The game makes available different movement mechanics for the player, these are named Blink, Shift, Continuous and Continuous Hand. Now we’re not saying that Half-Life: Alyx has solved that problem but it certainly has made more progress than anyone else. While increasing the pixel density and refresh rate of the HMD displays can certainly help with immersion, it’s when you have to move around in the video game world that causes immersion to break. Movement in VR has been the holy grail that every game developer has been after. It feels natural for Half-Life: Alyx to continue this legacy and put down some concrete mechanics for movement in VR. Crouch-jumping, a movement mechanic that has become second nature to every FPS player was something you first learnt in Half-Life. A live electric cable making contact with water would cause the entire body of water to become a hazard. The first Half-Life introduced several new concepts including how environmental elements would interact with each other to mimic real-life scenarios. Half-Life as a series has built a reputation for leading the charge when it comes to innovation in gaming. Damn the Combine Immersion through movement The game mostly revolves around this monolith and that’s about all we can let on without unleashing the spoilers.

In fact, the Combine is busy building a massive monolith in the middle of the city which happens to be Alyx’s principal interest. The Combine is everywhere in City 17 and Alyx spends most of her time surveilling their forces. You play Alyx Vance in a time period between Half-Life and Half-Life 2 about five years before Half-Life 2. If the name didn’t give it away then you’re probably living under head crab’s butt. That being said, Half-Life: Alyx more than makes up for all of Valve’s sins. So Valve ditching that storyline and releasing a prequel is tantamount to levels of cruelty that even the gulags didn’t drop to. Episode 2 ended with a nasty cliffhanger but it’s one of the reasons why the game has become so “meme”orable. While everyone has been waiting with baited breath for Episode 3 for more than a decade, it’s safe to say that Valve has pulled a Sopranos on us. However, the game plays just fine on every other VR system out there. Half-Life: Alyx is perhaps the first AAA video game title that is made-for-VR that is best experienced with Valve’s very own HMD VR solution, the Valve Index.

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