Half-Life: Alyx Still Hasn’t Been Topped As VR’s Most Exciting Game, 5 Years Later

The wait for Half-Life 3 has been so long that it borders on farce. Was it ever going to be a game at all? Was Half-Life 2 just a dream? While the wait for Half-Life to become an actual trilogy continues, that doesn’t mean that the series has been totally abandoned. It’s not the most accessible game for all players, but the most recent Half-Life release is one of the best parts of the series and one of the best games on its entire platform.

Virtual reality is a hard sell. You need to buy an expensive headset to use it, and it’s not particularly comfortable to have a helmet strapped to your head with two tiny screens just inches from your eyes. But a bigger problem might be its perception. To the non-VR-playing public, virtual reality can look like a gimmick meant to dazzle players rather than give them experiences as satisfying as what they might get in traditional games. That perception is changing somewhat as VR matures, and one of the biggest arguments against it is Half-Life: Alyx.

Released on March 23, 2020, Half-Life: Alyx is a prequel to 2004’s Half-Life 2, starring that game’s most important NPC, Alyx Vance. The game takes place in Half-Life 2’s setting of City 17, which has been turned into a totalitarian stronghold of the Combine, the invading alien force from the second game. It follows Alyx’s attempts to destroy a terrifying new Combine weapon and ending up both setting the stage for Half-Life 2, and resolving a cliffhanger that had been left dangling since 2007’s Half-Life 2: Episode 2.

“We absolutely see Half-Life: Alyx as our return to this world, not the end of it.”

More than any single plot thread, what’s notable about Half-Life: Alyx’s story is how it expands what had been done before in the series. The crowbar-toting scientist Gordon Freedman is still the face of the series, but Half-Life: Alyx puts the spotlight on the rest of an organized resistance against the Combine, with Alyx as its avatar. It seemed at the time that it could be opening the door to even more stories in the games’ universe, which developer Robin Valentine told Game Informer after its release, saying “We absolutely see Half-Life: Alyx as our return to this world, not the end of it.”

That, of course, has not come to pass yet. Five years after Half-Life: Alyx, any continuation for the series seems as distant as ever, despite rumors and supposed leaks popping up regularly to suggest that work is still underway on Half-Life 3.

While fans may be disappointed that it wasn’t followed by a sequel, Half-Life: Alyx was a spectacularly well-regarded game. Reviews at the time were glowing, and while some of that excitement was over a new chapter in the Half-Life story, it had more to do with how the game uses VR. Simply put, Half-Life: Alyx is still one of the best uses of VR in games. A first-person shooter may not be the most original concept to be translated to VR, but the magic of the game lies in just how well it realizes its world.

Simply put, Half-Life: Alyx is still one of the best uses of VR in games.

“Immersion” is a near-meaningless buzzword in games, and in VR in particular, but Half-Life: Alyx shows that it has real power, too. Yes, the game’s combat makes fantastic use of VR and the decision to let players teleport short distances instead of moving step by step helps to relieve the motion sickness that sometimes plagues VR players. But it’s smaller details that make Half-Life: Alyx such a great case for VR. At any time, players can use the hand not currently gripping a weapon to pick up items in the environment, push aside debris, and otherwise interact with the virtual world in a way that’s just not possible without VR. If you can ignore the alien soldiers firing rifles in your direction, just existing in the world of Half-Life: Alyx is a joyful experience just for the sheer technical power of its simulation.

Just as Half-Life: Alyx didn’t usher in a new wave of Half-Life sequels, it wasn’t enough to prove that VR is worth investing in either. Sony has now released and quickly abandoned two different PlayStation VR headsets, and few companies are eager to compete with the likes of Meta to make VR platforms of their own. It’s still an incredible niche side of gaming, and a success on the scale of Half-Life: Alyx has yet to be found. As satisfying as it would be for a VR renaissance or Half-LIfe 3 to follow it, the fact that that hasn’t happened doesn’t detract a bit from the game itself. If it’s destined to be the grand finale for Half-Life and the peak of VR for mainstream players, Half-Life: Alyx’s place in gaming history is well deserved.