Alyx is really a bad game. People don’t recognize this because they play it for a very short time and then that’s it.
The gun and grabbing UX is fantastic. It’s really good. But the enemies and movement are awful. The enemies are simply not designed to handle your movement. The game is secretly an on rails arcade shooter except you can control the rails.
This is a fundamental problem with VR. You cannot expect humans to move to the degree required for game movement irl, so most of your movement HAS to come from control stick movement. But if most of your movement is coming from control stick movement then your irl movement is largely pointless.
But people WANT the irl movement to be the thing that matters. Because it is fun to duck in and out of cover. So that’s what Alyx largely is. You see enemies. You play the duck and peeking game, and if the enemies come too close or are melee you yeet yourself back to a safer spot.
The basic enemies with guns and melee and drones are pretty good with this gameplay. When they start trying to do something a little bit more interesting in the game later, it really falls apart. Why? Because the enemies are incredibly dumb. Much dumber than a typical game. And the basic concept you get to is that any enemy that does not respect peeking is just asking you to do this clumsy movement scheme rather the fun arcade on rail gun shooter gameplay and it feels dumb.
Imo the Valve team did a very good job trying to accommodate what they found were enormous limitations. But the end result is really underwhelming. You can’t play many games like that for the novelty of on rails shooter gameplay to still work.
The gun and grabbing UX is fantastic. It’s really good. But the enemies and movement are awful. The enemies are simply not designed to handle your movement. The game is secretly an on rails arcade shooter except you can control the rails.
This is a fundamental problem with VR. You cannot expect humans to move to the degree required for game movement irl, so most of your movement HAS to come from control stick movement. But if most of your movement is coming from control stick movement then your irl movement is largely pointless.
But people WANT the irl movement to be the thing that matters. Because it is fun to duck in and out of cover. So that’s what Alyx largely is. You see enemies. You play the duck and peeking game, and if the enemies come too close or are melee you yeet yourself back to a safer spot.
The basic enemies with guns and melee and drones are pretty good with this gameplay. When they start trying to do something a little bit more interesting in the game later, it really falls apart. Why? Because the enemies are incredibly dumb. Much dumber than a typical game. And the basic concept you get to is that any enemy that does not respect peeking is just asking you to do this clumsy movement scheme rather the fun arcade on rail gun shooter gameplay and it feels dumb.
Imo the Valve team did a very good job trying to accommodate what they found were enormous limitations. But the end result is really underwhelming. You can’t play many games like that for the novelty of on rails shooter gameplay to still work.