I pre-ordered the game, but unfortunately my internet chose this month to go to complete garbage so I've been unable to finish downloading it. And the Coronavirus crisis is severely impacting the usual routes of getting it fixed. Regardless, I am beyond pleased that Alyx has turned out well. I've been watching some gameplay footage in the interim and a few things strike me:
I think the lack of melee combat options is reflective of a complicated problem in VR design. Melee is super OP in games like Walking Dead: Survival Instinct. However, I find it a tiny bit disappoint that the (sequel/prequel) to Half-Life 2 doesn't let you attack enemies by throwing things at them. HL2's combat was really stodgy, but its saving grace was the sheer fun of physics-based combat once the gravity gun was introduced. In Alyx, you can stop headcrabs with a chair, but you can't squash them with a chair. You can't stun enemies by hitting them in the head with a brick. Yes, it's a balancing thing. But it feels like an unfortunate concession.
The performance requirements of VR are interesting. The visuals are top notch, but the lighting is pretty obviously baked for the most part. The flashlight works well, though. The biggest deviation from classic Source engine design I can see is the use of webms for ingame monitors. In Source games, TV screens were typically portals to hidden rooms. So when you saw Breen on the Breencast, he was standing in a room outside the map boundaries. I always liked that approach. But I'm assuming that it had a performance overhead, and they needed this game to look beautiful, be highly interactive, and also run really, really fast.
Not a fan of the Alyx Vance recast. I have nothing against Ozioma Akagha, and I think she does a solid job. But she's not Merle Dandridge and the recast feels pointless. She doesn't sound like a young Merle Dandridge, possibly because Akagha is in her 40s just like Dandridge.. I try to be chill about these things, though. Don't hate the playa, as they say. I know some people detest Arkham Origins for having Roger Craig Smith as Batman. But he did a good job. He's not Kevin Conroy, but he played Batman well.
My hope is that Valve releases high quality modding tools for Alyx and the community uses them to, for example, remake the old HL games in Source 2. I know that is underselling the work required, but imagine HL2 with Alyx mechanics. Imagine how absolutely awesome that would be. Yes, we have VR projects for both HL1 and HL2. But they're fairly vanilla. Imagine HL2 and its Episodes reinterpreted through a VR-oriented lens. While we're at it, I just hope Valve manages to foster the kind of modding community HL1/HL2 had the good old days.
