Half-Life: Alyx
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Half-Life: Alyx - Official Reveal Trailer – 01:50
— IGNGoddamn, sounds like I'll be spending serious money on a new computer next year.
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It's about time Valve remembered how to make games and brought out a new Half-Life game, but it's a bit of a shame it's VR only.
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It looks cool.
I really liked the original HL. Never played HL2. Is it worth playing? Should I wait until Alyx comes out and binge them all?
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@Captain I'd say go through HL2 now - as with all series of games, the technical downgrade will be very noticeable when going to an earlier game. But it's a very good game nonetheless - and it's been receiving many graphical updates all the time since its release, so it looks quite good even today. Just, be wary it's an old-school FPS, with health points and such - I've been playing on easy and I still died a lot.
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@Captain said in Half-Life: Alyx:
Never played HL2.
@Captain said in Half-Life: Alyx:
Is it worth playing?
Yes as are HL2 Episode 1 & 2.
@Captain said in Half-Life: Alyx:
Should I wait until Alyx comes out and binge them all?
Binge it now. Get Orange Box and play Portal too.
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@Gąska said in Half-Life: Alyx:
it's an old-school FPS, with health points and such
Which new FPS games don't have health points?
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@loopback0 I meant health points that don't regenerate unless you pick up a health pack. In modern games that's very rare.
Oh, and you'll constantly run out of ammo for your favorite weapons - so most of the time, you'll be shooting whatever the current enemy happens to be shooting. Also, accuracy on most guns sucks, and there's no zooming. Also also, beware grenades on right click.
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@Gąska said in Half-Life: Alyx:
I meant health points that don't regenerate unless you pick up a health pack. In modern games that's very rare.
Ah, right. Yeah.
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@loopback0 said in Half-Life: Alyx:
VR only
Dismembered floating hands. Whatever the argument for/against VR is, I can't get past that point.
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@Gąska said in Half-Life: Alyx:
@loopback0 I meant health points that don't regenerate unless you pick up a health pack. In modern games that's very rare.
And very stupid and boring. Being "Wolverine with a gun" takes away all of the challenge. Yet another way Halo screwed up the genre. (I think. At least I don't remember all this insta-regeneration nonsense going on before everyone decided "let's Halo All The Things!")
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@Gąska said in Half-Life: Alyx:
I've been playing on easy and I still died a lot.
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@Applied-Mediocrity fun fact: Half-Life 2 has floating hands too.
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Is Alyx coming out for Linux?
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@Applied-Mediocrity said in Half-Life: Alyx:
Dismembered floating hands. Whatever the argument for/against VR is, I can't get past that point.
That doesn't bother me - it's just that I don't have VR.
Partly because of the cost but mostly because my gaming PC is in my spare room which has no space for VR.
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@Mason_Wheeler Halo had health packs. As I recall it, it was Call of Duty that brought in "run and hide until you heal," although I played nothing older than Call of Duty 4.
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@Gąska said in Half-Life: Alyx:
@Applied-Mediocrity fun fact: Half-Life 2 has floating hands too.
Where? IDR
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@mott555 Really? Huh. Maybe it's been too long. I just remember a lot of things taking a turn for the stupider at about the same time as Halo came out.
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@Mason_Wheeler said in Half-Life: Alyx:
@Gąska said in Half-Life: Alyx:
@loopback0 I meant health points that don't regenerate unless you pick up a health pack. In modern games that's very rare.
And very stupid and boring. Being "Wolverine with a gun" takes away all of the challenge.
Bullshit. It just makes the challenge different. Instead of being able to tank dozen enemies but only once per level, you die in a few shots, but it's a few shots each time - allowing for much faster gameplay, and no "I survived, but still I have too low HP to continue, fuck this shit, load previous save" moments.
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@Applied-Mediocrity said in Half-Life: Alyx:
@Gąska said in Half-Life: Alyx:
@Applied-Mediocrity fun fact: Half-Life 2 has floating hands too.
Where? IDR
The edges are right outside camera.
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@Mason_Wheeler said in Half-Life: Alyx:
@mott555 Really? Huh. Maybe it's been too long. I just remember a lot of things taking a turn for the stupider at about the same time as Halo came out.
According to this article it didn't have regenerating health but regenerating shields.
e:
While many credit the game with popularizing the mechanic, the fact of the matter is that Halo: CE didnt even feature regenerating health at all. Instead, it gave players regenerating shields, while utilizing a more traditional health system underneath. The next two installments in the franchise added full-blown health regen, though, and while both Halo 3: ODST and Halo: Reach reverted to the originals non-regenerating ways, Halos unprecedented commercial success led to many, many studios borrowing as many of the series traits as they could, recharging health included.
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@Mason_Wheeler Of course, now I can't prove it because all Internet searches for "Halo HUD" give me results for a Minecraft mod...
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@Gąska said in Half-Life: Alyx:
@Applied-Mediocrity said in Half-Life: Alyx:
@Gąska said in Half-Life: Alyx:
@Applied-Mediocrity fun fact: Half-Life 2 has floating hands too.
Where? IDR
The edges are right outside camera.
And that makes all the difference.
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@Applied-Mediocrity oh come on. You already have no legs. Having no arms isn't that hard to get used to.
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@Captain said in Half-Life: Alyx:
Never played HL2. Is it worth playing?
I'd say it's literally one of the best games of all time. So, yes, probably.
Then again I'd also put Super Mario Galaxy in that list. My tastes might not match yours.
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@anonymous234 I haven't played Galaxy either. I liked the parts of Sunshine I played, except for a couple of annoying levels (and the timed obstacle course stages, I sucked at those for some reason even though I did okay on the N64 ones)
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@anonymous234 HL2 is a weird case. I'd say it's a great game in every way that's hasn't aged at all, except for shooting mechanic, which is very standard even for its time and aged quite poorly (HP being the least of its problems).
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@Gąska I don't see my legs (and given the camera direction I don't need to either) so they may be or may not be there, but my hands are there floating in front of me like I'm some Jedi master with hands chopped off by ol' Vader except I'm still able to use them, just, I guess, clipping them to my belt when those midifluoridians run out of juice.
I mean, I don't even understand the technical reasoning. Why not render them as far as you'd be able to see them? They do this in non-VR FPS games, up to the shoulder (for example, elbow-greasing a door in whichever Call of Dutyfield was that), so what is the problem?
Then it says it'd feel strange and create a mental disconnect if hands would not be where you expect them to be. Alright, but isn't it like that already? Having your average auto-rifle, I'm not exactly carrying a 3 kilo piece of metal nor gripping it correctly nor feeling the kickback.
I don't goddamn get it. Maybe I would if I had any VR apparatus...
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@Applied-Mediocrity said in Half-Life: Alyx:
I mean, I don't even understand the technical reasoning. Why not render them as far as you'd be able to see them?
How does the game know where's your elbow?
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@Captain said in Half-Life: Alyx:
It looks cool.
I really liked the original HL. Never played HL2. Is it worth playing?
Yes, it’s pretty awesome.
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@Applied-Mediocrity said in Half-Life: Alyx:
I don't see my legs (and given the camera direction I don't need to either) so they may be or may not be there, but my hands are there floating in front of me like I'm some Jedi master with hands chopped off by ol' Vader except I'm still able to use them, just, I guess, clipping them to my belt when those midifluoridians run out of juice.
You're focussing way beyond the tops of your arms while playing.
IRL I have arms but I'm not focussing on the tops of my arms or even registering their existance. Once you're immersed in VR, it's the same IME.
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@anonymous234 said in Half-Life: Alyx:
I'd say it's literally one of the best games of all time.
This.
@Gąska said in Half-Life: Alyx:
except for shooting mechanic, which is very standard even for its time and aged quite poorly
Not this. It's different from some modern games but it doesn't age it.
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@Gąska said in Half-Life: Alyx:
HL2 is a weird case. I'd say it's a great game in every way that's hasn't aged at all,
"Hey Gordon, the entire world's falling apart! We need you to save it! You're going up against an entire army of technologically advanced aliens, and you're our only hope."
"All right. I'll need suitable weapons for going up against an army, then."
"Hahahahaha... no. You get a crowbar. Have fun taking on the numberless alien hordes!"
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@Mason_Wheeler you're forgetting that they're an underground rebel movement on the verge of defeat and that Freeman wasn't supposed to end up in this crowbar situation at all.
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@Gąska said in Half-Life: Alyx:
@Applied-Mediocrity said in Half-Life: Alyx:
I mean, I don't even understand the technical reasoning. Why not render them as far as you'd be able to see them?
How does the game know where's your elbow?
Not very far from my hands, I suppose. Does it need to?
@loopback0 said in Half-Life: Alyx:
Once you're immersed in VR, it's the same IME.
Possibly. I've tried and it bothers me. Of course, I went in quite keen on finding things to be bothered of instead of enjoying the game, but let's not have that get in the way of an internets argument.
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@Applied-Mediocrity said in Half-Life: Alyx:
@Gąska said in Half-Life: Alyx:
@Applied-Mediocrity said in Half-Life: Alyx:
I mean, I don't even understand the technical reasoning. Why not render them as far as you'd be able to see them?
How does the game know where's your elbow?
Not very far from my hands, I suppose. Does it need to?
Yes, it does. What should happen when you move your hand forward/backward? Should the character's skin extend/contract in a straight line? Yes, they could put a fake elbow based on their best guess about your arm's length - but at what angle? Should it block your side vision all the time regardless of what you physically do with your hand, or should it block bottom vision? That would be immersion breaking.
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Yeah, I never understood that about HL. I mean, I understand the first game, where he was just a scientist who just happened to be in that awesome survival suit when an accident happened.
But then he slowly becomes the MiB's proxy, and the MiB is totally useless.
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@Gąska said in Half-Life: Alyx:
@Mason_Wheeler you're forgetting that they're an underground rebel movement on the verge of defeat and that Freeman wasn't supposed to end up in this crowbar situation at all.
They must have been totally on the verge of defeat if they didn't have even a single gun to spare!
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@Gąska The short answer to that is that anything you want to have on screen needs to be motion tracked, otherwise it requires certain suspension of disbelief, which I'm not able to provide.
That said, I get why Gaben's doing this. Bolstering their VR effort with new full-length first-party titles, especially using their most famous IP? Probably should have been done long ago.
Also:
“We would love to be delivering a version of this that you could play with a mouse and a keyboard,” Valve’s Dario Casali says. “But as we said, it began as an exploration of VR. The more we used the controllers and the headset, the amount of possibilities these things give us, the more we realized that there’s so much opportunity that we can’t really translate back to the keyboard.”
“The amount of complexity that’s going on there, it’s just so hard. We would have to map an entire section of the keyboard dedicated just to interacting with doors if we wanted to have that kind of functionality. Whereas it’s so intuitive for you ’cause you know how a door works and you can sort of crack it open a little bit with one hand and put your gun through with the other.”
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I don't know if I'm alone in this but unless a game has cartoon graphics and therefore looks awesome forever, like TF2, I just can't enjoy really old titles like Half-Life because of the whack-ass graphics. I'm patiently waiting for Black Mesa to be completed so I can experience it as it was meant to be experienced.
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@Applied-Mediocrity said in Half-Life: Alyx:
which I'm not able to provide.
I said the same thing about omnibox in original Chrome. I came around eventually. You will too, when more VR games start appearing (and depending on how well Alyx sells, this might be either a couple years from now, or never).
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@pie_flavor said in Half-Life: Alyx:
I don't know if I'm alone
I'm certain you're not alone within your age group. I can't get myself to play Fallout 2 either.
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@pie_flavor said in Half-Life: Alyx:
I'm patiently waiting for Black Mesa to be completed so I can experience it as it was meant to be experienced.
In a game engine released 6 years after it was?
@pie_flavor said in Half-Life: Alyx:
I don't know if I'm alone
but I don't agree. Plenty of old games have worse graphics but they're still good. Gameplay is more important IMO.
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@pie_flavor said in Half-Life: Alyx:
I just can't enjoy really old titles like Half-Life because of the whack-ass graphics
Oh man, don't try Deus Ex then.
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@Gąska said in Half-Life: Alyx:
I said the same thing about omnibox in original Chrome. I came around eventually. You will too
Might be a bit difficult sale for me considering...
But I get what you're saying. Perhaps I will. I'll definitely want to try this at some point.
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@Applied-Mediocrity your Firefox looks weird. Are you using the @Lorne-Kates version?
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@error I can see how you can like detached hands...
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@Applied-Mediocrity There are VR appliances that try to render the full arms (and even body).
The difference of doing it versus a normal FPS is that you move your arms very freely in an FPS, so it's hard to do it properly, and the arms can be made to glitch pretty severely. They also do not know the real orientation of your arms, so you may move your arms in other ways than they do in game and still break the immersion. And also, if you're tall, the in game arms may be too short, and stop you from stretching your hands in game from stretching forwards as much as you do in IRL. Or they will actually go forwards or glitch the fuck out and spaz around like retarded fanblades.Like people have said, you get used to a pair of disembodied hands pretty fast. The weight is more noticeable, but there are VR appliances to fix that as well, like dummy controllers with decent weight to them.
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@Carnage said in Half-Life: Alyx:
The difference of doing it versus a normal FPS is that you move your arms very freely in an FPS,
It was amazing to me how easy it is to aim a gun in VR. Just point at the target, it's extremely natural, even when not facing your target. You can zip between targets, even while moving, and there's no learning curve to it. (As opposed to moving, which is usually simpler with WASD unless you're doing roomscale.)