Half-Life: Alyx Changed Everything (Spoiler free) 

Finally a Half-Life: Alyx video without spoilers, props to you!

i wanted to see some melee in this game but honestly i have no idea how they could have implemented it effectively

While playing Alyx, I found myself having actual memories from the game. Not “Alyx did that” no, I did that. Because, frankly, I did. Saints and Sinners, Skyrim, and Beatsaber made me know VR was the future, while Alyx convinced me that VR is the best way to experience games. Now, before they make Half Life 3 for VR, they need to make an affordable wireless version of the valve index, because holy shit that’d sell! There’s nothing less immersive being tangled in 50 ft of wires, and as someone with the Quest, I just want the quest but better.

A nice touch about the insta-grab in Alyx is that your hand moves as well as the object, making it seem like you're snatching it out of the air to hide the trickery.

The gravity gloves were so smooth in game that it was unbelievable, my first playthrough, the first time i took off my head set, and went to do something, i remember trying to gravity glove something towards me in REAL LIFE due to how natural it feels

This is a great summary. Valve are really just masters of innovation

Half-Life Alyx will also probably kick off the VR Modding craze, the SDK is one of the most accessible ways to make VR mods/games.

Also the graphics are faaar faaar beyond any other vr game and runs the same

More reasons to make me want to get my setup overhauled for VR, lol. Amazing video, and I’m glad to see valve still has their hands in the gaming industry. Half life has always been one of those special franchises to me, where even after one game might be dead and unspoken about in the mainstream, the DNA of the franchise continues to show itself all over the place. With any luck we’ll all be talking about Alyx in the same way we all talked about the first half life in the next decade.

I like how it's just an issue with the Cosmos (universally viewed as mediocre/ kinda bad relative to other modern headsets) and not inside out tracking in general. I know people that use rifles flawlessly with the Rift S.

So I'm a huge Half Life fan. I even bought a vive just to play half life alyx. With supply of vr accessories being pretty slim after the announcement of hla I got my hands on a vr setup in january and with boneworks being the big thing around that time I thought, "why not buy boneworks to tide me over until Half Life releases?"' And I've got to say that I had a lot of fun with boneworks, it worked really well with my tracking setup I didn't have any issues with motion sickness and I got really hyped for how good half life must be if an indie dev was able to make something like boneworks. So then half life finally came out, the game I was waiting for for 5 years and I've got to say' I was a bit dissapointed. Things like weapon switching being done through a menu while in VR annoyed me a lot as well as the lack of guns. In my mind, a central part of the Half Life experience was that you always had a choice in weaponry to approach your enemies with and build a strategy around. HLVR kind of fell flat in that department. I was also used to boneworks excellent melee system and balancing of two handed weapons and I was kind of annoyed that the only weapon type in HLVR were single handed guns. But through your video you really made the design decisions Valve chose to make clear to me, as well as the compromises Boneworks made which I just happened to skirt around by buying a VR which boneworks was designed for. This really furthered my horizon, great Video.

"as someone with a cosmos" dude... how did you pick the only vr headset that's not compatible with alyx

3:22 you have committed the ultimate sin. You have called a magazine a “clip.” Please report to your nearest NRA for extermination.

1:25 Barrel goes through pole "We know what does and doesn't work in VR"

11:49 I've done testing and there is a benefit to using 2 hands: the smg's shot grouping in full auto is a ton more accurate. Apart from that, the pistol and shotgun don't get accuracy buffs with a second hand.

You bet HL raises the bar while DOOM is eternal, Half Life is the king of the FPS still

please make more videos talking about HL:A game design

Just found your channel. This is amazing. I've been trying to explain Alyx to people for so long. Now, all I have to do is send this video!

This is a great video dude, you deserve a lot more subs

Great review, but you talk about manual reloading, crouching, and healing like they haven't been in play in VR for several years already. Maybe you mean for single player campaigns, because games like Onward and Pavlov have employed all of those mechanics since 2016 (early 2017 for Pavlov). They're great mechanics, but they certainly aren't new. It was immediately apparent in the "early days" of motion control that we should use some variant of manual usage for as many processes as possible.

Nice vid, you raised some Interesting points. You approached more from a VR-mechanics centric focus than I did in my own video but we latched onto a lot of the same points. My own approach was more player choice and whether the systems in Alyx offered players meaningful ability to express themselves. Reloading and stances in combat was one, I didn't know that other VR games did that via button presses so that makes Alyx more significant in the way ita approached it. To me at least that was a very good point you raised. My major finding from combat was that it induced stress. With the way reloading is it brings out the pressure of combat and that was really new to me. I think we both touched on the new control schema lending itself to new ways of manipulating the world. To me it highlighted potential but from watching your video it seems it might have also been about collating proven mechanics from other games. Different perspectives but it seems that many of the same features stood out to both of us even if it was for different reasons.

What I think Valve really did was create the perfect entry point to VR. While that's nice, the lack of deeper gameplay mechanics really makes me heavily prefer something like boneworks instead.

Like I've said. Hot Dogs, Horseshoes & Hand Grenades will be my favorite VR game but Half-Life: Alyx was the best experience I've ever had in VR. Everything about it put me into the perspective of Alyx completely, it helps that the gunplay is incredibly fluid yet easy to understand and actually rivals H3VR I mean the Gravity Gloves set the standard for VR grabbing, H3VR would implement, as would Cosmonious High.

Half-Life 2 and Alyx gave me an idea for a game that's probably already a thing - a linear story-based puzzler with an emphasis on physics that gives you the ability to change the rules but requires you to understand what changing certain rules mean for you to solve the many puzzles the game offers. This would be a GREAT experience in VR, which would give you spatial awareness and let you think more deeply about the solutions and how you want to execute them.

Nice video, although for me it could have done without what you said about the crouch buttons in VR Games. First of all Half Life: Alyx has actually a crouch button on one of the stick clicks and second of all it's presence in the games that have it doesn't hurt anyone. While it being there massively increasing comfort and fun for people with bad knees and with disabilities. For me playing games like Budget Cuts, actually gets painful sometimes just because they couldn't care to add a crouch option. The only reason why I care to write this comment is because I really wouldn't like for there to be a stigma that crouch buttons are bad.

The way you talked about portal 2 being impressive ‘at the time’ made me feel so old lmao.

I LOVE YOU FOR A NO SPOILERS VIDEO I ALMOST CRIED AND SCROLLED AWAY!!

Yeah this whole tracking part is why i got an original Vive despite its by now outdated HMD. Tracking is king for shooting games, and even the 1.0 lighthouse system still works with mindblowing precision. Also great video, a compilation of "industry standards" for VR game-design could be an interesting follow-up.

Thanks for making a Video without spoilers because I am currently still playing trough the game and don't want to be spoiled

"we know what works and what doesn't in VR" *meanwhile me gravity-gloving ammo 3 times, sighing because it keeps getting caught on objects*

I’m stupid. Until now I avoided videos about Alyx like hell because I really don’t want to be spoiled. I started watching this one because of the "spoiler free" in the title, and then I realized that the one thing I really don’t want to be spoiled is the gameplay mechanics. I want my mind to get blown by the design ideas as I discover the game. Like when I played Half Life back in the days, and then Portal (biggest mind blow ever). I don’t blame you ( what I saw is not a big deal of a spoil ). Your video is legit spoiler free. It’s 11pm and my brain is slow. I just realized that they are many types of "spoilers". Felt stupid for a moment. Write this down so that I remember not to fall for this again. ;-) I guess I’ll get back to this video when I’ll finish Half Life Alyx. But first, I need a VR headset. See you next year! XD

I know I'm late, but my favourite part about Half Life Alyx is that it's proven to other game companies that VR can be profitable.

As you i'm a lover of all things Half Life. I recently gave the FRee Half Life 1 port to VR (LamdaVR) a good run and it's pretty amazing, I'm using the Quest 1, and somehow it's head camera tracking is not a problem in the Port when it comes to dual wielding the weapons. It's a pure joy to use both hands/controllers with the guns and the iron sights or lazer tracking for increased aim and controll. i do remember it not being as comfortable in Alyx. However the weapon menu in the Half Life 1 port is a chore.

Only gripe I have with alyx (apart from the lack of melee) is that it isn't on the level of boneworks in terms of physics, while boneworks makes everyone sick until you adapt to stomach it, it undoubtedly presents the biggest immersion compared to other vr games. Having that or at least more of that in alyx with it's way better graphics would set the gold standard years ahead. It also compliments the gravity glove a lot better if the game just had better physics in general

Very cool how much effort Valve put into this game to make even the most basic actions feel good. So good, in fact, that I've heard of people doing the force grab in real life.

I remember when I got half life alyx I got use to the gravity gloves and I dropped something so I tried flicking my hands but then I realized I dont have gravity gloves.

6:39 HE IS CARRYING GNOME CHOMSPKI LES GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Funny you listed insurgency sandstorm at 0:40 , because it started as a HL2 mod, progressed to a standalone source game, and is now (sandstorm) an EU4 game.

6:15 You can see a cursor/mouse there to the right... lol, but good video

With everything else going on... I've forgotten vr even existed. It's legit been 1 1/2 years since I thought about it. This shit is so heavy. I can't believe I forgot about vr. it used to be something I was so interested in and now... its been off my radar for so long.

Yes. Having something to do when stuck in cover is everything. It's why mass effect's gameplay was so tight. I can command my squad to do all sorts of things when I'm forced to take cover, among them, set up some very satisfying combo skills. It's also why call of duty type gameplay was very boring to me personally. Especially at higher difficulties, which usually just translated to waiting behind cover for health more often with nothing to do.

I’m just thrilled that Alyx means 3 will eventually happen.

tbh, cant wait what nintendo will do with vr

"No Spoilers" Spoils the fun of discovering the garden gnome.

Raising the crowbar that is

I'm surprised we haven't seen a video about Boneworks to be honest the gameplay felt more like Half Life than Alyx did, but the atmosphere is completely different considering the amount of references to Half Life, I'm convinced the gameplay is just a love letter to it and it's just a good game in general

I still haven't had the opportunity to play Alyx yet due to the fact that my computer isn't powerful enough and I currently have no reason to upgrade, but ideally I'll get the chance some day

I think that the reason the gravity gloves feel so natural is because most people have interacted with a yoyo before.

THATS WHY RIFLES DRIFT WHEN I AIM IN BONEWORKS!!!!!! i never realised its because my hands go in front of eachother

Ive never had a problem with using rifles in the rift S. It has like a prediction system to when your controllers tracking is lost or not completley in sight it can kinda predict what your doing.

Hey Leadhead Do half life 2 mapping contest reviews with full playthroughs of each map

How do I say this? Your video essays are perfection. I don't know how you do it. The editing, the scripts, the narratives. PERFECT. Thank you, and keep up the amazing work!!! :D

I love your presentation style man; keep it up and you're gonna be a big time youtuber soon, mark my words.

I can't flick my left wrist without pain

A vr headset is in my future....but probably not until its 4k.

i dont want to play Wii Fitt though. I JUST WANT TO SIT AND GAME WITH VR

Valve is not capable of making a game without making a revolution in gaming

I'd like to point out that the reason that Two-Handed weapons weren't used (among others) was because there's no connection between your hands. A player holding a VR controller can plausibly feel like they're holding a Pistol, but there's no connection between your hands in real life for two-handed weapons so it breaks immersion. If the classic shotgun was in the game, you'd need to pump it with every shot, which would require a very specific hand-movement that would be too clunky to be fun or immersive. The main point they made with reloads was to ensure it is a physical activity, but it's simple enough to be done while looking at something else. I'm not saying it wouldn't work, but I'd imagine they wanted to keep it simple in their first big project. This is extremely noticeable in Boneworks, where it's extremely difficult to get used to using two-handed weapons. Using two-handed Melee weapons is near impossible.

I paid 100 bucks in my favourite cafe to finish Alyx. And honestly, even though I can't find ANYTHING I don't like in game, I expected crazier shit

When I finished HL:A, I was amazed, but also sad. The mechanics were fluid and intuitive. The graphics were gorgeous and immersive. The story was interesting and opened up many doors. But it was all still sad, because i knew no VR game for a long time will ever compare. Every VR I've played is beneath HL:A. But with enough patience, hopefully that will no longer be the case! P.S. I really feel you on the sore feet. If you've ever banged up your knees pretty badly in the past, you'll also feel it there in a few hours. Worth it!

THEY’RE CALLED THE RUSSELLS!!

I’m waiting for the portal one. Idk if it’s gonna happen, but I’m waiting for it.

I don't see it as cheating, I see it as the item gravitating toward the glove until the end.

Penelope your my hero and inspiration but did you just call boneworks a tech demo

I have wanted to pick this game up for two years now, but have hesitated because the ceiling where I set up my VR is relatively low for me (I'm a very tall boy). In other games, I've unwittingly bonked the ceiling, and I'm always afraid of damaging something. Therefore, I must ask: How is the verticality in this game? Are you forced to look up to shoot or throw a lot?

You made me hyped for this game even more.

Half-Life raised the crowbar* there, fixed for you

I really hope the next Half-Life game is already in development because I cannot wait for more! I also really hope other game developers start trying their hand at AAA VR games, even though I bet most of them will chicken out and just make a non-VR mode, which will mean neither mode will be as polished and fun as it could be. I’m very hopeful for games in the future tho. And whether the next game is called Half-Life 3 or not, I’ll be there on DAY 1 to play it!

I have played half life Alyx on my headset and my god it is so good

Half life never changed anything. It simply showed what can be done. It matters when the game devs actually care and can do what is needed.

It's frankly disturbing they were able to get half life alyx even MADE. Fans have been asking for half life 3 or at least episode 3 of the episodic trilogy for YEARS! And not even a hint about it comes along. But then Alyx comes out of nowhere with all of this in VR a relatively NEW tech. To say i'm shocked would be an understatement. But it also makes me furious. If they can pump this out then why not half life 3. They've shown they've still got the talent. I know a lot of the old writers and stuff are gone but it's not like they've completely lost the plot. And steam will continue being a money printer for them EVEN MORE SO if the fabled Hl3 gets released. ............ I say all this and i'm not even a huge fan. I haven't been waiting as long as others have but it still pisses me off cause it's just like ... why? What's the hold up?

alyx also raised the standard for my cpu heat

PLaying Alyx on Quest wirelessly is magic

As a rift s owner, i personally have not had any issues with inside-out tracking being bad when one controller is obscuring another. Cosomos has had tracking issues from day one and considering valve specifically said that alyx was designed around the knuckles i doubt the lack of two hand weapons is due to the current state of inside out on an extremely small percentage of headsets

Considering how big the half life series is, it’s a little weird that they released a large scale title exclusively to quite a small facet of the gaming community. Quite annoying for long time fans of half life. I hope episode 3 isn’t in VR.

I think boneworks is the one that really revolutionized it but alyx was very important too, I love valve

I played Alyx but I still feel that bone works takes the cake for interaction with the environment. But Alyx was very immersive with the fidelity of graphics and character animations/ behavior

1:18. No, YOU imply! Then I can infer. ;)

I would probably get half life alyx if it had melee combat, like comeone the crowbar is right there! it would've fit perfectly

About future devs following this games mechanics like the word of god, it literally is the word of god. Praise Gaben

He deserves more subs and views.

So many great games in 2020, but I'm confident that HALF LIFE: ALYX will still be my game of the year

If your feet/legs hurt while playing VR you’re either playing it for too long, or you’re incredibly weak.

Great vid!

with the success of gravity gloves in Half Life: Alyx, maybe we’ll start developing them in real life.

i was also surprised that there are still negative reviews about the game. like come on no vr games can top this

Playing this in vr is mind blowing...

6:30. Are you fucking kidding me dude?

What’s your opinion with the two handed weapons in Arizona sunshine but using the giant like gun controller thing? I’ve owned one and yes it’s good for shooting but it’s not great for like doing anything else (ie moving/ picking stuff up)

Half life alyx is definitly very innovative when it comes to VR but I feel credit should also be given to the people over at stress level zero who originally apraoched valve hopping to make a game using the half life IP that eventually became boneworks but what they showed valve inspirred much of half life alyx.

Does anyone else get motion sickness watching people play VR games?

Cant believe they actually made half-life 3

Raising the (Crow)bar

i'm really thinking about getting this game but i was wondering how the game handels controllers that don't have full finger tracking

My biggest issue with this is when you stated that bracing your hand when firing a one handed weapon doesn't really have benefits. The reason you do this is that both hands are more steady than a single hand, and also makes holding your arm up for longer less of a strain. This is true even in VR. It also has the added benefit of making it easier to control recoil with real firearms, but the main reason you do it is for aim stability, which absolutely does translate to VR.

You think two handed weapons could be solved by having horizontal grips on the sides of weapons? It's not conventional, but it would at least work.

i was feeling bad on how valve went from some sort of "video-game-post-grad-research-university" where alot of ideas and game design concepts where tested, refined and shared with the world to "DotA2 & Steam Money printing Corporation" Alyx brought back part of that hope that valve is still one of the last creative video game companies left.

Maybe Blizzard was about polishing what already worked to insane production values, but Valve was more about innovating and breaking new grounds in gameplay. In that sense, I found Alyx an impressive achievement in the polish department, but incredibly lacking in innovation. To me, far from showing the incredible new gameplay possibilities of VR akin to what HL1 did with interactive narrative or HL2 did with physics, it showed how beyond the coat of a new type of direct interaction (now you reload with your hands instead of pressing R, etc), you're eventually doing the same as always, and in fact even quite shallower due to the limitations of the VR medium vs actual real life. The puzzles, combat situations etc all felt just like and incredibly well crafted version of the stuff I've seen a hundred times, and once the innovation of the "how" you interact with the world wears off, I think there's not much more to see. It's a glorified WiiMote, and I predict VR sets all around the world gathering dust, just like mine does.

Well said, nothing more to say. :) Alyx is the milestone for VR and hopefully sets the standard for future game productions.

Half Life raised the crow bar