Half-Life: Alyx review round-up: critics hail ‘a tremendous VR experience’

Half-Life: Alyx review round-up

• VGC (5/5) – “Alyx is truly an exceptional experience, and… not only do fans finally have their new Half-Life, but VR has its killer app.”
• Edge (9/10) – “The freedom of movement opens up so much of what makes Half-Life: Alyx great, letting you duck and dive and occasionally lose all sense of your position in the real world.”
• Eurogamer (Recommended) – “The more I played of Alyx, the more I thought about how VR and Half-Life were made for each other.”
• GameSpot (9/10) – “Half-Life: Alyx is a tremendous VR experience that captures and elevates what makes the series special.”
• IGN (10/10) – “Half-Life: Alyx has set a new bar for VR in interactivity, detail, and level design, showing what can happen when a world-class developer goes all-in on the new frontier of technology.”
• Game Informer (9/10) – “If you were waiting for a killer app before you made the investment into virtual reality, this is it.”
• PC Gamer (92/100) – “Valve has created both a great VR game, and another great Half-Life game.”
• PCGamesN (9/10) – “Confidently serves as both a vindication for the magic VR can bring to gaming, and a satisfying new entry in the beloved Half-Life series.”
• USgamer (4.5/5) – “There are some small flaws that are no more annoying than over-long sewer odysseys or having to crouch jump were in past games, and its spectacle hits the hardest of any in the series. It sets Half-Life up for a compelling future—here’s hoping we see it.”
• ShackNews (9/10) – “Valve has showcased a clear way for developers to create a high quality AAA experience built for VR that still hits all the marks of a traditional PC game.”
• Trusted Reviews (4.5/5) – “Valve has surpassed impossible expectations with Half-Life: Alyx, bringing a series long thought buried back into the limelight with extraordinary impact.”
• Destructoid (9/10) – “As I took off my headset for the last time, I found myself thinking Valve can’t keep us waiting another decade-plus between games. Half-Life: Alyx reinvigorated my love for Half-Life. We can only hope it similarly reinvigorated Valve.”
• VentureBeat (80/100) – “Alyx doesn’t quite have the variety or charm of Half-Life 2 or other Valve masterpieces like Portal 2.”
• VG247 (5/5) – “You’d be forgiven for thinking Half-Life: Alyx isn’t a proper Half-Life game. This is a prequel for one thing, exclusive to VR – surely its place in the story and its limited audience mean this is something you can skip over. It is not. Alyx isn’t only an essential experience, it’s a key piece of the Half-Life story.”
• Vice (no score) – “For a while now, we’ve wondered “What it would be like for Valve to make games again?” If Alyx is indicative of future performance, unforeseen consequences be damned, we should all be excited about what’s to come. I just hope more people get a chance to experience it.”
• Rock Paper Shotgun (no score) – “I hope I don’t have to wait for brain-computer interfaces to exist before the series returns again, because despite a handful of complaints, I still think Valve make the best first-person shooters around.”
• Upload VR (5/5) – “It is as essential a VR game as you’ll find in 2020, but perhaps the most exciting thing about it is the message is that the best is yet to come.”
• Kotaku (no score) – “Half-Life: Alyx reaches some astoundingly high heights while also managing to be both too ambitious and too conservative for its own good.”
• PC World (4.5/5) – “It’s “only” A Very Good Game—and isn’t that exactly why Valve waited so long to make a new Half-Life? Because no game could truly live up to the second-coming rhetoric surrounding the series?”
• DualShockers (10/10) – “It’s been a long 13 years, and yes, it may not be Half-Life 3, but I can assure you that Half-Life: Alyx is entirely worth the wait and is an experience worth seeing for yourself, if only to find out what comes next.”