Half Life 3 is here bois

[Sho Nuff]

Is that the:

spoiler (click to show/hide)

Guy who hears you cough or whatever?

[close]

My wife played this game 2 months ago and spoiled most of it for me but she was just too excited by it and I didn't want to tell her not to talk about it lol

Yeah that's the one. There's more shit to it too, omgggg

[bluemax]

So how you guys liking the orb puzzle? Cause it seems like no one likes it.

I'm shocked by just how much you can do in this virtual space.
I crouched and very carefully managed to see beyond a ceiling beam that obstructed my view so I could shoot some aliens.
Leaning over things or just carefully positioning yourself so you can pick off enemies from a distance.
There's a strategic element going on in terms of movement and where you put yourself in the world.

Plus there's all the interaction with the weird Combine gizmo's and machines, which really feel like they don't belong on Earth and have all these obscure interfaces to figure out.

I don't think anything as immersive as this exists anywhere else in gaming. 

The physics stuff there's probably not much else like it, but all the leaning and looking around stuff is one of the things that people like about most VR FPS compared to "flat" games.

[nachobro]

orb is cool, definitely requires two hands and the ability to look around it though. i know valve says the game can be played sitting and one handed and i guess that's technically true but that would be a real shitty experience. i don't even know how some of the moving of objects would work one handed.

jeff from GB was playing it sitting and that looked pretty wack.

[nachobro]

every single headcrab still scares the shit out of me. i may have a heart attack by the end of this game

[Nintex]

I do about 1.5 hour play sessions.

spoiler (click to show/hide)

Had to venture into the dark to finally get to the train. That shit was scary, this is a legit horror game at times.

[close]

The game looks absolutely disgusting at times on purpose obviously but I'm sorta surprised how much they doubled down on the nasty zombie, dead bodies, garbage etc. everywhere.
Sometimes you peak through a hallway and you're like shit, I have to actually pass through these sewers with nothing but a flashlight to shoot aliens so they vomit body parts all over me. 

[Sho Nuff]

I played the whole shaboodle (14 hours?) standing up. I can’t see enjoying this seated in any way, shape, or form. Was super lucky to play it in a big room with a Vive so I’d get turned around all the time. It was great.

[Don Rumata]

I saw the Digital Foundry video about it running on min spec.
8400 with a 1060 is also what i play on, so it should run it, even if barely. 

[Nintex]

I saw the Digital Foundry video about it running on min spec.
8400 with a 1060 is also what i play on, so it should run it, even if barely. 

It's not very demanding visually, the most tricky part are the physics I think. Most environments and scenes are pretty small and because of the VR gameplay the number of enemies on screen at once is fairly limited too.
There a few pretty parts but graphic fidelity reminds me of Wolfenstein The New Order although without the texture streaming glitches and less stylized.
A 1060 should get you a long way especially if it's not a vanilla one but a souped up model.

[Sho Nuff]

I played mine on an uh....i7 from 5 years ago, and a 2060 super. Super smooth at 90hz on the original Vive, which doesn’t have the best resolution though.

[Don Rumata]

I saw the Digital Foundry video about it running on min spec.
8400 with a 1060 is also what i play on, so it should run it, even if barely. 

It's not very demanding visually, the most tricky part are the physics I think. Most environments and scenes are pretty small and because of the VR gameplay the number of enemies on screen at once is fairly limited too.
There a few pretty parts but graphic fidelity reminds me of Wolfenstein The New Order although without the texture streaming glitches and less stylized.
A 1060 should get you a long way especially if it's not a vanilla one but a souped up model.

The digital foundry video seems to show that GPU isn't the bottleneck, but CPU is.
They tried pushing the game to high and then back to low, and very little changed (aside from volumetric lighting) in terms of performance gain.
Yet what really tanked the framerate, seemed to be the holographic elements and the more "cutscene-like" moments.
They say it's still mostly playable, just not a super smooth experience.

I certainly am not in the position to upgrade my PC now, let alone the CPU/MoBo, so it's a non-issue anyway, for me.

[nachobro]

Yeah the GPU needed isn't much, anything 6gb will do which is any 10 series or newer card. But even for the CPU a first gen ryzen or three year old i5 will run the game pretty well. The game seems pretty good at optimizing to make the framerate as high as possible, which is definitely smart if you don't want people getting sick, so I haven't manually fiddled with the graphics settings.

[Transhuman]

Based on Alyx what do you think the ETA is on a must-play VR multiplayer FPS?

Because i'm only going to buy one of these rigs if I can get hundreds of hours out of it.

[Transhuman]

Have to say, the fast travel movement in Alyx does not look fun at all. Maybe it feels different when you're actually playing it though. 6 years seems about right considering the distance of Doom to Halo was 8 years.

[bluemax]

Based on Alyx what do you think the ETA is on a must-play VR multiplayer FPS?

Because i'm only going to buy one of these rigs if I can get hundreds of hours out of it.

There were people who put in 500+ hours of Firewall Zero Hour last year, so for some people it is already here. That game certainly showed the potential but was held back in a lot of ways by the hardware and the dev team.

The thing is, despite its "success" it was really well below what anyone would consider a success for a non VR game, so it really comes down to a company like Valve of Facebook deciding to throw away a lot of money on something that will have a fraction of the players of your average Battle Royale these days.

[Nintex]

Have to say, the fast travel movement in Alyx does not look fun at all. Maybe it feels different when you're actually playing it though. 6 years seems about right considering the distance of Doom to Halo was 8 years.

You have 3 options, blink, shift and just walking with the stick.
If you can handle the third the option is there but it is very intense.

Blink and Shift are nice and comfy

[Don Rumata]

Based on Alyx what do you think the ETA is on a must-play VR multiplayer FPS?

Because i'm only going to buy one of these rigs if I can get hundreds of hours out of it.

Like 100's of hours for one game? Maybe 6 or more years.

Pavlov is a good multiplayer VR game and VRChat is a strong chatroom... both have users that play for 100's of hours. But casuals/normal human beings will need expansive worlds with complex systems and a strong MMO-like infrastructure... I don't see that happening until the next-gen of VR, granted we haven't seen how next-gen GPUs/CPUs will allow devs to keep stronger hardware in mind when developing these titles.

Alyx is probably the first real AAA single-player game that you would pick up off the shelf at a retail store, multiplayer infrastructure and interactivity is a ways out in terms of R&D because it brings in a host of new problems to tackle.

For a multiplayer FPS? 

[Transhuman]

I think he means to get hundreds of hours of gameplay out of it

[nachobro]

tell that to cs players

[bluemax]

We shipped with basically 2001 era gameplay but in VR and a 2001 era DLC plan (that was eventually pivoted) and that was enough to get people who played for hundreds of hours and some people who are still playing 2 years down the road.

You know what we didn't have? Marketing of any kind.

Maybe Medal of Honor from Respawn has multiplayer and actual marketing and people jump in.

[Mr Gilhaney]

https://twitter.com/ProbablyTTMR/status/1244496654142541824

[nachobro]

still plugging away very slowly. finally got to the point where i can play for a multi-hour session with zero ill effects, even minor. also just found out the lightning dog can take over a corpse.

so that was totally cool and not a problem at all.

[Steve Contra]

Tvc brought over his gaming laptop let me play this today. Can’t say the last time a game impressed me as much.

[stufte]

Just finished it. It was a masterpiece.  I've never spent this much time in VR with any game or app ever. It's really the best VR experience I've ever had and I'm so excited to see what else Valve does.

[BikeJesus]

I'm about 10 hours in, just finished the jeff chapter, and my only real complaint is that Valve doesn't trust the player enough to allow them to manually turn the flashlight on and off. It really bothers me.

[Don Rumata]

So i managed to set the Rift back up (even managed a decent space, i can spin 360° with my arms extended out) and tried a couple of hours of this.
Never been in a VR space for this long, tbh, but it's quite incredible how realistic it looks (despite the stylized graphics), sometimes a simple dark corridor is so fucking creepy.
Also, just fighting a single, slow walking head-crab zombie turned into panic mode when another one jumped out from the side, and i had to remember how to actually reload the gun. 
Props to them to manage to cause panic in me with simply 2 slow as shit enemies.

The art style of Half Life is also possibly one of my favorites in general (i'm talking about the look of the city and its palette, so i'm happy this ended up being the subject of the VR flagship title.
some of those massive Combine structures are... 

[Don Rumata]

Just got the torch to put on the gloves, and the black head-crabs popped out.

We Alien now. 

In fact, They need to do a proper Alien game (not a cobbled together mod, like for Isolation) with this level of polish.
This is how i want to die, hunting face huggers through the Nostromo with a flamethrower, and then getting eaten by a Xenomorph.

[Sho Nuff]

Just remember whenever you're talking on the radio, you're safe. They're not going to throw enemies at you during a radio conversation.

Probably.

[Bebpo]

Just got to chapter 4. I really like it, but certain things are holding it back from top-tier VR. Mostly that I still have control issues that I have with every fucking vr game on the planet where things don't always work just right and considering this game can be fucking hard, having shit happen mid-battle is annoying here and there. I think Astrobot & Beat Saber are my favorite VR games because it's pretty hard to fuck up their controls.

Like on the turn stick, sometimes it registers right/left as down instead and I take a step back instead of turning. Also the walk stick movement sometimes jumps me way further than I want and I end up in weird places in combat. I also don't understand why backstep isn't down on the left controller since up is forward?? The backpack thing doesn't register about 1 in 10 times or a little more often where I drop the ammo/energy and it falls to the floor. Also some stuff is really counter-intuitive like I was trying to stab myself with a needle to get life and I didn't understand you have to push a button first and I'm like why isn't this working what am I doing wrong. Like I guess they didn't want people accidentally stabbing themselves and wasting an injector but it's pretty hard to do that.

In Ch.3 I ran out of ammo in the dark flashlight bits. This was VERY DIFFICULT and required a bunch of reloads to make every fucking shot count. The part with where you get the flashlight and come back and there's a million headcrabs and they will FOLLOW YOU TO THE ENDS OF THE EARTH if you don't kill every one of them and there's so little ammo I ran out of ammo a couple of times. Made me wish I could at least have a melee weapon to conserve ammo and whack down headcrabs. Aiming isn't the easiest in VR and when ammo is ridiculously scarce it's tough. I feel like there's less ammo in this games so far than RE2R/RE3R.

Also I didn't realize you were supposed to be scrounging everywhere to stock up on ammo. Breaking every box, looking in every nook & cranny. So I probably missed some before the flashlight. After that point I break EVERY BOX because ammo is life.

That being said, right after that million headcrab no ammo left part the game gives you a ton of ammo and I've been very conservative with it, so in ch.4 I have about 80 hg bullets and 6-8 shotgun shells.

I fucking hate reloading in this game. I get why they do it for gaming balance, but considering enemies take like a full clip, I run into a lot of times where I run out of my clip with HG and shit is jumping at me and I don't have time to do the slow ass reload so I switch to shotgun and waste a bullet finishing the enemy off because it's quick. Reaching back, hoping it grabs the ammo, hoping I get the clip in and hit the reload button is a lot of effort which doesn't work in quick combat. Works better against combine when you can hide behind shit and reload slowly.

I like the puzzles but the controls again are a bit finnicky with some of them. The spinning orb one never seems to spin right, it's hard moving it exactly how I want it. The others are fine. Have about 32 resin, not sure what I want to upgrade. I think I'm saving up for laser sight on the HG just so I miss less shots and conserve ammo.

The combine combat is good and makes me wish Namco would do a Time Crisis VR. There's something about hiding behind actual objects and popping out for shots that's really satisfying in VR.

[nachobro]

eventually  the shotgun gets an autoloader thing and the handgun has a double clip thing so that helps a lot. sorry to hear you are having ammo problems though. i've always been able to find some on desks or counters before each encounter. the game does encourage opening every drawer and looking on and around cabinets/lockers/boxes, but i did notice that only the wooden boxes seem to have ammo. the cardboard ones don't.

[Nintex]

Most enemies can be taken down by about 3 well placed handgun shots or 1 shotgun blast.
Always aim for the heads when shooting at zombies. (you get a scope thingy later that makes this easier).

Yes, search your environment for ammo and resin for weapon upgrades. Some stuff his hidden in environmental puzzles as well.
Remember, you can pick up bigger items like oil drums with 2 hands. 

With regards to the controls, assuming you are using the Oculus make sure to check your battery levels.
There's something funny going with your batteries nearly running out but the warning doesn't appear until they're pretty much fully drained.
Also make sure there are no objects that can confuse your camera's. I noticed you had quite a bit of equipment on the floor in your photo.
I'm no expert by any means but I imagine the tracking signals can get distorted pretty easily. I didn't encounter any serious issues with tracking myself.
Also make sure to check your height setting in the Steam VR setup.

Finally make sure you set USB power management off also. I had to keep reconnecting the cables after every reboot. Turns out Windows automatically disabled the USB 3.0 ports to save power. 
I imagine it may effect some other stuff as well. If your GPU has a VirtualLink USB-C Port get a dongle and use that to hook up the Oculus instead.
I've read reports that the port has been added specifically to improve VR compatibility on RTX cards as not every motherboard offers the same results.

[Bebpo]

I'm using Valve Index with room scale. I'm assuming it's cause I'm short (I have some issues with the index controllers too which I assume is because my hands are smaller) or because my room is tiny and baarely the min requirements.

For enemies I always do headshots and this is what they take with hg so far:

-Grabby tongue things - 3-4 HG shots
-Headcrabs - 3...but sometimes 4-5 HG shots (I thought they were 3 but sometimes I get 3 good shots and they're still alive wtff)
-Zombies with headcrabs - probably 5-6 HG shots to the head and then maybe another 1 to the headcrab if it's still alive
-armored headcrabs - 1 to the weakpoint
-zombies with armored headcrabs - is there a trick to them other than shoot them in the body for like 6-8 shots?
-combine with flame pack - 1 shot to the flame canister
-combine normal - I counted each bullet with HG headshot and it was 9 or 10 HG shots (full clip) to take one down

Now shotgun 1 hit kills everything, but generally I conserve my shotgun shells for emergencies.


That tip on getting the double clip size for HG is actually pretty smart so don't have to reload as much mid-combat. Because of the way ammo clips work, sometimes you got like 2/10 shots going into combat but you don't want to throw away those 2 bullets and reload beforehand  :'(

[nachobro]

i've read some places that there's an ai director like system that gives you more ammo for weapons you use more often. not sure if it's true or not but i started getting more shotgun ammo when i started abusing the shotgun so maybe there's some truth to it.

[Don Rumata]

I'm still on Ch.3 (didn't really have time to play more, since the last post) but personally i've never had any real problem with the controls, in fact, playing a bit of SUPERHOT VR, it made me appreciate some of the choices in Alyx more.
Also i like the slow shooting style of game (like Alyx) to the fast ones like RoboRecall or Sairento, i don't think fast moving works well in VR.

One thing i definitely agree with though, is the need for a simple melee weapon, or the ability to use objects as ones.
I never ran out of bullets completely (though i explore A LOT) but i'm definitely always on the brink, like a Resident Evil game, which is a good thing, but also, it's dumb that you have a head crab on the floor in need of a mercy kill, and you have to waste a bullet, when you have a thousand bricks laying around.

FWIW, i think there is a mod for rudimentary melee+crowbar, if you're interested.

EDIT: I'll add, if Valve thought they didn't have a good enough melee system (which i can understand, the Katanas in Sairento are SHIT to use) they could've just implemented some form of super weak, short range, infinite "gun", say, a blow torch or laser cutter of some kind, working on a cool down.

[Don Rumata]

Oh this made me think of how well a VR DeadSpace (1) would work.

Dark tight corridors.
Slow movement.
Slow fine aiming required (for limb cutting etc).
Many peculiar weapons, all based on shooting.
Physical, in-world HUD already implemented.
Locating enemies through 3d sound (in vents for example)
Horror game.
Massive structures.
Possibly zero-G movement, like in Lone Echo.

 

[Don Rumata]

Into Chapter 4 now.

spoiler (click to show/hide)

Yeah that dark explosive corridor was sphincter tightening, but i also loved the Combine shootout immediately after, probably one of the most fun parts so far, popping out of cover to shoot them in the head/canister is so satisfying, on a visceral level.
And the train derail
Can't find the blue keycard though, i'm probably missing something, but i'm stuck right after you see the big "vault" in the sky (in that area with the elevator).

[close]

Any good, slow, tac. shooter on VR? I've seen stuff like Pavlov thrown around, but that's competitive and fast as shit.
I want more of a plan-your-moves&pick-your-shots kind of feel.

[nachobro]

if its the part i'm thinking of

spoiler (click to show/hide)

take the elevator up and its in one of the desks

[close]

also i'd take a look at onward. that's a tactical military sim style game that's getting good reviews

[Don Rumata]

Yeah, it was in a desk's drawer.

spoiler (click to show/hide)

Anyway, moved on a ton, and did the whole part with the electric teleporting headcrabs ( that boss fight when it enters the body  ) and am currently finishing up the Northern Star Hotel.
The big armored Combine boys...

[close]

I found the SMG, but if i have to move a critique, looking at the weapons list for the game, i think this is going to be it, and i'm finding the arsenal extremely basic and not very creative at all.
Don't get me wrong, all the guns feel great to use and they're so fun to look at as they animate, but as far as function goes, they really did the bare minimum.
A handgun, a shotgun, a machine gun and a grenade (2, but both working the same)?

Here's some random ideas that'd work in VR, and are even more or less standard in other games, always keeping with their "one handed gun" policy:

Crossbow (reloading it would be fun) with sticky bolts that have various functions.
Energy weapon with projectiles that bounce off of walls.
Gun that places trip wires (just shoot one end and then the other to the opposite wall, and have enemies walk into it).
Bolas gun to shoot at enemies' feet.
Freezing/stasis grenades.
Blackhole/implosion grenades that sucks in objects and enemies (just to group them together, no damage).
Throwable lures/holographic decoys.
Deployable or portable shields (1 time use, on cool down, with health bar, whatever)

I mean this is just off the top of my head as i'm writing, i'm sure they could come up with more.

I'm still holding out hope that, by the end, i do get the proper Gravity Gun tho.  :'(

[Nintex]

Played some more.
Chapter 4 and chapter 5 are fantastic. I also love the meta commentary the devs put into the game.

spoiler (click to show/hide)

"The electric dog thing went into a guy"
"That sounds crazy!" "
It was! You should've seen it!"

[close]

I just keep getting amazed by how well they managed to execute this.
My expectation was that Half Life Alyx would sorta set the stage and a possible sequel would deliver the real fleshed out experience but this game delivers both in one package once you get through the first 3 chapters.

[Bebpo]

Got to Chapter 5? Northern Star and a bit in on that. Good stuff.

Spent all my resin on the Grenade Launcher thinking it would let me store grenades in my backpack. Lol, no. But been carrying 1 in my arm, 1 in my off-hand and one on my shotgun and shotgun grenading everything has been helpful enough to be worth the 40 resin. If I manage to get another 20 or so I'll get the 2nd ammo clip for the pistol next though I'm not finding much of a use for the pistol anymore other than flying machines & head crabs on their own.

[Don Rumata]

Finished Chapter 7 (JEFF).
Yeah, butt clenching for sure, it's what i expected in terms of mechanics, and it works great, although all the hype was a bit over blown.
Still it's the kind of creative design variety you had in HL2, this game was starting to miss a bit, loved it.
It's an idea seen in many other horror games tbh, but in VR it's a whole other beast. 

[Don Rumata]

Finished.
Needed a bigger bang in the end, but the final set pieces in the last chapter were at least interesting.
Also that post credit scene was a nice tease, i can't imagine them making HL3 NOT in VR, at this point.

[Bebpo]

Got to chapter 6 Arms Race.

That part with the infinite spawning spidercrabs was EVIL
SMG is pretty good, nice to be able to take out shield guys without grenades

I'm getting really tired of these orb laser puzzles. Like the orb thing was fine before the lasers were moving, then it was ok with the moving lasers. But adding 2nd and 3rd points and you have to start all over and the touch controls for this are the only controls in the game that are a bit finnicky and you need to be extremely precise. Bleh. It's not fun spending 5 mins retrying a dumb orb puzzle over and over.

Also right at the end of ch.5 there were some odd trip mines where I'd be an entire hallway away and it would still kill me. On that last one behind the door I had to open the door slightly more so I could back into the kitchen of the previous room and shoot it from there. Even from the end of the hallway I'd instant die. Just seemed kinda iffy design.

Otherwise real good.

[Nintex]

Got to chapter 6 Arms Race.

That part with the infinite spawning spidercrabs was EVIL
SMG is pretty good, nice to be able to take out shield guys without grenades

I'm getting really tired of these orb laser puzzles. Like the orb thing was fine before the lasers were moving, then it was ok with the moving lasers. But adding 2nd and 3rd points and you have to start all over and the touch controls for this are the only controls in the game that are a bit finnicky and you need to be extremely precise. Bleh. It's not fun spending 5 mins retrying a dumb orb puzzle over and over.

Also right at the end of ch.5 there were some odd trip mines where I'd be an entire hallway away and it would still kill me. On that last one behind the door I had to open the door slightly more so I could back into the kitchen of the previous room and shoot it from there. Even from the end of the hallway I'd instant die. Just seemed kinda iffy design.

Otherwise real good.

laser wires

Open the door, throw grenade, close the door 

[close]

[Bebpo]

Got to ch.8. Still pretty good. I kinda wish you didn't die in like 2 seconds from combine gunfire, I've had a decent amount of deaths in this game and the loading could be quicker. The Jeff part was sorta clever, sorta annoying trial & error-ish a bit. Makes me wish the game had more NPCs. Holding your breath motion is a bit weird since you have to hold your hand out a bit since the headset sticks out.

Basically my feel on this is it's great, and it really is Half-Life episode 3, but it's also not quite as good as the old Half-life games and you can tell it's mostly a different team that's just not quite there in creative gameplay design skills.

The writing, VA and art are excellent and spot on though, you can tell those are the same staff.

Not sure if there'll be any replay value once I finish it. But length is definitely quality, especially for a VR game. Around 8 hours-ish now, so guessing it'll be about 10 hours or a bit more. Very solid.

[Don Rumata]

I was also in the "this is fantastic but not as creative" camp, until i tried some other VR games, where you don't just stand still.
You know, stuff like Saint&Sinners, Boneworks and such.
Now i have new found respect for Alyx, this thing really is a watershed moment in terms of polish and comfort levels that should be at the bare minimum, when you want to do a VR game with a campaign.
Even simple stuff like reloading or exploring a room, is just so much cleaner and responsive in Alyx, i really gave it for granted.

Then you have games like the aforementioned ones, where your head bobs up and down for no reason, where the inventory is some over-complicated list of motions, where your (pointless) virtual arms flips around, where they couldn't be bothered to design around not having crouch & jump, and so on and so forth.

I do hope they'll try to be a bit more daring in an hypothetical HL3vr, but i do appreciate many of the "safe" choices they made more, after playing some games who don't care as much.

[Bebpo]

Yeah, in terms of movement/controls it's really good. Once you've played a bunch you can move around and interact and shoot like second nature. The art design/graphics are probably the best visuals in VR. Everything has a clean detailed look to it.

The laser orb puzzles are kinda lame though.

Actually got stuck for the first time in the game after the ant-lions. Need to look up how to get out of this room. There's a forcefield and a wall that's cracked and you can see into a kitchen behind the wall, but I can't see anything to shoot/interact with there.

[Don Rumata]

Yeah, in terms of movement/controls it's really good. Once you've played a bunch you can move around and interact and shoot like second nature. The art design/graphics are probably the best visuals in VR. Everything has a clean detailed look to it.

The laser orb puzzles are kinda lame though.

Actually got stuck for the first time in the game after the ant-lions. Need to look up how to get out of this room. There's a forcefield and a wall that's cracked and you can see into a kitchen behind the wall, but I can't see anything to shoot/interact with there.

I know the room you mean, it took me a second too.

spoiler (click to show/hide)

There should be cables in the walls but they're hard to see and they go up the ceiling.

[close]

[bluemax]

Almost a million new people registered with SteamVR, Valve's storefront for VR games, in April. To put that in context, the 950,000 people who signed up in April bring the all-time total to around 2.7 million, meaning that a third of all SteamVR users registered in the past month alone.

There's another piece of context that's important, of course, which is that 2.7 million isn't actually a whole lot of users for an entire market segment served by competing hardware offerings from some of the world's biggest gaming companies. It is still somewhere in the region of 2% of Steam's overall user base, suggesting that the uptake of VR headsets by PC gamers is actually somewhat lower, proportionally, than the uptake by PS4 gamers.

https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2020-05-07-vr-could-seize-its-moment-if-the-big-players-would-cooperate-opinion

Of course this article is kind of funny given that Vader Immortal and Saints and Sinners both got announced for PSVR this week. Saints and Sinners actually got released on PSVR, not just announced.

For general comparison Sony announced 5 million PSVRs sold. Which would put it at about 4.5% attach rate to PS4s.

[Bebpo]

Got to ch.10, man the big construction yard battle at the end of ch.9 was tough. Good stuff though. Yeah, now that I'm pretty used to Alyx, the controls (for a 1st person VR game), the interactivity and visuals are just better than everything else out there. It's fun opening all the drawers everywhere looking for loot. Would like to see more VR games have this kind of physics/interactivity with the environment, shouldn't be that hard to have objects be grabbable and drawers able to open. Been doing that in non-VR 1st person games for decades.

But yeah it's also a bit odd how the texture quality is so much better here than like every other VR game, all while running smooth. Not sure if it's because Half-life uses a slightly shaded art style.

[Don Rumata]

The shaded art style is part of it for sure, but i think developing the Source 2 with VR in mind (my assumption, but c'mon) is also a large part of the advantage.
Hopefully they'll make that engine open to the public/modding, like Source 1 was.

[Bebpo]

Yeah, I saw Alyx supports community mods but not officially yet.

A mod that removes the laser orb puzzles would be great 
It definitely fucks with the pacing when you get to one if you get stuck on it for a bunch of attempts when the progression just stops while you keep trying the dumb orb. Still doing them all because uh, ammo is important.

[Nintex]

The orb puzzles are easier when you move the orb and not the laser

[Don Rumata]

The orb puzzles are easier when you move the orb and not the laser

This is true, and also remember to keep the laser aimed very straight to the sphere's core.
I personally found the mine defusing worse, just because things low to the ground can create problems with tracking, for me.

[Bebpo]

Yeah, I thought the mine defuse ones were jokingly easy compared to all other puzzles but with tracking issues I can see that being a problem.

The orb puzzles are easier when you move the orb and not the laser

Except moving the orb is very finnicky on my setup. Spins around at random speeds and not necessarily in the direction I want when I try to rotate it. Only part of the controls that consistently is iffy.

At least if you let go of the dumb blue laser it becomes invincible. I learned to just speedrun those like I'm playing super meat boy and just try to rotate the orb to line up a straight shot or near straight shot and then move the laser in one go quick then rotate and do it again.

[Bebpo]

Beat it.

Also realized I have been rotating the orb to move on the laser orb puzzles 

That was really good. Some of the end combat situations were pretty tough at first, but doable. Definitely enjoyed and appreciated the combat. The end bit was a little gimmicky but fun.

I thought the level design was spectacular. On the ch.10 breaking & entering, when you keep going up and circle around the same central section and seeing below where you've came from and above and then you get to the top and you can see all the way down the shaft to the start of the stage, that's just always cool design. Lot of great level design throughout. The puzzles were a fun distraction even if some were a little annoying or too frequent.

Grabbing and catching ammo/resin was always awesome. Felt great and perfect for getting loot. Last upgrade I did was finally adding laser sight to the base pistol and a fully modded pistol with triple burst on is basically as a strong as an SMG.

Story-wise the ending was cool. Very satisfied with the game. Definitely raises the bar for FPS VR games. Would like to see Valve do another AAA VR campaign like this.


Actually the one thing that felt off in VR was like the final

spoiler (click to show/hide)

Grenade launcher gun

[close]

and a few other handles spots. VR haptics need some better feedback to when you're holding a lever and moving it up and down. If you're not looking at it, it just feels weird because it's floaty with no weight. Not sure what the VR solution to that is but there has to be some way of doing that better.

Also I never realized until the last bunch of battles that you can reload the shotgun after putting the bullets in by just flipping it up  That would've been pretty helpful lol, sometimes had issues pulling it back.

[Don Rumata]

Also I never realized until the last bunch of battles that you can reload the shotgun after putting the bullets in by just flipping it up  That would've been pretty helpful lol, sometimes had issues pulling it back.

Wait, what alternative is there? 

[Bebpo]

You grab it with the other hand and pull it back into place.

[nachobro]

yeah learning i could flip the shotgun was a game changer and made me feel like 100x more badass

[Don Rumata]

I must've seen it in some footage maybe, because i did it just naturally as a first thing.

[Bebpo]

Mod tools came out and people already throwing stuff up quick. I have a feeling there will be a decent mod scene in a few months, a year or two since Alyx is probably the biggest VR game after Beat Saber which already has a huge mod scene.

I started a replay of Alyx today. I wish there was a new game+ to take your upgrades in and finish upgrading all the weapons, but since Alyx is a game where you're really learning how to ride a bike and by the end you move and shoot effortlessly, replaying the game on a speedrun is pretty fun. In a couple hours already almost at the Northern Star, have tons of ammo (barely used my shotgun yet so have like 15 shells, 60 pistol) and saved up and bought the laser sight for the pistol first and about 2/3rds there for the bullet reservoir which I think you need before burst fire since you run through bullets so fast otherwise in burst.

When I got to the spot where in my first run I ran completely out of ammo, I had something like 40 pistol shots and 5 shotgun shells at that same point this time.

Also replaying the game is nice for appreciating how good the campaign is. The only parts that are kinda a pain in the ass on replay still are the parts in the dark, especially the big horde fight. Also the sneaking past explosive areas are less fun on 2nd time since the most fun stuff on replay is just moving, moving and combat.

I definitely have control issues sometimes with my Index though. A few spots both of my hands would just start drifting away into the air or vanishing. Still at like 2/5 battery on both. I fixed this last time by unplugging everything and doing a full reset, but idk what to think. Index is so expensive I hope it's not a hardware problem, especially since now during the pandemic isn't a good time to do large returns. Have everything unplugged right now and will re-plug it later.

Definitely looking forward to the single player expansion mods. The in-game interface for loading mod campaigns and mod settings for the main game is pretty good. Maybe someone will make a new game+