Exciting news! Valve just announced a new Half-Life game!!! Yeehaw!!!
... oh, wait... Yeah, it isn't Half-Life 3, is it?
Oh, it's called "Half-Life: Alyx". Hmmm... ok. Maybe it will be good?
Oh, it's for VR. And exclusively for VR.
Well, meh! A thousand times meh!
Why? Well, knowing Valve's attitudes and approach at VR, I give it a 99% chance that it will suck.
From the very beginning Valve has had this strange attitude that VR is only for so-called "room-scale" experiences, to the most extreme extents. In other words, standing-up only, no sitting down. Walking around the room, with a teleportation mechanic. No other form of movement. Valve has always been on the forefront of promoting the notion that if the camera moves in any other way than by following the headset's movements, and by teleportation, the user will die.
So I predict you can forget about this actually being a fun game to play. It will be awkward to play, it will be slow-paced, and it will most probably be very short (if a first-time casual playthrough takes more than 4 hours, I will be genuinely surprised.)
Movement in VR games can be more like those of a regular first-person shooter. Games like Resident Evil VII are a testament to that (where the only compromise to reduce motion sickness is stepped camera rotation, although even that can be turned off if you really want). Also some games use genuinely innovative and fun ways to move around, such as Lone Echo (which is in my opinion one of the best VR games in existence, even surpassing RE7 on that front).
But Valve doesn't subscribe to any of that. Room-scale only, standing-up only, teleportation mechanic only. You aren't getting anything else from Valve. (If I'm wrong, I will be very surprised.)
Let's hope they don't make it an Vive/Index exclusive. (They probably won't, but who knows.)
... oh, wait... Yeah, it isn't Half-Life 3, is it?
Oh, it's called "Half-Life: Alyx". Hmmm... ok. Maybe it will be good?
Oh, it's for VR. And exclusively for VR.
Well, meh! A thousand times meh!
Why? Well, knowing Valve's attitudes and approach at VR, I give it a 99% chance that it will suck.
From the very beginning Valve has had this strange attitude that VR is only for so-called "room-scale" experiences, to the most extreme extents. In other words, standing-up only, no sitting down. Walking around the room, with a teleportation mechanic. No other form of movement. Valve has always been on the forefront of promoting the notion that if the camera moves in any other way than by following the headset's movements, and by teleportation, the user will die.
So I predict you can forget about this actually being a fun game to play. It will be awkward to play, it will be slow-paced, and it will most probably be very short (if a first-time casual playthrough takes more than 4 hours, I will be genuinely surprised.)
Movement in VR games can be more like those of a regular first-person shooter. Games like Resident Evil VII are a testament to that (where the only compromise to reduce motion sickness is stepped camera rotation, although even that can be turned off if you really want). Also some games use genuinely innovative and fun ways to move around, such as Lone Echo (which is in my opinion one of the best VR games in existence, even surpassing RE7 on that front).
But Valve doesn't subscribe to any of that. Room-scale only, standing-up only, teleportation mechanic only. You aren't getting anything else from Valve. (If I'm wrong, I will be very surprised.)
Let's hope they don't make it an Vive/Index exclusive. (They probably won't, but who knows.)
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