Half-Life: Alyx vs Half-Life 2 | Direct Comparison

welcome back everybody to another episode up to Rhett comparison in today's episode we're gonna look at the recently released VR exclusive half-life Alex and see how it compares to the last main line entry to the series half-life 2 now obviously this comparison is going to be a little different than usual we're dealing with two incredibly different styles of game here with one being a traditional shooter released back in 2004 and the other being a virtual reality experience built to take full advantage of the platform's interactivity but both of these experiences still share a bunch of similarities including character designs gameplay concepts and the unique city 17 locale so we're gonna take a closer look at many of these aspects and see just how valve has managed to improve on what many consider to already be a masterpiece now for this video both games are being played on the PC where the graphical settings pushed as high as possible though while we're still gonna take a look at some textures and model designs the primary focus for this video will be on comparing the general gameplay mechanics and how they've been redesigned for virtual reality alright so to keep this comparison off let's start by talking about the general movement and control half-life 2 of course handles like any other first-person shooter you move around using the keyboard hold shift to sprint space to jump and control to crouch and you control your aim using the mouse pretty straightforward stuff but half-life alex is an entirely different experience there's no keyboard or mouse to control basic movement instead you need to use a combination of a few buttons on your VR sets handheld controllers along with your own personal body movements peeking around corners requires you to actually lean awkwardly to the side need to take cover from incoming fire get ready to do squats and want to walk across the room well you technically can but only if you have the space if you don't have a city 17 size space to walk around in you're probably going to need to move around the world either with teleportation or by enabling locomotion to smoothly walk in a specified direction it's a surreal experience being able to look across the rooftops of the city and travel through the alleys as you hunt for supplies but it can of course be exhausting to every turn and movement requires you to constantly be aware of how you're standing and what expensive monitor you're about to smack as you reach out to interact with something interaction is key here and one of Alex's most fundamental aspects that makes it more immersive than its predecessor when half-life 2 released one of its big selling points was how immersive its environments were thanks to havok physic's first can pick up almost anything that's not nailed down and toss it around you can pick up soda cans jump on a seesaw or even grab someone's TV and toss it out the window that would only shatter if enough momentum was applied Alex expands on this concept substantially allowing you to interact with practically everything in an unprecedented way even the most mundane activities like opening a door or a shelf are made more fascinating thanks to this new perspective this of course also extends to the amount of time you spend doing incredibly simple tasks opening a door and grabbing ammo off the shelf for example can be accomplished within a second and a half life - but with Alex you need to position yourself properly at the door turn the handle either push or pull it open walk over to the shelf brush items out of the way and manually grab what you want to help speed this up alex features special hi-tech gloves called the Russells that can be used to flick distant items into the air and straight towards the player these share a lot of similarities to the gravity gun introduced partway through half-life 2 but have the added benefit of working independently with both hands meaning you can do really cool things like shooting a gun while simultaneously grabbing an enemy's grenade and tossing it back at them what's possible and Alex really does feel limited to your imagination your imagination and your willingness to insert physical energy but if you're already familiar with virtual reality none of this should really be news to you so let's move on to talking about the weapons and how they've evolved over the course of the past 16 years both Alex and half-life 2 are first person shooters after all so you'll spend a good chunk of your time in both games grabbing ammo and blasting away headcrabs and combine soldiers but where half-life 2 is fast paced and features large-scale battle sequences half-life Alex's combat is more personal enemy combat scenarios are smaller and scale often involving a maximum of three hostels at any given time and doing something as simple as reloading is now an entire process in half-life 2 reloading the weapon simply requires the player to press the R key but in Alex you need to mainly drop the spent magazine on the ground grab a fresh magazine from your backpack feed it into the gun and then pull back on the slide to chamber around it's a really cool feeling that makes you feel even more awesome when you follow up a fast reload with a satisfying kill but this also leaves a ton of room for user error and when things start to get really tense later on in the campaign you better have enough distance and solid cover to safely reload and return fire the weapons themselves are also different models entirely you half-light to Gordon receives a standard 9-millimeter pistol that deals a pretty decent amount of damage against combine soldiers and the like but this weapon stays the same throughout the entire game and never improves making it less useful in the later stages half-life Alex's pistol is based heavily on the design of Alex's handgun from half-life 2 with what looks like a heavily modified 1911 in fact when you first receive the gun from your friend Russell it looks like a regular old 1911 but throughout the game you can use pieces of resin to fabricate upgrades with all the upgrades appearing more like the original design Alex wields when you see her in the old games when firing the weapon in half-life 2 you simply aim with a mouse and click but in VR you have to hold the weapon steady for yourself and you can pretty much hold the weapon however you like allowing for a much more fluid and intense combat I particularly like how you can smash up and windows with the butt of your gun or open car doors to protect yourself if you aren't afraid of jumping out of a window in real life you can probably even dive to the side and shoot like a crazy person if you wanted to when viewed up close the weapons and half-life Alex look incredible with a significantly higher poly count higher resolution textures and more fine details there's also some new hardware never before seen in the half-life universe before like these digital reflex sights that allow players to highlight enemy weak points for these cool new frag grenades that look like they've been built using old tape measures and then of course we have the shotgun and combine SMG that feature entirely new designs never seen before in the series and both have their own special reloading mechanics to master the only downside to Alex's Arsenal is how Limited it is there's no revolver pulse rifle crossbow or rocket launcher to play around with there's only three weapons in the whole game but as I mentioned earlier the combat is more intimate in close quarters than your typical half-life experience so a lot of those weapons may have no practical use anyway now the character models are even more interesting ALX features the return of practically every classic enemy faced in half-life 2 there's headcrabs zombies barnacles combine soldiers and even ant lions and while they're all easily recognizable they also feature some distinct changes headcrabs for example now feature more realistic physical properties and move around more erratically in half-life 2 headcrabs almost always pounce and hit the player dead-on but in Alex the crabs aren't quite as precise and often flip around the environment smacking into walls and stunning themselves it's pretty funny to watch and also helps to make the experience more manageable especially considering you have to mainly pull them off your face now the zombies handle very similarly they aren't quite as smart as they usually are typically zombies shamble directly towards the player swinging their arms once they get in close this general principle remains but they move more organically almost as if the headcrab host is struggling to control the unwilling corpse and it helps make the zombies more unpredictable what's really cool about the zombies now is that they come in a lot more variety than before there was only like one or two different zombie models in half-life 2 so this change greatly helps to make the world feel more realistic then of course we have the combine soldiers at half-life 2 there were a few different types of combine like the Metro Police soldiers and elites all with unique masks and uniforms half-light Alex continues this trend the Metro Police for example can be seen roaming the streets during the intro and you'll run into plenty of different soldiers all throughout including brand new types like these heavy troops wielding shotguns and machine guns or perhaps they're the same soldiers from before but in VR they appear much bigger and more heavily armoured either way the detail is incredible you can make up actual texture along the combines eye panels and can even steal weapon magazines and grenades from pouches along their armor there's even weak points on some enemies that when damaged will cause the enemy to explode these weak points play an even bigger role with the antlions that can now have their limbs severed to reveal a critical weak point on their abdomen beneath their wings over all the complexity of various enemy and character models is undeniably a huge improvement something that's easy to notice when interacting with friendly NPCs like this vortigaunt everything has more personality now and helps to make the world a path life feel more alive so let's take a moment to talk about the world now in half-life 2 players explore an unspecified eastern european city called city 17 that has been overrun by an alien force called the combine this world was revolutionary for its time with the immersive physics effects and it's dark moody atmosphere on top of that halfway to introduced a sophisticated alien hierarchy to help make the experience more believable combine soldiers for example has specific ranks and jobs to help keep the peace and make use of several different synths like hunters and Striders to complete tasks this is expanded even further in Alex we can see a few new uses for things like Striders as they install power cables for the Citadel we also get more glimpses of combine soldiers raiding homes and taking prisoners and there's even some new biological organisms introduced to help keep it all fresh what's more we get to see a lot more of the interiors of these old abandoned structures with an up-close and personal look at headcrab nests and other weird alien flora in the quarantine zone the architecture of these structures feels more complex which is apparent within the first moment when the game world is revealed something that took me by surprise simply by how insanely real it all looked when sitting there in person the sheer depth and complexity of these environments is unlike anything I've ever witnessed in VR and easily has set a new standard for the platform it works well and tricks your brain pretty easily into thinking you're in a real place what's more these environments are beautifully decorated every single alleyway hallway and bedroom is loaded with physics based objects that can all be played with I found myself constantly getting distracted by silly things like shelves lined with alcohol a working piano a spinning globe this cute little snark trapped in a bottle and of course these functional dry erase markers you can use to draw images on windows at the start now half-life 2 obviously doesn't feature environments this detail you'll often walk into a room and find a little to nothing left inside this can be explained by saying the combine took everything from these people but you'll find the same empty rooms in the Raven home areas as well but half-life 2 did spend a lot more time in wide open spaces avoiding the need for richly detailed interiors you can even drive around in vehicles which are not available in Alex at all next let's talk about the lighting lighting in the source engine was a big deal back in 2004 it was a major step up from what was possible in gold source and eventually with regular updates and tweaks allowed for some forced HDR implementation in more natural bloom effects giving the additional episodes an even more polished look Alex's lighting is on an entirely different level it's incredible just how real these effects look everything feels natural with the Sun slowly descending throughout the course of the campaign eventually causing God ways to pour into dusty interior spaces and making way for the city's fluorescent lighting to cast soft blue and yellow light all around and then there's the sequences where you need to use your flashlight attached to your hand to see which feels far more immersive and horrifying the old flashlight in the center of the screen offered in half-life 2 the environments have a much more natural tone and color palette and Alex but the world retains its same general aesthetic as his predecessor with lots of earthy tones contrasting heavily with the dark metals of the combine architecture reflective surfaces have also been improved a great deal there are some nice reflections from water surfaces in half-life 2 but alex features some nice baked reflections and objects like this television that while definitely not reflecting in real time still look pretty impressive shadows have also seen a huge improvement with much softer edges and more environmental projections from things like trees the only downside to the shadows I found was when interacting with objects objects held by the player don't appear to cast shadows all the time but as soon as those objects are released the shadow projection will slowly materialize this is strange especially considering these shadows still function in real time and will move in relation to those objects if they're pushed around or hit something else but it also seems deliberate and was like we done to help improve performance and then of course we have our effects now I've spoken a great deal already about how the physics define both of these games and you can probably already tell from the sponge what I mean by that but it is worth mentioning that half-light alex also features some soft body physics as well with things like pillows and paper actually being malleable and bending realistically it's just another incredible detail that blew my mind when I first started messing around with it though it isn't perfect and if you start to really push the effect it can't end up going out quite a bit but the one thing Alex doesn't seem to feature at all or water effects this was a really surprising omission I don't recall even seeing any ponds or fountains throughout the game one of half-life 2's really impressive features when it released was this water simulation which features some great reflective properties that really put it ahead of other games at the time but Alex's environments never offer an opportunity for us to really see what the source 2 engine can do with water now there were a few examples of fire to look at which unsurprisingly looked better in the new game though explosions were a bit of a disappointment they certainly looked better don't get me wrong but the effect just doesn't feel as authentic when compared to the rest of the game world and finally let's listen to a few sound comparisons which game do you think has the better audio design [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] and that wraps up this episode of direct comparison over all half-life Alex is a revolution in graphical design it's been a while since I've booted up a game and have been genuinely astonished by how good the graphics looked though I guess I shouldn't have been too surprised this is valve after all and it's kind of their thing to always push the envelope and build breathtaking experiences with state-of-the-art technology and fresh ideas sadly this experience comes with a hefty price tag so a lot of gamers won't be able to experience this any time soon but if you've been looking for an excuse to finally dive into VR this is that reason everything from half-life 2 has been recreated here with some beautiful new character models advanced animations incredible environmental designs and some truly immersive gameplay mechanics setting a new standard not just for the half-life series but for the industry as a whole but what do you guys think are you impressed with half-life Alex or do you still prefer the design of half-life 2 let me know in the comments section and of course don't forget to Like and subscribe for more videos posted every week [Music] [Music]

Channel: Nick930

Views: 1,243,804

Keywords: Half Life, Half-Life, Half-Life 2, Alyx, VR, Virtual Reality, Comparison, Direct, Side-by-side, Review, Analysis, City 17, Quality, Ultra, Graphics, Texture, Model, Lighting, Sound, Effects, Shadow, Resolution, Half Life 3, Headcrab, Valve, Zombie, Combine, Nick930, Digital Foundry, Alien, Shooter, FPS, PC, Console, Release

Id: BB1vn3BNzB4

Length: 18min 35sec (1115 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 29 2020