Mere minutes into Half-Life: Alyx, I encountered a Strider. These behemoths cast ominous shadows on all who dare pass beneath them, their spindly legs and jagged haunches forming a silhouette of sheer threat. I gazed up at the Strider in awe. I could practically feel the wind buffet my face as it lumbered by the balcony I stood on. Then I raised both my hands loftier and flipped it off.

In One-half-Life: Alyx, you lot're non series hero Gordon Freeman. You lot are Alyx Vance, Gordon's BFF and beau resistance member, undertaking a mission to rescue her father but prior to her offset meeting with Gordon. Earlier long, however, Alyx and her compatriots learn of the existence of a Combine super weapon and attempt to destroy information technology or merits it for humanity.

You're Alyx, but you lot're besides yous: Alyx is a game that tin can only exist played in VR, which turns it into a distinctly more than personal experience than Half-Life, Half-Life 2, or their episodic sequels. Desire to defiantly flip off a Strider? Get for it. Want to pick upwards a zombie corpse and slap its face around like it's the third (and worst) Stooge? Sure, knock yourself out. Want to try to exercise the same thing to a headcrab, only for it to leap out of your hands and onto your face? It's your funeral. That's what makes it special. You tin be lightheaded. Yous tin can exist expressive and dramatic. You tin pick upwards every concluding object you notice in the game world, gently examine information technology, and then hurl it into an abyss. You can embody Alyx still you cull.

Hither's 20 minutes of Half-Life: Alyx in action.

Merely, past the same token, yous're the one performing all the actions. Need to reload your pistol? It's you performing every footstep in the procedure, instead of some lightning-handed weapons wizard. It'southward your butter fingers retrieving ammo from your backpack, loading the magazine into your gun, and cocking it, all while a headcrab zombie charges at you like a drunken gorilla. I dropped the ammo mag. I did it multiple times. Each fourth dimension, I ran abroad from the headcrab zombie while audibly whimpering in fearfulness.

Alyx is a full-diddled Half-Life adventure that, at least in terms of length and scope, rivals anything the series has produced. But VR changes the nature of your interactions with City 17 and its denizens. When Alyx is firing on all cylinders—drenching you lot in dread and atmosphere while steadily introducing new, VR-specific mechanics and ideas—the game injects some unfamiliarity into locations and enemies whose novelty has worn off for series fans. But, partially as a consequence of needing to get people acclimated to this bold new VR earth, it reveres the games that came before a trivial too much, taking quite a few hours before it breaks ground that feels truly new and trying to replicate some elements of previous One-half-Life games that aren't a great fit for VR. Half-Life is a different brute in VR. It is more than stressful and intense than its non-VR predecessors. Information technology tin exist downright exhausting—sometimes for extremely commendable reasons and other times for securely frustrating ones. Alyx reveals what VR games can be, only perhaps besides what they should attempt to avert for fright of overwhelming or frustrating players.

So a headcrab leaps onto your bodily human face, and you freak the absolute f*ck out.

Half-Life: Alyx is a return to a universe that'due south laid dormant since 2007's Half-Life ii: Episode two, but it's also the first game in the series to be designed from the ground up for VR headsets. This in mind, the game needs to teach you a lot in a relatively curt amount of time: How to movement in VR by warping forward in whatsoever direction, rather than moving seamlessly through levels like in a standard FPS. How to pick up and shop ammo past physically placing it in your backpack. How to use Alyx'south gravity gloves, the game's take on Half-Life ii's iconic gravity gun, to yank objects from afar, which solves the long-standing VR trouble of awkwardly reaching out to grab things. How to use Alyx'south multi-tool, a modest electronic device that can hack man and Combine technology, to solve different kinds of puzzles that involve manipulating holograms in 3D spaces in order to admission ammo, health, and weapon upgrades that are locked inside diverse Combine devices. How to put your weapons in upgrade machines, which give them new parts like additional ammo slots and laser sights. How to open up cabinets. How to aim your dang gun with your own two easily instead of a mouse or controller.

These things might sound basic, merely they take fourth dimension to etch into your muscle memory. And and so, for the showtime few hours, Alyx goes relatively easy on y'all. The footstep is dainty and fifty-fifty. Levels are simplistic zombie game fare—straightforward virtually to the point of being unmemorable. The game introduces new concepts and challenges only when it feels like you lot're fix to tackle them and not a moment sooner. You encounter enemies that, if you're a Half-Life fan, you'll want to greet like old friends.

But and then a headcrab leaps onto your actual human face, and you freak the absolute f*ck out. Over the course of my 17-hour playthrough, headcrabs never stopped making me experience a nauseating sense of dread. This is far from my starting time VR rodeo; I'm used to having video game enemies try to invade what feels like my IRL space. My reaction, then, is a testament to the animation and sound blueprint skill of Half-Life: Alyx's development team that the very idea of being touched past these lurching meatball monsters inspired within me a deep revulsion. (Relevant sidenote: It'due south possible to grab leaping headcrabs with your outstretched easily in this one. The get-go fourth dimension I tried, I did so with a bucket, for fright of my hands going anywhere most the fauna'south gurgling craw.)

I institute this to be true for a peachy many members of Half-Life'due south classic closet o' monsters. Headcrab zombies. Barnacles. Antlions. Poison headcrabs—oh god, toxicant headcrabs! Without giving abroad too much, I will merely say that Alyx contains a segment involving plentiful darkness and toxicant headcrabs, as you'd expect from a Half-Life game. Information technology is masterfully designed. I have never been more afraid while playing a video game, particularly toward the stop of this section. During the level's crescendo, I freaked out and forgot how to fifty-fifty hold my gun, let alone how to aim it. Then I teleported face-first into a wall. My adrenaline spiked similar a freshly-flare-up fire hydrant. For a brief moment, I could non remember how to course words. I but knew that I was deeply, authentically agape. This level was not immensely difficult, but afterwards playing it, I had to lie downwards on the burrow and take a breather. It felt similar some function of my lizard brain actually believed I'd but had a brush with death.

But even when it's going easy on yous, Alyx is a stressful experience. It is i thing to have your space invaded by a pesky, bladed "manhack" robot in a standard Half-Life game. It'due south something else to have one soaring effectually your head and neck in VR. You lot desire to yell or empty a full prune into information technology simply to make certain it doesn't rise up and pop your personal chimera again. The starting time fourth dimension a swarm of them came after me, it was overwhelming. In that location were just so many, and they moved so fast, buzzed so menacingly. I warped around a series of narrow alleys to try to maintain distance, cursing as my anxiety-addled shots pinged uselessly off walls each time the manhacks got close plenty for me to open fire.

Over time, thank you to the game's series of slowly escalating challenges, I adjusted. A few hours in, I encountered proper assault rifle-wielding Combine soldiers. I felt ready. The whole scene was beautifully set, with nostalgia-tickling Combine radio chatter coming from behind a moving train. I knew what I had to do. I warped behind a clamper of cover. The train passed. Synth-laden guitar music took the identify of an otherwise sparse soundtrack. 2 soldiers saw me. They opened burn. I ducked. Physically, with my whole body. I popped one with my pistol. He fired dorsum. I ducked again. One of his shots grazed me, taking away a portion of one of my three hearts of health. Simply this was my moment. I fired once more and again and over again. I reloaded with the speed and efficacy of an activeness movie hero, or at to the lowest degree someone who doesn't die in the first scene of an action movie. Eventually, i soldier dropped dead, eliciting the familiar heart monitor flatline sound that's accompanied Combine deaths since fourth dimension immemorial (2004). I then fabricated short piece of work of his friend with some sloppy but effective followup shots.

After the second soldier fell, I stood up and raised both my arms in triumph. I did not country any perfect headshots or slaughter a horde of alien jerkholes similar Gordon "Gosh darn, he'southward skilful at slaughtering conflicting jerkholes" Freeman, but I overcame what felt like my first real test with poise and a fiddling bit of style instead of panic and spaghetti spilling out of my pockets. And so I went over to one of the deceased soldiers, grabbed him by the head, and slapped him effectually like the fabled 3rd Stooge. I was ready for new challenges.

The game agreed. After the first five or and then hours, Alyx removes its kid gloves. This leads to some of the game's best moments: high water marks non but for Half-Life: Alyx, but for Half-Life in general. When Half-Life: Alyx stops trying to pay tribute to the enemies and encounters that have come before and brings wholly new (at least, for One-half-Life) ideas to the tabular array, it soars more than often than it falters.

One level toward the center of the game involves fugitive an uber-powerful brute that is sightless, but reacts to even the slightest sounds and will "tear your arms off," according to some other character, if it ever gets its hands on you. I did not fire a single bullet for this unabridged level, because I like my arms. Instead, I had to creep around and, in a fun twist, physically cover my oral fissure with my hand to prevent Alyx from audibly coughing around toxic spores scattered throughout the area's corridors. The level, in plow, found increasingly diabolical ways to force me into close quarters with this heaving monstrosity, oftentimes by forcing me to solve puzzles within spitting distance of its salivating jaws. The level was clever and terrifying, reworking puzzle ideas present in earlier levels to fit its Don't Wake Daddy formula. Each time I entered a new part of it, I let out an exasperated sigh and said "Oh, you take got to exist kidding me." I loved information technology.

At that place are other top-notch levels, besides. One takes place in a zoo. It'southward very funny. Some other makes swell use of verticality. In that location'south one involving explosive barrels that at least gets points for creativity. Oh, and the final level is bonkers.

But by the time I reached the end of the game, it felt similar it had overstayed its welcome a little. Many of its challenges—both in terms of combat and puzzling—escalate incrementally, and after they escalate by a sure bespeak, VR becomes a liability rather than an immersion enhancer. There are frustrating segments and mechanical stumbles that had me practically spitting with frustration.

In its apparent blitz to feel like a proper kickoff-person shooter instead of a VR shooting gallery, Half-Life: Alyx throws more and more enemies at yous each time you wind up in an open infinite. These enemies are certainly more stationary than standard FPS baddies, but they still follow you lot, flank y'all, throw grenades to flush yous out of cover, and send manhacks to hunt you down. Initially, this is heady, and information technology fits with the game'south premise: Alyx is, subsequently all, a normal homo taking on overwhelming conflicting forces. Information technology is immensely absurd to warp backside embrace and blast a shotgun-toting Warhammer 40,000 space marine wannabe with i hand while injecting a health syringe into your stomach with the other. That'due south some real peel-of-your-teeth stuff!

But these fights apace devolve into awkward games of Ring Effectually The Rosie where yous're fleeing around combat arenas using cease-commencement warp controls and herky-hasty analog stick-based turning to occasionally blast enemies earlier resuming your short-distance teleport-dart to new cover. It's only not an ideal control configuration for that kind of sustained locomotion or situational awareness (though you tin can at to the lowest degree alter the extent to which yous turn in the game's options). It but doesn't feel natural in a fast-paced combat scenario. On more than a few occasions, my manus got stuck on an object, or my view turned the wrong way, or my head wound up partially in a wall. Having enemies bust up the "real" you is intrinsically more stressful than when they knock abstract wellness points off a video game avatar, and it'south non fun to feel like you're piloting a malfunctioning tin man at the same fourth dimension. Sometimes, it's fifty-fifty infuriating.

Alyx ofttimes gives third acts to encounters that don't feel similar they need them, or that feel like they could enjoyably ramp up to that level of complicated chaos in a normal first-person shooter. Just this is a VR game, where the line between fun and frustration is thin.

Some enemies introduced later in the game make this kind of combat more enjoyable, but others do the opposite. Regular antlions, for instance, come at y'all in frightening swarms, but it'south fun to blast their legs off to slow them downwards. Bluish antlions, however, lob slime blasts at you that exercise pretty serious damage and leave a rest over your optics that temporarily obscures your already-express (relative to normal FPSes) vision. Fighting them in isolation rules. To avoid their blasts, I bobbed my head, slid my feet away in the nick of fourth dimension, and fifty-fifty leaped backwards, nearly tripping over the burrow behind me in the procedure. But mix blue antlions into a grouping of regular antlions and Combine soldiers, and you've got a recipe for frustration. Getting hit with a blinding blast out of nowhere only feels cheap when you're frantically warping most. There'southward not time to fight them the fun way while fending off x or more than enemies, either. You have to juggle likewise many other factors while battling controls that just aren't cutting out for nuanced maneuvering at high speeds.

It doesn't assist that at that place are a few too many of each encounter, bosses included. One boss in item shows up first every bit a clever hide-and-seek challenge, and and then as a different, much more perilous fight that's clever in a different manner. Just so the game traps you lot in a basement with ii of that boss and a bunch of headcrab zombies, forcing you to run in circles to avoid attacks that embrace large swathes of ground, and it's similar "OK, nosotros become it." Alyx often gives third acts to encounters that don't feel similar they need them, or that feel like they could enjoyably ramp upwards to that level of complicated chaos in a normal first-person shooter. But this is a VR game, where the line betwixt fun and frustration is thin.

The game's recurring multi-tool puzzles, for the most part, do not suffer from the same issues as gainsay, only they similarly hitting a point of diminishing returns in the game's subsequently portions, when they grow from cool manipulations of 3-dimensional spaces into unwieldy multi-part exercises in trying to outdo previous iterations of the aforementioned puzzle. There are a few recurring multi-tool puzzles in Half-Life: Alyx: the hologram ball you guide blue lights through (while avoiding swarms of carmine lights), the hologram ball that asks y'all to match same-colored segments beyond its surface, the hologram of mini-constellations that you organize such that beams of light pass through designated areas, and the i where y'all use your multi-tool to trace wires in walls and complete circuits past changing the direction electricity flows.

Many of these are optional. They're largely fine, but there are so darn many of them, and new ones just add more steps instead of fundamentally altering the nature of the puzzle in question. More blue lights to guide to one another while hoping your controller doesn't briefly freak out and force you to outset over. More mini-constellations to tug on and tinker with until they're perfectly aligned. More circuits to follow through more rooms. After a while, they make the game feel repetitive. As with combat, even the slightest controller sensitivity issues or sensor glitches tin bring them to an annoying, premature halt.

I likewise question whether the chapter-based, long-grade storytelling of a traditional single-player FPS is a good fit for virtual reality. I tried to play Alyx as I did Half-Life 2 back in the day, immersing myself in its story and globe via a serial of multi-hour play sessions. I came away with adrenaline-fried nerves and body aches. VR of this allegiance is merely more than intense than a standard video game. Alyx does a smashing job of leveraging its detailed (by VR standards) graphics, depicting a world that slowly builds from grimy to absolutely slathered in all manner of conflicting fluids. In conjunction with stellar sound and visual pattern, information technology leaves you dreading what's effectually every corner. But it takes a toll over time, particularly once those monsters finally cease going crash-land in the night and showtime going crash-land on your confront.

On tiptop of that, there'due south the obvious fact that VR is more physical than regular games. During any given play session, I stood, I walked, I leaped, and I crouched. On their ain, none of these actions are hard or intense, only they add upwards. Fortunately, Half-Life: Alyx has a slew of accessibility options to lighten the load and allow more people to play, such as a single controller mode, a crouch toggle, a stand toggle for seated players, and tiptop adjustment. But the game's standard way demands more physicality than players might expect because, if nothing else, standing mostly in one place for long periods of time is hard on your knees and dorsum. On top of that, there'due south however the accessibility elephant in the room: price. To feel Half-Life: Alyx in its full glory, you need an expensive headset tethered to an (at to the lowest degree) equally expensive PC, not to mention an apartment or living infinite with enough room for you to comfortably movement around. This game is, for now, certainly not for everyone.

Half-Life: Alyx reaches some astoundingly high heights while also managing to be both too aggressive and too bourgeois for its own expert. At different points, information technology tries to be VR's long-heralded, Gordon Freeman-esque savior full of fresh ideas most how VR can transform video games with inventive and immersive mechanics, proof that VR can fall in line with traditional action games meant for entirely different interfaces, and a triumphantly cornball return to the Half-Life universe. Information technology is not surprising that these goals sometimes conflict with each other.

In a lot of ways, the end result feels in line with the One-half-Life series' legacy. Messiness has always been part of the package. Half-Life was a masterpiece, simply nobody would call it perfect, equally evidenced by the gargantuan fan remake projection that spent more than than a decade attempting to gear up its flaws. In truth, One-half-Life two'due south story was not a narrative revolution—at least, not in terms of the content of the story it told. It leaned on mystery to fill in gaps where substance faltered and had many other issues besides. Merely its setting's sense of identify and the techniques information technology pioneered to assist players fully soak upwardly that earth'southward details informed countless future games. And that's to say naught of all the game'south physics-focused mechanical innovations.

One-half-Life: Alyx reaches some astoundingly loftier heights while also managing to exist both too ambitious and too conservative for its ain practiced.

Half-Life: Alyx, similarly, is a game of quiet revolutions that get in more than the sum of its parts, of pioneering ideas that nosotros someday may non exist able to imagine VR games without. Its locations feel like well-worn territory until a little also late in its arc. Its story has one wild twist, but otherwise it goes pretty much where you'd expect. It lacks the emotional gravitas needed to make its main beats really sing—Alyx'southward human relationship with resistance fellow member Russel, who chatters in her ear throughout her journey, is more than quippy than heartfelt, and most other characters make cursory appearances rather than getting fourth dimension to be actual, you know, characters. It is, in so many ways, Another One-half-Life Game in the mold of Half-Life 2 and its episodes when information technology could have been more.

At the same fourth dimension, I could go along for days about the detail-yanking mechanic solitary. One time you get it down, it feels and so good to hold out your hand like Iron Man, pull a distant object toward yous, and squeeze your controller (or just a trigger, if you prefer) to take hold of it. Every single time I did information technology, I felt like a cool genius. My partner told me that I looked absurd in real life while I was doing it. Nobody always looks cool in real life when they're doing things in VR! And it solves so many problems inherent to navigating virtual spaces. You don't accept to reach out at odd angles to grab things and risk confusing or otherwise harming your VR setup. You tin just flick your wrist, and at that place you take it: that thing you wanted. I am not joking when I say that my encephalon still thinks I should have this power in real life. In the past five days, I take absentmindedly tried on three separate occasions to pull minor objects toward me past flicking my wrist. So far, it has non worked, but I continue to hold out promise.