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It’s difficult to talk about Half-Life: Alyx.
Hell, it’s difficult to talk about Half-Life period.
As a fan since the very beginning, I’ve been through the dizzying highs and the seemingly interminable lows. Episode Two remains the single greatest video game experience of my entire life, but the years after its release (the “dark interval” so to speak) were excruciating to endure. My perception of the series is now inextricably conflated with vivid memories of frequent frustration at VALVe’s vagaries along with intermittent bouts of sweeping hope followed swiftly by crushing disappointment. Key members of the original Half-Life team retired in quick succession during the 2010s, capped off by the departure of writer Marc Laidlaw in 2016. This was the death knell, signalling the end of the series as I knew it.
I subsequently settled into a state of perpetual dissatisfaction and melancholy. Laidlaw offered ‘epistle 3’ as tiny consolation, but there was no real closure. No catharsis. Just constant yearning for a conclusion that I was forced to accept would never come.
Then, like a quantum fluctuation, Half-Life: Alyx was announced out of nowhere.
I experienced an avalanche of conflicting thoughts and feelings competing for dominance – shock, excitement, disbelief, disappointment, apprehension and more. Like a monkey’s paw, my wish had been granted but not without a few caveats. This was a prequel, not a sequel. This was a full-fledged game, but VR-exclusive. This was made by VALVe, except without Laidlaw and various other OG developers.
This was new Half-Life, but not the Half-Life I had hoped for.
Despite my misgivings, I couldn’t miss out on such a momentous event. I upgraded my PC and purchased a Samsung Odyssey+ – an unprecedented investment for just one game, but which only Half-Life could entice me to make. Alyx launched almost as soon as COVID lockdowns began worldwide and I completed it within four days.
The first few hours of Alyx were astonishing. I was expecting to be impressed based on the trailers I watched but, having never played VR before, I was still unprepared for the jaw-dropping detail, scale and immersion. It was incredibly emotional returning to a world I had been obsessed with as a teenager – one I had thought abandoned just a few months earlier – let alone through VR. I can find no words with which to adequately describe how affecting it was to fade in on that balcony and see that familiar vista – the monolithic and parasitic Citadel towering above the meagre housing blocks of City 17 and its hapless citizens. 12 very long years fell away the instant I heard the distinctive ambiance of Combine dropships, scanners and hunter choppers swarming the surrounding sky as the clinical and artificial voice of the omnipresent Combine Overwatch pierced the air.
I was also unprepared for the grueling physical demands of playing VR and it was intensely visceral at regular intervals. One moment that stands out is approaching a hanging corpse at the end of a dark canal and reaching for its flashlight, knowing something monstrous will emerge when I take it. The dread is palpable and minutes pass before I work up the nerve to continue. As soon as I grab the flashlight, I whirl around and see the unmistakable silhouette of poison headcrabs scuttling towards me, barely visible in the dark. Panic stricken, I flail around the area, waving the flashlight wildly and emptying my shotgun recklessly, barely dodging their leaps as they approach me. Not since the days of the original Half-Life has the lowly headcrab provoked such fearful, primal and instinctual reactions in me.
Less frightening but no less thrilling was my first proper engagement with Combine soldiers. I exit a subway tunnel, the sound of gunfire close by. My way forward is momentarily blocked by a stationery Razor Train beyond which Combine chatter signal the presence of two grunts. The train starts to accelerate, the gaps between each carriage briefly revealing their positions. The first notes of 'Anti-Citizen' kick off and an unexpected rush of adrenaline courses through me as the firefight begins. Old memories of holding off waves of Antlions alongside Vortigaunts in a mine and surviving an ambush at an abandoned inn come flooding back as I duck behind concrete and dispatch them.
Glorious.
These encounters would have been child’s play with a mouse and keyboard. In VR, fending off headcrabs, avoiding barnacles and engaging in firefights with just a handful of Combine soldiers was far more difficult and taxing than it had ever been before. Everything was much slower, more deliberate, more threatening. More realistic. Fitting, really, given the change in protagonist. Alyx has always been so much more human and more vulnerable than Freeman ever was. Hell, the immense detail in the environment alone was often exhausting to look at and process. I spent obscene amounts of time reading newspapers, examining flora, poking at zombie corpses and inspecting objects. The headset itself was also challenging to wear for extended periods of time and each session rarely lasted longer than an hour and a half, by which time my head was pounding severely and I had no choice but to take a break.
Suffice to say, I really enjoyed Alyx.
But I didn’t quite love it.
The gameplay and overall presentation was exemplary, but the narrative was thin even by Half-Life standards. Substantive story beats were few and far between, filled in by far too many quippy interactions between Alyx and Russel. The latter overstayed his welcome during the second half of the game, at which point Eli should have had a more prominent presence. I was particularly troubled by the ending, which effectively erased the horror and anguish of Episode Two’s cliffhanger while blowing the proverbial lid open on what the G-Man is capable of doing with little regard for the messy implications therein. It seemed to me to be a transparently desperate and potentially ill-fated attempt to wriggle out of a deep crevice in which VALVe had become hopelessly stuck for over a decade and to reorient the future of the series following the departure of some of its original auteurs, leaving me with decidedly mixed feelings.
Four years passed in the veritable blink of an eye and I found myself compelled to play Alyx again a few weeks after the 25th anniversary of the series. My first – and only – playthrough had come with a lot of baggage. Hype and expectations rarely invite a balanced perspective and mine was certainly clouded by both. In addition, I’d rushed the second half of the game to get to the ending and avoid spoilers, failing to absorb and appreciate some of the details and moments along the way. This time, I intended to take my time without any of the noise, novelty or cynicism getting in the way. I wanted to see the game for what it really is.
And it’s truly a masterpiece.
Alyx reaffirms that VALVe is simply without equal as a developer. It’s several orders of magnitude above every other VR title to date, a superlative game period and a worthy addition to this highly esteemed series, once again pushing the frontier of gaming in the way only Half-Life – only VALVe – has ever done. The environments are stunning, the puzzles satisfyingly tactile, the combat exhilarating and the performances top-tier. I especially like how Alyx imitates the structure of Half-Life 2, using each chapter to introduce and focus on a new gameplay idea or mechanic. It’s still not narratively substantive and some of my misgivings about the ending remain, but it succeeds where it matters and leaves room to do a lot more.
Indeed, perhaps the best thing about Alyx is that it ends with the promise of more Half-Life to come one day. For a few precious moments, inhabiting Gordon Freeman again, a radiant light wiped away the darkness of that devastating cliffhanger, offering a brief glimpse beyond its event horizon.
Half-Life has a future once more.