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Half Life: Alyx is Five Years Old Today (lemmy.ml)

submitted 1 month ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

126 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I genuinely can't believe Half Life Alyx is five years old.

No other video game has felt the way Alyx felt. No one else has taken such a bold swing in what a video game can be. It's burned into my mind as my Half Life game, the one that came out at just the right time for me.

It was also my "pandemic" game. While everyone else was playing Animal Crossing or Doom Eternal, I was playing and replaying Half Life Alyx.

It definitely feels like it's somewhat doomed to be less remembered in the popular consciousness than most big games that come out, and indeed the rest of the games in the Half Life lineage. Cries of "Half Life 3 when?" still abound in spite of the very clear effort Alyx made to move the story forward. But to me it feels like a game that still hasn't been topped in the five years since it came out, not by a long shot.

Half Life Alyx received a Game of the Year win from GameSpot, and nominations from a few other publications. When it came to events like The Game Awards with a dedicated "Best VR Game" category, it won handily.

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[–] [email protected] 42 points 1 month ago (53 children)

The idea was people would buy the game and play it.

[–] [email protected] 40 points 1 month ago (37 children)

The idea of sinking $500 into a headset and then another $80 for one game is pretty crazy. Not like Valve doesn't have the ownership numbers from the hardware survey. It was never going to sell like HL2.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 month ago (8 children)

Plenty of people do that to play a single game.

Given how different it is to other, normal 3d games, I don't think the comparison is fair. Additionally there are a lot of other, really great games in VR too.

Regardless, I don't think the problem is financial anymore. Rather that VR requires a sort of "commitment to inconvenience" where you feel cut off from the outside world (among other things) that I don't think a lot of people are comfortable with.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 month ago (1 children)

It's both financial (huge investment for a single game) and not. Playing with a thing strapped to your face does not sound fun. Especially with glasses. Or in the summertime. Plus I'm a Linux gamer, so I'd probably run into a lot of issues before I could run it.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

I also run on Linux exclusively and I could play Half-Life Alex almost flawlessy on the Steam Index. And other VR games as well, including Beatsaber, Gorn, Walkabout Golf and many others. I'm really grateful to Valve and their Proton.