Recent reviews by OhmZ

PROS

It's not often that scenes in a game give me goosebumps and butterflies in my stomach. Some of the set pieces in Half-Life Alyx stunned me. In the first opening scene, I just stood there for about 15 minutes looking over a balcony at City 17 and the Citadel with my jaw dropped. As I play the game, I feel compelled to take my time, to observe the richness and detail of the world. Something as mundane as picking up a piece of litter like a beer bottle or floppy disk and being able to read the text on it makes the world feel so much more rich and tangible.

To date, this is the most high production-value and polished VR game I've ever played. The visual fidelity and richness is absolutely stunning. The sound design. The atmosphere. The voice acting. The level designs. The character designs. The smoothness of gameplay. Everything is top-tier. I truly feel like I'm immersed in a cinematic experience.

CONS

I will say, it's a pretty linear and simple shooter in the classic Half-Life formula plus a pinch of very simple resource hunting and crafting. You progress through the levels in a linear fashion, solving some world/physics puzzles. That's not really a con in my view. Just don't expect "revolutionary" gameplay. It's nothing new shooter-wise or Half-Life-wise except that it's wrapped in a super immersive and rich VR experience.

Even though this is the best-looking, polished and complete VR experience to date, it is showing its age. Some of the VR-specific mechanics do feel a bit dated in their design compared to more modern VR experiences.

Switching weapons/tools is a matter of navigating a sub-menu interface on your hand, rather than actually holstering/unholstering them off your body, which more modern VR games have figured out.

Pistol magazines cannot be filled between firefights, so if you want to conserve ammo, you're stuck having to go into firefights with partially filled mags or having to discard those mags entirely if you want a fully loaded gun before the next firefight.

You can move around freely and have the option for continuous turning (snap turning is the default). BUT, there is no jumping unfortunately. So to mount platforms, you're stuck with using a "teleport" movement mechanic (which breaks immersion in my opinion), or a clunky vaulting mechanic.

A weird performance quirk: I found that the frame rate takes a big hit if the game window is focused. This is particularly apparent when I'm trying to play the game at 120 fps. If the game window is focused, the fps will drop and fluctuate between 60 and 90 fps. Just make sure to click outside of the game window to fix the issue.

SETUP

I play on a Quest 3, tethered to my PC (5800X3D, 4070 Ti), at 2064x2208 per eye, 120 Hz & fps. Ultra settings. I really recommend settling for nothing less than that. This game NEEDS to be experienced at its full potential. I tried playing wirelessly, but it just doesn't look as crisp and fluid. A word of warning, trying to get this game to run on a Quest 3 at 2064x2208 @ 120 Hz is a bit finicky and unstable. I got it to work reliably enough, but you could always settle for 90 Hz instead for peace of mind.

Free game to test out RTX. The environments are very nicely shaded and lit. The gameplay is very simple, but the atmosphere makes up for it. Worth playing a run or two.

It is what it is.