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 Half-Life was the first videogame developed by Valve and published by Sierra On-Line, first released for PCs back in 1998. Videogames had been around for a long while by that point, but the jump to the third dimension was really only starting to get major attention with Nintendo’s Super Mario 64, and the landscape for videogames, and what a videogame is and what a videogame could be was starting fresh, from step one, all over again. Since its debut, Half-Life has received over fifty Game Of The Year awards and is considered to be one of the most influential videogames of all time, spoken in the same breath as Rareware’s Goldeneye. Half-Life then received a number of expansions – another word for DLC back before digital distribution was a thing – released sporadically up through 2004, and by then it had branched out from PC gaming and onto other platforms. For example, the second expansion, Blue Shift, was slated to be released for the Dreamcast, but that was ultimately scrapped and released for the PC. The third expansion, Decay, was released only on the PlayStation 2. These were all expansions, though: additives to go with the original experience. It wouldn’t be until 2004 when Half-Life saw a proper sequel in Half-Life 2. Half-Life 2 had a troubled six-year development cycle that included delays and even a leak of the game’s source code, but in the end, it was all worth it: Half-Life 2 may have received less Game Of The Year awards (a paltry, starving-man’s 35 compared to it’s predecessor’s 50), but it was a massive leap in computer graphics, artificial intelligence, physics engines, and storytelling, to name just a few categories it excelled in. Half-Life 2 was also the first game to be published and distributed in-house through Valve’s new online marketplace Steam, and, well, Steam doesn’t need an introduction. Half-Life 2 went on to receive two more expansions (and a short tech demo), named Episode 1 and Episode 2, released in 2006 and 2007, respectively. Half-Life was, and still is, one of those Golden Goose franchises that have yet to put out a poor product; one of those implacable series of games with an untouchable, unblemished history of not only putting out fantastic products, but of innovating and advancing computer gaming as an industry – as an art. Which may be why it’s suffering from its own success: there hasn’t been another entry in Half-Life since 2007. Valve releasing a fabled Half-Life 3 has been a running meme on the internet for so long, it’s older than most accounts here on Something Awful. And to be fair, it’s not difficult to understand why. How do you build on a legacy as perfect as Half-Life? Half-Life: Alyx One of the most significant leaps in videogame tech is the movement from 2D graphics and gameplay to 3D. Innovating further is going to take some real imagination to pull off, but there are a few promising avenues that developers have been looking into. The most promising one – and the one pursued by Valve, evidently – is Virtual Reality, or “VR,” where a player’s eyes and ears are fully submersed into the world of gaming to bring them as literally ‘into’ the game as possible. You aren’t a player controlling a character on a screen: you are moving, walking, turning your head, and throwing punches, as the character. VR has been in development since roughly the late 1990s, but it’s only recently that the tech has been shrunken enough – both physically and fiscally – to be an option for your average person just looking to play a game. Valve may have been largely silent as a developer over the years, but they’ve been keeping their finger on the pulse of the gaming industry and their advancements over time – and when VR was starting to really approach that sweet-spot of power and availability, they were quick to capitalize. And what better franchise to do it with than the franchise that got them started? The franchise that’s known for innovation and for pushing the envelope? Half-Life: Alyx was released in March of 2020. It’s not a proper sequel: it’s a prequel that takes place before the events of Half-Life 2, and, therefore, there is still no Half-Life 3. Some of the characters are displaced – you play as the titular Alyx Vance instead of the face of the franchise, Gordan Freeman – but it’s as Half-Life as you can get, right down to utilizing everything that the modern-day tools have at their disposal to make as impactful a game as they can and using everything that a VR headset is capable of to achieve that. The LP: Everything I’ve written in this OP is me paraphrasing stuff I read off Wikipedia. I don’t actually know a drat thing about Half-Life: I didn’t own a PC that was strong enough to play any decent games until the mid-2010s. The most PC gaming I did up until that point was, like, Age of Empires 2 and StepMania. So, I actually know very little about Half-Life, or the characters or the settings and scenarios or the overarching story. But I have already played through Half-Life: Alyx and I was so floored that I wanted to do an LP with my best friend Olive Branch in the co-pilot’s seat once again. I don’t care about spoilers for the Half-Life series since the last game released was Half-Life 2: Episode Two back in 2007. But I would appreciate if we don’t post any spoilers specific to Half-Life: Alyx. Unfortunately, due to the nature of the game, there aren’t going to be a lot of opportunities for thread participation. Whatever opportunities for personalized routing we take, I was actually going to leave to Olive Branch. Half-Life: Alyx is just such a wild trip of a game (and it’s only about a fifteen-hour game, thereabouts) that I thought it’d be criminal for others to not experience it, even if it’s only vicariously through someone else wearing the helmet. I hope you enjoy it! Episodes:                                 
Maple Leaf fucked around with this message at 14:13 on Dec 24, 2022 |
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Sep 9, 2022 02:27
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| # ? May 8, 2024 21:15 |
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If you want to get caught up on Half-Life lore, you can start here, here or here.
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Sep 9, 2022 03:45
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Thank you, Solitair! We non-Half-Lifers have to learn the history behind this honestly golden series... and I have to at least play it one day.
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Sep 9, 2022 04:47
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This looks interesting. The red bug in the jar is a Snark, a weapon from Half-Life. You throw them and they run at an enemy and explode, but if there's no enemy around they'll run at you.
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Sep 9, 2022 15:53
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Doesn't seem wise to keep a thing like that as a pet
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Sep 9, 2022 16:34
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You have to move fast and joystick too slow
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Sep 9, 2022 17:35
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Maple Leaf posted:Doesn't seem wise to keep a thing like that as a pet In between Half-Life 1 and 2 a lot of Earth's animals have been killed off by invasive aliens species so there aren't many options. And having a pet that you can use as a grenade could come in handy.
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Sep 9, 2022 21:12
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RBA Starblade posted:You have to move fast and joystick too slow Nice!
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Sep 10, 2022 04:32
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Very interested to see this. But I must note that 3D gaming pre-dates Mario 64, though the game revolutionized many parts of it
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Sep 12, 2022 05:03
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Sep 13, 2022 16:06
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Watching again makes me think, just how big is the quarantine zone? A few blocks? And are the zombies dangerous to the Combine too?
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Sep 13, 2022 18:57
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Olive Branch posted:Watching again makes me think, just how big is the quarantine zone? A few blocks? And are the zombies dangerous to the Combine too? Probably a few blocks to a small town at a time, like Ravenholm in HL 2. And yeah, zombies are dangerous if they can actually close in! Especially the tougher ones! They just tend to operate in teams, so they are less in danger of being flanked or overwhelmed.
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Sep 14, 2022 02:52
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Olive Branch posted:Thank you, Solitair! We non-Half-Lifers have to learn the history behind this honestly golden series... and I have to at least play it one day. It's worth it to play the original, even! But if you can't get over the 90s aesthetic/gameplay, Black Mesa finally finished not that long ago so it would be using the marginally less dated HL 2 engine and graphics. It does change a few bits from the original, but nothing significant.
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Sep 14, 2022 03:35
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Man, this game let's you flip the bird at stuff ala blood dragon and draw the obelisk of knowledge on your window? It's got everything!
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Sep 14, 2022 04:43
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Olive Branch posted:Watching again makes me think, [...] are the zombies dangerous to the Combine too? They are, and Episode One introduces a variant called the "Zombine". Also while Gordon Freeman doesn't get to use The Alyx, Alyx does hack into various Combine technology with a custom device, but I don't think it looks like the Alyx in this game, so it's probably (retroactively) a later version in Half Life 2.
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Sep 14, 2022 05:22
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It's still weird to me to have a Valve game where the PC talks.
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Sep 14, 2022 08:31
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(I've only watched the first video so far.) I have a long history with the Half-Life games... because I am old. I've been playing PC games since the early nineties on friends' computers - and then the family computer - and then on my first computer that I bought as a teenager in 1997, with money I earned working part-time at KFC after school. When Half-Life (and Unreal) came around in 1998, it was kind of a seismic change in games. You could feel it right away. The first mod I ever released on the Internet was for Half-Life - or "singleplayer episode" as they were called back then. Too early. The term "mod" wasn't around yet.  Part of what got me a job in the games industry was a deathmatch level made for Half-Life 2 as part of the interview process. (Though I wasn't in the industry for that long as it turned out, thanks to the global financial crisis killing the industry in Australia stone dead.) I finally got a VR headset last year, and Half-Life: Alyx was the first game I played. When that modern version of the classic Valve "guy with valve in the back of his head" intro video came up in VR, man... it's kind of a cliche, but the hair on my arms stood on end. Over twenty years of history there, and most of it without any new Half-Life games. Half-Life: Alyx was a hell of a return to form. Oof though, you're stuck playing with a cable attached to the headset? I couldn't imagine using VR like that. I've got a Quest 2, and while it's generally not as technically impressive as the Valve Index, you can use it completely wirelessly. I guess you do get some video-artefacting sometimes since it has to compress it to send it to the headset, but the full freedom of movement definitely makes up for that, in my mind. Being able to physically turn around to turn around in the game is much more immersive of course, but also I find that it gives me far less simulation sickness. Absolutely no simulation sickness, actually. In comparison to smooth-turning, which was the absolute worst when I tried it, drat. Just instant  . It took a full 24 hours for the nausea to fully taper off. I haven't been game to try it again since. Which is fine; physically turning around is much better anyway!
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Sep 14, 2022 10:40
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Sep 16, 2022 12:54
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Ooh, do you get to meet the other headcrab/zombie variants?
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Sep 16, 2022 14:02
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Samovar posted:Ooh, do you get to meet the other headcrab/zombie variants? I guess time will tell! (Yes)
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Sep 16, 2022 15:19
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Samovar posted:Ooh, do you get to meet the other headcrab/zombie variants? They are really, really annoying! This game introduces some extremely irritating new enemy types. And, worst of all, doesn't have cute lil houndeyes!
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Sep 16, 2022 16:24
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Sep 19, 2022 13:08
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The Guants in HL2 were good because they used a distinct form of English, but this guy is incredible, since he has a speech pattern similar to the other Guants, but just slightly off. Poor fella.
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Sep 19, 2022 14:16
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Sep 22, 2022 16:45
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The fact that the hard carapaces are on the wall implies that either headcrabs obtain them from a separate source, or that when several carapace headcrabs are around, they meld into some kind of ... alien superstructure. Both options being nice and creepy.
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Sep 22, 2022 20:54
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Samovar posted:The fact that the hard carapaces are on the wall implies that either headcrabs obtain them from a separate source, or that when several carapace headcrabs are around, they meld into some kind of ... alien superstructure. Headcrabs seem capable of mutating their hosts enormously, but also mutating themselves if some of the more unusual organic structures in Xen are anything to go by.
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Sep 23, 2022 22:14
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The hard shell plate that is both a part of the headcrab and also apparently a "detachable" shell with no residual headcrab on it, in addition to being its own flora... makes me think this is more of a fungal growth than an environmental mutation. Xen fauna tends to be parasitic in nature, so it's reasonable to assume some of the flora is parasitic too.
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Sep 25, 2022 19:47
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Sep 26, 2022 01:21
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Oh hai there Poison Headcrabs, fuuuuck I hate those things.
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Sep 26, 2022 04:45
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Do they have the same effect if they strike you like they did in HL2?
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Sep 26, 2022 05:45
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I actually had no idea they were poisonous because I've never let them hit me, and I'm not too privy to finding out.
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Sep 26, 2022 13:53
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Maple Leaf posted:I actually had no idea they were poisonous because I've never let them hit me, and I'm not too privy to finding out.
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Sep 27, 2022 00:00
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Sep 28, 2022 19:05
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I would not have the nerves to squeeze past barnacles in VR.
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Sep 28, 2022 21:18
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That was incredibly claustrophobia-inducing.
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Sep 29, 2022 04:12
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Oct 1, 2022 23:56
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The Combine barks are so good
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Oct 2, 2022 06:27
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Oct 5, 2022 08:48
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Man, watching this is making me wish I had my own VR headset so I could play this myself.
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Oct 5, 2022 13:56
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It's the only VR game I've seen which looks... Y'know, like a game and not a proof of concept.
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Oct 5, 2022 14:30
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