The countdown is on!Join us in 48 hours for a special announcement about Hollow Knight: Silksong!Thursday 21st August | 7:30 AM PT | 10:30 AM ET | 3:30 PM UK
NOT a joke this time. It’s happening. It’s really happening. SILKSONG IS REAL.
Half-Life 3 was already made and it was a VR exclusive. And it was REALLY good. And nobody cared.
People like to meme. They don’t like to think. Silksong will probably have a wave of “is it as good as it was supposed to be” or “DISAPPOINTED BY SILKSONG” and then just go back to being like Hollow Knight: a REALLY good metroidvania with souls-like aspects (also souls games ARE metroidvanias but…).
Personally? I am more excited for the chuds to lose their mind once they figure out Hornet is fem.
Spoilers for Alyx for all those without VR headsets
Honestly, all it’s doing is retconning the ending of Episode 2 in a slightly different way while still presenting that cliffhanger. It made me lose a lot of faith in their writers, and it will be hell to explain such a janky twist to non-VR players.
It’s not “nobody cared” it’s “not enough people can afford to keep a roof over their heads, let alone afford an extra holodeck room in their house with an expensive holodeck setup”
I’d love to play HL alyx. I didn’t and don’t live in a place where I can have a perpetually empty room I can drill holes in the wall of, or drop $1k on a valve index (after shipping and imports) plus a new $2k gaming rig.
Not that it invalidates your points at all but I played HL Alyx sitting down on an original oculus quest on a computer with a 1060 and an r5 2600. It was great but it and Beat Saber were basically the only two VR games that were fun enough for me to play for more than a few minutes at a time.
That quest has been collecting dust since I beat Alyx.
Really hard for me to recommend spending several hundreds of dollars on hardware when there’s really only one game worth playing. But if you can find a cheap used quest or WMR headset it might be worth picking up and then selling just to play Alyx. Alyx is probably one of if not the most well optimized VR games out there. You really don’t need that powerful of a rig to play it.
Ooh can I suggest games? There are definitely a bunch that are great to play sitting down, or standing up but in place. I haven’t bought new VR games since alyx came out, but I def have plenty
I’ve said this plenty of times but this stigma of VR is a REALLY REALLY weird one, especially since I keep seeing it. There are so many arcades and whatnot you can try VR where it’s just tethered in place. So many VR experiences are designed such that you can absolutely play them sitting down in a chair. The idea you need a “holodeck room” breaks down the second you look into it all.
Not only that, but the Quest can play VR games, and it’s running a phone processor. You don’t need top of the line hardware, just enough to run a normal video game, which I’m willing to bet if you’re a pc gamer, you literally have more than enough.
I beat Alyx on a $250 headset and a laptop with an underclocked 1060. In my shitty 800 sq ft apartment’s dining room. And it was still an absolutely phenomenal experience. Was it top of the line? No. But it was still plenty playable. These days my pc is in my bedroom and I just hook it up and play in the empty space in front of my bed. You absolutely CAN sink thousands of dollars and a dedicated space into it if you really want to. But it’s hardly a requirement.
People are buying entire consoles for one or two games. If folk can afford a 450 USD switch 2 for mario kart they can afford a facebook (ugh) quest for 300 bucks that regularly goes on sale.
Can EVERYONE? No. But this is a luxury hobby and plenty of discourse online is “I bought a PS5 for Demon Souls” or “I love Welcome Tour” and so forth.
Nah. Alyx was just completely ignored. Likely due to a mix of chuds not wanting to acknowledge women and… people don’t ACTUALLY care all that much about a new Half-Life. They just love meming about it.
People are buying entire consoles for one or two games. If folk can afford a 450 USD switch 2 for mario kart they can afford a facebook (ugh) quest for 300 bucks that regularly goes on sale.
The difference is that you don’t need an entire room to play the Switch 2 (hell, you even need a TV). It’s easier to scrape together the $500+ required for a console than it is to afford a down payment and a mortgage, or the extra rent for a two-bedroom instead of a one-bedroom apartment.
Consoles and VR are both luxury goods, but the barrier for entry with the former is much lower than with the latter.
Space will always be the most expensive peripheral of all.
Sitting and standing VR are both a thing and are both supported in Alyx. All you have to be able to do is rotate your chair 180 degrees away from your desk and you can play it. Hell, you can play it AT your desk but I would not recommend waving your arms in front of a monitor…
And if you can afford to walk one step away from your computer chair? Now you can do Standing VR which, honestly, I have always preferred over room scale because I can never get comfortable walking around. But moving with an analog stick (or teleporting) and then moving my body to dodge things and interact? That is the shit.
Or, to put it in Nintendo terms: If you can play Welcome Tour and the game that is totally not wheelchair basketball, you can do seated VR.
Standing and Seated VR are both a thing that are both supported in Alyx.
To be clear: I am not saying everyone should go buy a facebook quest 3 (I would NEVER say that… even if that is usually my begrudging suggestion to anyone who wants to try VR) and that everyone needs to play Alyx.
But if the obsession over Half-Life 3 were anywhere near as big as the memes pretend they are… people spend more to play a tweaked re-release of a game they already have on a new console. We buy new GPUs when we find out our performance will be too low on fricking Dragon’s Dogma 2.
But spend 300 bucks (usually closer to 200/250 on sale) to play their “dream game” ? Oh, nah, I’m washing my hair that… five years. Uhm… oh, I don’t like the head strap. That is why I can’t play it. Yeah…
And… for those of us who really ARE Half-Life sickos? Alyx is GOOD.
Definitely agree with everything you said… Except that Souls games are Metroidvanias. Backtracking is really the only thing that most souls-likes share with Metroidvanias. Unlocking gameplay abilities that also function as environmental keys is the main defining feature of Metroidvanias IMO.
Alyx honestly lived up to the hype. The only things that bugged me were that enemies were too slow (the fast zombie was removed entirely) and certain objects like coats weren’t able to be picked up like they could in Boneworks. I wanted to throw a coat over zombies and beat them like a pinata with a crowbar. :)
I’m just hoping for some good games moving forward that aren’t trying to milk us for everything we have with slop we don’t want.
… There is plenty of that?
The thing to understand is that influencers pretty much always fall back to the “us vs them” mentality. We could see it with early youtube where they accused magazines/websites of all being corrupt and getting paid for reviews (never forget Jon “It’s about ethics in games journalism” Bain…). And we saw it in twitch when they instead said it was the youtubers and their sponsor deals who were doing the same. And we saw a huge rise in “I need to watch tiktok because that informs me about things that mainstream outlets don’t want me to hear!”
Some outlets go political. Most are aggressively “apolitical” and all that entails. But that means that “the game devs are trying to screw you over” is a solid talking point. It is why everyone and their mother needs to say they hate live service games (with the added bonus of avoiding any chance of having a regular game they arer expected to stream) and so forth.
But if you actually PLAY games? It is still a golden age where basically every sicko gets their fetish in game form (and Microprose and Kitfox are apparently the sleazy club I slink off to…). We are in for a pretty bad drought after the past two years or so of funding drying up and studios being gutted. But if you actually are looking you are gonna find a LOT of games that know what you want.
I’ll also add on that “game devs want to ruin gaming” is a great excuse to play “retro” games. Which drastically reduce operating costs for the part timers because… even IF they are showing you their console and cartridge, you can bet your bottom dollar they are running an emulator with a game they grabbed from their local internet library.
Half-Life 3 was already made and it was a VR exclusive. And it was REALLY good. And nobody cared.
People like to meme. They don’t like to think. Silksong will probably have a wave of “is it as good as it was supposed to be” or “DISAPPOINTED BY SILKSONG” and then just go back to being like Hollow Knight: a REALLY good metroidvania with souls-like aspects (also souls games ARE metroidvanias but…).
Personally? I am more excited for the chuds to lose their mind once they figure out Hornet is fem.
If Alyx counts as Half-Life 3, surely Opposing Force was Half-Life 2, Blue Shift was Half-Life 3, and Alyx is like… Half-Life 7 or something.
Except that Alyx very clearly focuses on the core plotline rather than a side story like the expansions.
Also you forgot the coop game for the Dreamcast.
Spoilers for Alyx for all those without VR headsets
Honestly, all it’s doing is retconning the ending of Episode 2 in a slightly different way while still presenting that cliffhanger. It made me lose a lot of faith in their writers, and it will be hell to explain such a janky twist to non-VR players.
It’s not “nobody cared” it’s “not enough people can afford to keep a roof over their heads, let alone afford an extra holodeck room in their house with an expensive holodeck setup”
I’d love to play HL alyx. I didn’t and don’t live in a place where I can have a perpetually empty room I can drill holes in the wall of, or drop $1k on a valve index (after shipping and imports) plus a new $2k gaming rig.
Not that it invalidates your points at all but I played HL Alyx sitting down on an original oculus quest on a computer with a 1060 and an r5 2600. It was great but it and Beat Saber were basically the only two VR games that were fun enough for me to play for more than a few minutes at a time.
That quest has been collecting dust since I beat Alyx.
Really hard for me to recommend spending several hundreds of dollars on hardware when there’s really only one game worth playing. But if you can find a cheap used quest or WMR headset it might be worth picking up and then selling just to play Alyx. Alyx is probably one of if not the most well optimized VR games out there. You really don’t need that powerful of a rig to play it.
Suggestion: Walkabout Mini Golf. I was addicted to that thing for weeks
Ooh can I suggest games? There are definitely a bunch that are great to play sitting down, or standing up but in place. I haven’t bought new VR games since alyx came out, but I def have plenty
I’ve said this plenty of times but this stigma of VR is a REALLY REALLY weird one, especially since I keep seeing it. There are so many arcades and whatnot you can try VR where it’s just tethered in place. So many VR experiences are designed such that you can absolutely play them sitting down in a chair. The idea you need a “holodeck room” breaks down the second you look into it all.
Not only that, but the Quest can play VR games, and it’s running a phone processor. You don’t need top of the line hardware, just enough to run a normal video game, which I’m willing to bet if you’re a pc gamer, you literally have more than enough.
I beat Alyx on a $250 headset and a laptop with an underclocked 1060. In my shitty 800 sq ft apartment’s dining room. And it was still an absolutely phenomenal experience. Was it top of the line? No. But it was still plenty playable. These days my pc is in my bedroom and I just hook it up and play in the empty space in front of my bed. You absolutely CAN sink thousands of dollars and a dedicated space into it if you really want to. But it’s hardly a requirement.
I refuse to give Facebook money and honestly if I didn’t have a WMR headset, I wouldn’t even have bothered.
People are buying entire consoles for one or two games. If folk can afford a 450 USD switch 2 for mario kart they can afford a facebook (ugh) quest for 300 bucks that regularly goes on sale.
Can EVERYONE? No. But this is a luxury hobby and plenty of discourse online is “I bought a PS5 for Demon Souls” or “I love Welcome Tour” and so forth.
Nah. Alyx was just completely ignored. Likely due to a mix of chuds not wanting to acknowledge women and… people don’t ACTUALLY care all that much about a new Half-Life. They just love meming about it.
The difference is that you don’t need an entire room to play the Switch 2 (hell, you even need a TV). It’s easier to scrape together the $500+ required for a console than it is to afford a down payment and a mortgage, or the extra rent for a two-bedroom instead of a one-bedroom apartment.
Consoles and VR are both luxury goods, but the barrier for entry with the former is much lower than with the latter.
Space will always be the most expensive peripheral of all.
Already addressed that in the other branch but:
Sitting and standing VR are both a thing and are both supported in Alyx. All you have to be able to do is rotate your chair 180 degrees away from your desk and you can play it. Hell, you can play it AT your desk but I would not recommend waving your arms in front of a monitor…
And if you can afford to walk one step away from your computer chair? Now you can do Standing VR which, honestly, I have always preferred over room scale because I can never get comfortable walking around. But moving with an analog stick (or teleporting) and then moving my body to dodge things and interact? That is the shit.
Or, to put it in Nintendo terms: If you can play Welcome Tour and the game that is totally not wheelchair basketball, you can do seated VR.
Can a stand-alone quest play Alyx?
If you plug it into a PC that meets
Then yes. Well, less plug-in and more pair these days since they do it over the network (so wifi).
And it even works on Linux (with ALVR) although Proton is shockingly finicky with Alyx but it isn’t too much tinkering.
by itself no. requires a. pc thats like entry gaming in like 2016 standards though which isn’t particularly high.
modern (e. g past like maybe 2 years) igpus could probably run it
This has more to do with the vast majority of people not owning VR headsets than it does with a new half-life game coming out
Or not having the space to do motion controls
Standing and Seated VR are both a thing that are both supported in Alyx.
To be clear: I am not saying everyone should go buy a facebook quest 3 (I would NEVER say that… even if that is usually my begrudging suggestion to anyone who wants to try VR) and that everyone needs to play Alyx.
But if the obsession over Half-Life 3 were anywhere near as big as the memes pretend they are… people spend more to play a tweaked re-release of a game they already have on a new console. We buy new GPUs when we find out our performance will be too low on fricking Dragon’s Dogma 2.
But spend 300 bucks (usually closer to 200/250 on sale) to play their “dream game” ? Oh, nah, I’m washing my hair that… five years. Uhm… oh, I don’t like the head strap. That is why I can’t play it. Yeah…
And… for those of us who really ARE Half-Life sickos? Alyx is GOOD.
Definitely agree with everything you said… Except that Souls games are Metroidvanias. Backtracking is really the only thing that most souls-likes share with Metroidvanias. Unlocking gameplay abilities that also function as environmental keys is the main defining feature of Metroidvanias IMO.
Alyx honestly lived up to the hype. The only things that bugged me were that enemies were too slow (the fast zombie was removed entirely) and certain objects like coats weren’t able to be picked up like they could in Boneworks. I wanted to throw a coat over zombies and beat them like a pinata with a crowbar. :)
I saw some article mention that there has not been a Half-Life game in ages… completely forgetting about Alyx.
I’m just hoping for some good games moving forward that aren’t trying to milk us for everything we have with slop we don’t want.
… There is plenty of that?
The thing to understand is that influencers pretty much always fall back to the “us vs them” mentality. We could see it with early youtube where they accused magazines/websites of all being corrupt and getting paid for reviews (never forget Jon “It’s about ethics in games journalism” Bain…). And we saw it in twitch when they instead said it was the youtubers and their sponsor deals who were doing the same. And we saw a huge rise in “I need to watch tiktok because that informs me about things that mainstream outlets don’t want me to hear!”
Some outlets go political. Most are aggressively “apolitical” and all that entails. But that means that “the game devs are trying to screw you over” is a solid talking point. It is why everyone and their mother needs to say they hate live service games (with the added bonus of avoiding any chance of having a regular game they arer expected to stream) and so forth.
But if you actually PLAY games? It is still a golden age where basically every sicko gets their fetish in game form (and Microprose and Kitfox are apparently the sleazy club I slink off to…). We are in for a pretty bad drought after the past two years or so of funding drying up and studios being gutted. But if you actually are looking you are gonna find a LOT of games that know what you want.
I’ll also add on that “game devs want to ruin gaming” is a great excuse to play “retro” games. Which drastically reduce operating costs for the part timers because… even IF they are showing you their console and cartridge, you can bet your bottom dollar they are running an emulator with a game they grabbed from their local internet library.
I would love to play it but VR market hardware is loaded with compromises and it’s not mature enough for me yet.