Half Life Alyx is my first true AAA VR experience and to be honest I've got to admit that I really felt like I got a bit swindled when it came to the price of this game, the opening hours left a little bit to be desired with its fairly basic introduction to the Half life world without giving really any context as to where my character is based in this world (Never played Half life 2 or 1/Black Mesa).

My initial thoughts going into this were that I was going to see some never before seen mechanics that only this game would allow you to experience, for example the nemesis system in Shadow of Mordor, one mechanic isolated to that one game/universe but with this game most of your mechanics are seen in other VR titles today such as the gravity gloves that you pick up early in the storyline. But I have got to say that even though I have experienced this previously, I have got to admit the system in this game just for the gravity gloves alone is fun, it doesn’t seem tedious in away and it can be challenging trying to work the gloves around awkward obstacles to catch items in the air which when you do does feel very accomplished.

The first time you fire up a game you are opened to a very beautiful looking game and to be honest ill probably do another run through of this game just for the scenery alone as its quite breathtaking how good looking this game is and it honestly still holds up in terms of quality 5 years later.

In the game you play as Alyx, a recurring character in the Half life universe and the game itself is set roughly 5 years before half life 2 so with this being my first playthrough I may be more inclined to give HL:2 a shot … maybe black mesa before-hand but who knows.

The games storyline from what ive gathered somewhat sets up the events that occur in HL:2 but I feel that even after playing Alyx I don’t feel that I have been missing some key intel regarding the HL:1/2 storylines so I feel that even as a beginner to the series I feel that Alyx was a good investment to jump into first before playing the HL Mainline series as I didn’t feel lost during the story-telling and did not feel left out when it came to certain moments that are considered spoiler territory.

The physics in this game are probably some of the best I have seen since starting my somewhat rocky VR journey, moments where physics objects are flying all over the place is quite commonplace and when it comes to certain combat encounters it feels fairly realistic to throw a random object you have to hand to give you ample room to reload your guns.

The length of time that it takes to complete the main story does somewhat feel a little bit lacking as the storyline in my time playing took around 10 hours to complete and my rule of thumb regarding price versus game time is "hours played X £2" (every hour played equals £2 of value to the game). So when I completed the storyline I did feel that there should have been more and felt that the price of the game was a bit much to ask, but for my experience playing the game all of the immersion I felt I do feel that the game is worth more than the time spent completing the storyline as there are moments of pure tension in the game and moments where the game genuinely scared me and there were moments where I had to physically prepare for a big brawl to kick off.

Playing this game on a Quest 2 in my opinion was a really good start and I would have loved to have played this on a higher end rig and have it be physically connected to my PC as opposed to playing wirelessly via SteamLink, but as a first time VR user especially in this game space I am honestly pleasantly surprised at how good this game is especially when using Wi-Fi connection based VR.

I can honestly say that the game has broadened my horizons in possibly playing the Half Life series more in the future