GAME CHANGER
The big AAA game that VR so badly needed.
Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trilogy
I didn’t have much doubt Half-Life: Alyx would be a great VR experience – Valve makes its own VR headset and software, after all. But I was sceptical it could also be a great, proper Half-Life game, and I was thrilled to discover it really is. While it’s sandwiched between the events of Half-Life and Half-Life 2 the repercussions of its story extend well into whatever future there is for the Half-Life series, and its technical accomplishments will leave most other developers, once again, struggling to keep up.
Five years before the events of Half-Life 2, Alyx Vance is performing surveillance and recon in the Combine-controlled
City 17. It’s immediately engaging to be back in City 17 again, so familiar yet so much more impressive in VR, an environment I don’t need to just look at and admire but one I can actually run my virtual fingertips across and crane my neck back to take in fully. When a city scanner takes my picture I instinctively hold my hands up against its blinding camera flash. Combine Metro Cops seem larger than life because they’re now actually life-size. I’ve seen Striders before but I’ve never had one step over me in VR as I stared up at it, utterly dumbfounded, watching it sink its massive feet into the side of a building, using the crumbling masonry as a step to walk itself up to a rooftop. During the opening minutes, and at plenty of times during the entire game, I just had to stop, stand still, and simply take it all in.
Half-Life: Alyx took me roughly 13 hours to complete, and while the slow and measured pace and claustrophobic setting of the first half felt occasionally stifling, the second half flew by as the intrigue of the story took its hold and the combat got far more exciting, varied, and excellently fast-paced.
The ending is, frankly, wonderful, surprising, exciting, not to mention more than a bit puzzling when you really stop to think about it.