Half-Life: Alyx Is NOT An Absolute Nightmare – This Is Why

there are no major story spoilers in this video but I do talk about the gameplay at length also this video was sponsored by Skillshare please enjoy the video man this game is really wait wait is that bucket surely surely not yes I'm finally safe from the head crabs what are you gonna do now dude's under the bucket we did it boys I remember when I was 7 and I was reading an old copy of Nintendo Power that I found a car boot sale inside was a whole section dedicated to a future release of a console the Virtual Boy it promised full-on immersive 3d graphics that could make you think you were actually inside the video game you were playing immediately I started to imagine myself in one of my favorite games like double dragon fighting waves of enemies using my actual hands and seeing the streets where the game was set all around me as I read more and more I couldn't stop thinking about the endless possibilities you could even play golf kids love golf or getting a virtual boy was a different matter I was 7 I had no marketable skills and less being a constant pain in the ass that somehow become a profitable business venture this magical futuristic box was completely out of my reach keep in mind at this time the Virtual Boy was already out I was just reading an ancient copy of a magazine all about games that were released half my life ago and I just had no idea honestly though this was the world a lot of his lived in back then you couldn't open a copy of the Sun and find a six-page spread on Galaga it was 1997 the year one of my mum's friends warned me that the internet contained actual demons there's no punchline here it's just a scarring event from my childhood no one gave his [ __ ] about games he just had to take whatever information you found and I had no money what was I supposed to do ask my school friends what did they know they were seven soon after this they all really got into the Phantom Menace game on the PC the bloody idiots plus I to this day I've never actually seen a Virtual Boy in person the fact that no one I knew ever had one kind of led me to assume it was terrible and that was the Golden Rule back then we didn't have gaming critics spewing irrelevant opinions on blogs that they abandoned months later because their opium addiction needed a more stable income if no one had something in the nineties you didn't know it existed or you just assumed it was bad and in this case it was a fair assumption the Virtual Boy was uncomfortable heavy had terrible graphics was too expensive had games that weren't even in the first-person eventually though 2012 rolled around and with it came the first generation of modern VR headsets these new headsets were uncomfortable heavy had terrible graphics that were too expensive overruled and the 90s left me with a bit of a grim view of VR and as time passed I began to forget my dream of able to see games like Double Dragon and full immersive 3d one day though in 2018 I went to my friend's house who had just bought something cool it's a vibe did we snort it or is it a pill I asked Oh mom's gonna love that one I arrived with my friends and eventually it was my turn to use I put on the headset and played my very first vr game space pirate trainer I will always remember that rush of excitement I felt when I realized this kind of gaming experience was now actually possible over 15 years after the release of the Virtual Boy technology was finally able to deliver what Nintendo had promised jump the gun a bit there didn't you guys it even had functional motion controls that other thing Nintendo mercilessly teased and immensely under-delivered on honestly I wonder how long Nintendo delayed virtual reality and motion controls by systematically misleading the entire gaming community like lambs to the slaughter house like promising a Mario themed scuba event but the tanks are actually full of hydrogen cyanide since the release of the vibe though virtual reality has unfortunately been on a bit of a rocky journey to say the least the first took the bull by the horns early on and poorly ported toward the largest open-world games ever made into the most computationally demanding medium ever invented as a result fallout for VR ran like a room full of people with no legs and Skyrim VR while fun was so fuzzy playing it was like looking at a topographical map of New Zealand after having your corneas forcibly removed either way everyone around the world bear witness to these inexplicably popular pause players lost $80 amongst whatever shred of respect they had left the VR being the incredible gaming revolution it is and everyone left thoroughly unimpressed thanks I mean what the [ __ ] is going on outside of Bethesda's many indiscretions virtual reality came with a big problem and I think many people still can't overlook to this day and that's that there are no full-length games that take advantage of what makes VR so revolutionary that are actually any good [Music] there's a lot of fantastic games don't get me wrong space pirate trainer is probably the most fun I've ever had playing a video game and beat Sabre is incredible Gorn is insanely good and Jett Island is utterly wonderful but these are all very short games aren't varied or substantial enough to grab you by the balls and force you to choose them over sending your only child to college you're not still waiting for games with a huge exciting world to explore a thrilling story engaging characters games like bone works in The Walking Dead saints and sinners are starting to turn up and are clearly trying to fill this gap but they haven't quite hit the mark on being the revolutionary game VR is missing part of my issue with these games is that if you strip away the motion controls in the VR headset they very quickly become quite average games now this is a pretty tenuous point of course you could also argue that if you took the controller away Mario Kart isn't actually that amazing either can confirm I'm feeling a little left out here it's just with so many of these VR games I feel like I'm playing a fairly average game with excellent immersion and let's just face it that's pretty much life on Earth and I'm [ __ ] sick of it too Dark Souls is devastating background storytelling new Vegas has characters so real you feel like you could reach out and touch them and Metroid Prime has level design that would put the Sistine Chapel to shame which I think makes sense truly special games need more than motion controls and immersive 3d to stand out they take you on an adventure of discovery and give you something rare and memorable that you can take away with you the are ups at this point hasn't yet captured this level of quality that it is more than capable of but then valve turn up I'm sure there's a pun in there somewhere kick the door down and drop what is extensively the zenith of absolute perfection in the form of a VR game yes ladies and gentlemen Alex is the tits and you should all find a way to get it that's why there's a big knot in the title let's start off by saying I'm not actually a huge fan of half-life this is a bad star putting me in the eyes of most gamers somewhere in the lower quartile of humans scum on earth even lower than this guy it's pretty nice but it does mean I can be objective and view this as an unbranded video game and not just my pants every time I see a lambda symbol they were cool before you got your hands on them valve they actually symbolize something it well still related to half-life of course but never mind never mind alex is excellent for various reasons but for me primarily it finally holds the position of being a great game has been made incredible by being in ER if this game was ported to a non VR medium it would still be granted completely different than a lot less fun but I still think it would be a fabulous game in its own right which I don't think I could say about any other VR only games now there's all I want to say about this game so let's start at the very beginning in this game you play as owl yes who is part of the resistance group trying to fight back against the combine an alien race who have taken over earth at the beginning your father is captured and most of the game has been travelling across the city you live in to try and rescue him and that's pretty much all I'm gonna reveal about the story let's get to the game itself the game opens up with the world of half-life Alex fading into view a huge city sits before you brimming with life helicopters soar overhead people walk the busy streets gigantic creatures climb over buildings entwined with wires that all lead to an ominous monolith that towers over you Oh less than an hour later you are creeping through tunnel was overgrown with alien flora later still you explore beautiful tribal monuments underground kitchens biohazard containment areas floating buildings this is what the people wanted injected into my veins virtual reality is the power to show you firsthand world beyond your imagining seas of lava magical islands in the middle of a beautiful blue ocean or recently empty streets of concrete office buildings and cemeteries you see valve appreciates how much more effective unique and interesting environments become in VR and Alex provides it in spades spade every environment you journey through is rammed full of little touches that bring it to life things will retract or snap as you get close rooms are cluttered with objects and details you could look through for hours the world isn't just varied it feels alive except this guy he's hopefully he's dead although maybe headcrabs fall out of ceilings a little bit too often the graphics in this game are also fantastic it's honestly a little bit unbelievable how valve has managed to make this game looks so good in VR both stylistically and how crisp and smooth it is on both the valve and the index the index in the vibe no VR game other than alien isolation perhaps has come even close to this level of visual quality and clarity just look at this place I've never simultaneously wanted to go anywhere less and more in my entire life except maybe outside during a quarantine the Sun is awfully bright so sit back and really as we take a look at the wildlife of city 17 [Music] [Music] [Music] this is the only way I can get the shots steady when half-life one came out it broke new grounds by basically inventing the idea of a story unfolding around you rather than directly in front of you important or interesting things could happen at any time even if you were busy looking somewhere else as a result most of the events in the game felt like they would be happening even if you weren't there to see them so vos comes the famous philosophical question if a dimensional rift opens in an experimental test facility and no one is there to hear it does it start an eternal war with a multi-dimensional Empire everything for a price miss Alex continues the trend set in half-life by using its environment as well as scripted animations to help tell the story over the course of the game and like half-life most of it's never shoved into your face how half of its barely ever elaborated on it gives the game a richness that feels effortlessly natural when in fact it must have been a [ __ ] nightmare to put together where Alex manages to completely break new ground is with the quality and smoothness of its character animations and cutscenes which are nothing short of absolutely mind-blowing I have never seen anything like these scenes before in a video game or otherwise and half the time when they're going on you don't even have to look at them you're in a room stuffed to the brim with so many other interesting details of beautiful animations that I start to feel like I might pass out from sensory overload trains crash around you powerlines explode grand events are happening constantly all around you and then nothing short breathtaking and I'm not even a fan I can only imagine what seeing a fully rendered 3d headcrab would do Taheri half-life over the dialogue is on par with Valve's other games landing it's somewhere in between the works of TS Eliot and hermaeus mora it's witty constantly funny and at times extremely touching there's a conversation where Alex asks Russell the guy was helping you through the game over a headset what life on earth was like before the combine and he describes the Alex a club sandwich and from this strange idea comes this brilliant moment of life and depth between these two characters you can hear how much Russell misses life before the combine and how excited alex is hearing about a world without them like your grandfather telling you what life was like during World War two and honestly I had found Alex a little annoying up to this point as she jauntily wanders off without a care in the world to take on the entire combine who make the Third Reich look like the fourth doctor Alex turns out to be extremely relatable reacting to things throughout the game in the exact same way the player does I remember at one point turning a corner and seeing a small army of combines strung up by barnacles and both of us at the exact same time said sure she's overconfident but she's taking out an army that makes a xenomorph look like a friendly partial erection and out of everything Alex faces she is notably disturbed by head crabs and zombies in particular which gives her personality some much-needed balancing even one of the enemies in this game yeah has more personality than any character you meet in the entirety of saints and sinners no she's dead and he doesn't even say everything this guy who turns up for about two minutes has a hat so incredible it gives him more character development than every single character and bone words combined I will say at times I found Russell slightly too Johnse as almost everything he says comes with a punchline which sort of covers up some of his established depth but overall he turns out to be far more lovable than annoying like my wife after the second week of a lockdown half-life 2 transitions between different styles of gameplay a breakneck speed one minute you're in tunnels avoiding barnacles next you're driving vehicles across landscapes without any hands this isn't gonna end well decapitating zombies in polite town with the murderous equivalent of Pope John Paul the second commanding an army of bugs with balls of your pheromones or storming the combines futuristic headquarters and I couldn't tell you why one part began and another finish Alex isn't quite as varied as half-life 2 but still has very distinct sections that focus on horror puzzles exploration action and combat all with the pace that ramps throughout the entire game leading to a suitably satisfying ending however although the gameplay is extremely varied Alex's real achievement is its seamless blending of action and exploration you see in this game you have a set of gravity gloves that you can use to pull objects towards you which you do by flicking your wrists at the object then catching it when it comes close the amount of fun this mechanic is and remains to be throughout the entire game is one thing but combining it with combat sections is where this game absolutely shines during fights enemies will usually drop grenades or precious mo which you can now immediately get hold of as a result the resources you have available to you during a fight are constantly changing combining this with the combines terrific AI leads to an incredibly dynamic combat system there is honestly so much going on in the gunfights I find myself instinctively dropping to the floor and to cover at a moment's notice almost forgetting I have a miniature plant pot strapped to my skull this has made all the more effective by how well the ammo system is balanced I never once felt like I had an excess of ammo and never fully ran out of ammo either so trying to grab more resources while you fight is very enticing saying this I did unfortunately find the game a little easy I was using the hardest difficulty on my first playthrough and found that the game still presents healing items in the abundance of soya a vegan festival although I will say every time I use the healing syringes I pretended they were real and made a fake little groan of discomfort just for fun the end lines are particularly easy enemies to fight too because as well as being weak to pistol fire they're slow enough to avoid most of the time so rarely ever get to hurt you half life more like please half the amount of life I have three well aimed pistol shots will grow one of them so a lot of these fights end up feeling a little anticlimactic but hacking minigames you play when breaking into the combine security systems are also a little bit simplistic but with the motion controls they still turn out to be a lot more satisfying than the inane garbage mastermind ripoff you're forced to do in Fallout and you will allow them to do it [Music] [ __ ] bodies had fun dropping mannequins off our roof Matt there's still a conception held by truly stupid people that we need bodies in VR maybe I've gone a bit too far with this one you have a rendered body and bone works and I can't even begin to imagine in my wildest dreams how difficult this must have been to program its side steps leans with you the arms never bug out objects never get stuck in you everything is weighted proportionately with your arms but but is it any fun is it fun not being able to open doors because you get in the way not being able to aim because your theoretical head is blocking the back of the gun having weight so when you climb you shake about like my margarita mixer because dig godself isolating is giving me a drinking problem is it not fun not being able to hit an enemy because your own elbows are in the way I'm warning you I didn't find one situation in bone works where having a body made things even slightly more entertaining valve looked at this problem called a board meeting sat down and said [ __ ] in Aleks we don't have arms and valve has proven that we don't need them suck at PC gamer it's not just the arms though almost every single challenge virtual reality presents as a gaming medium was analysed and addressed in half-life Alex here are some examples of problems they encountered and totally overcame getting a flood is a slow and clumsy walk to teleport kicks it dropping weapons is frustrating weapons are only equipped from a menu when I crouch I can't grab my ammo everything you need is selected from over the shoulder am I supposed to go over here teleport tells you where you can and can't go objects with way to ruining my immersion no more weighty objects different movement speeds make me feel sick the game is built around a single running speed jumping is disorientating the game's linear and design so you always drop down but you can teleport if you need to reloading keeps missing huge room for error I think my cat is trying to kill me here's a safety cage Matthew mitosis once made the analogy that if you have a controller for a game that doesn't work say 10% of the time then the controller simply could not be sold but 10% of the time in the walking dead or bone works I try and store a weapon over my shoulder and accidentally throw it across the level into some poor persons face will try and load a clip into a gun and it completely misses motion control will probably never be flawless because I'm the one doing the motions and I'm far from flawless the valve have managed to make an interface in Alex that is immersive but still incredibly functional and when motion controls are used they've clearly been rigorously tested to ensure they almost always work but is that any surprise look at the number of people who made Alex I bet together they could successfully colonize Mars the talented [ __ ] this team is bound to be at least three or four times the size of the next biggest VR development team on the planet virtual reality is still at the stage where huge development teams simply aren't cost-effective because not enough people have VR what's wrong with you all you could all be playing VR but no you had to buy all that food for your starving family saying all this I did still find I had a slight issue when changing weapons in Alex you see to change weapons you press the weapons select button then move your arm in the direction of the weapon you want to select seemed ok but whenever I was flustered in the middle of a fight I found myself trying to change weapons while I was moving in and out of cover this meant I would accidentally select the weapon corresponding to the direction my arm was moving at that time giving me perhaps a pistol when I in fact wanted a grenade launcher this may have just been me being panicky and although it wasn't a huge issue it perfectly highlights the kind of problems motion controls can have in space by a trainer I get as flustered as a youtuber after his fourth cup of coffee yeah I always manage to select the correct weapon because it's done using an analog stick which is difficult to mess up perhaps in Alex if we were to swipe along the indexes indexes touchpad to the weapon we wanted it would improve this issue but I think it looks like the touch pads on the index are a little too small for this especially since we can't see them speaking of controllers I played Alex on the vibe as well as the index and both play this game really well it's just the index is slightly better visual quality and controllers microphone sound is more comfortable works better with steam I was sitting with my friends last week when one of them asked me to pass them a switch controller and I honestly pointed at it with my hand and tried to flick it into the air towards me needless to say I killed them all in a fit of rage to avoid further embarrassment what I'm saying is half-life Alex is so immersive you really can forget you're playing a video game and it's important to note that being immersive isn't about mimicking real life perfectly I find new Vegas immersive and half the time the maps look like they were lifted from electron microscope readouts that have been left in the Sun immersion is truly broken when something happens that reminds you you're playing a video game and nothing reminds you of that more than when you try and do something in a game and it doesn't work to avoid this wherever possible valve have chosen simplicity over being realistic and as a result I've made one of the most immersive VR games ever made that sets the benchmark for what VR can achieve my hope is that this game will prove how good virtual reality really can be and help us get to a bigger consumer base where larger VR development teams and budgets start to become viable this game is so good I think it proves that screens in VR headsets don't need to get that much better right now what we need to work towards instead is Wireless VR headsets because nothing is less immersive than having a wire trip you up when you're trying to avoid a brain-sucking parasite either way this gave made me a proper half-life fan and I'm off to play Black Mesa thanks for watching everyone and I hope you enjoyed the video it's a [ __ ] cheesiest outro I've ever done in quarantine my wife cut my hair and I think she's done an okay job I'm just gonna check the back does it look okay that was a long video I haven't slept in days I'm really happy to say that this month's video was sponsored by Skillshare Skillshare is an online community with thousands of classes for people who want to learn new skills or just be more creative it's a great place to learn all the stuff I love like creative writing film animation and even better business practices as someone who's done a lot of studying and who was also a teacher I find the way that schools and universities teach a little bit boring Skillshare though is filled with incredibly creative classes that will engage with you to keep you inspired with videos that are concisely edited to help make the skills easier to learn there are loads of tutorials on things like editing for example which I clearly need to take but interestingly I found productivity habits that stick by Mike Vardy amazingly healthy the main thing I've learned from this class is to give every day a specific focus a dull usually I just wake up to as much work as physically possible and then go to bed this class has helped me calm down and be more creative with less anxiety and having more structure is especially important considering Moyes going on with covert at the moment not that you've heard about that Skillshare is designed specifically for learning so there are no ads and there's always new premium class is being added so you can stay focused and go where your creativity takes you and is less than ten dollars a month for an annual subscription which is pretty good the first one thousand of my subscribers to click the link in the description will get two free months of premium membership so you can go out and explore your creativity Oh

Channel: UpIsNotJump

Views: 2,569,615

Rating: 4.949657 out of 5

Keywords: upisnotjump, vr, vr games, vr gaming, virtual reality, games, gamer, gaming video games, half life, half life alyx, valve, index

Id: NnwsL6BO8ls

Length: 22min 0sec (1320 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 10 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/Brewe]

Wait... This video came out yesterday and the auther, UpIsNotJump, still doesn't know that COVID-19 is infectious even if the host doesn't have symptoms?

[u/Runesr2]

I like his observation that we really don't need more resolution in the hmd panels - that everything looks really detailed with the Index. That's long been my thoughts too, we need more high quality content, the hardware is really great right now.

Btw, did you know that you can actually read the extremely fine print on the back of the multi-tool with the Index? There's a lot of text, and you can read it all - I remember it among other things said "made in China" - and there were some numbers like 3-383 and more, lol.

[u/MrOoof]

This dude makes the funniest reviews - also love his Budget Cut review :)

[u/SvenViking]

I don’t know, being in the dark with a bunch of poison headcrabs seems at least a bit nightmarish to me.

[u/raphazerb]

this guy is great, I love his video format and humor

[u/crackeddryice]

Who has said it is?

[u/Vexin]

Selecting a weapon was the one thing I had issues with as well. I'm pretty sure you can rebind that stuff though, I never bothered.

[u/Full_Ninja]

Are there any spoilers in the video?