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Edge #344 Review Scores - Half Life: Alyx, Dreams, Animal Crossing: New Horizons and more...

Mobu

Mobu

One Winged Slayer
The Fallen
Oct 28, 2017
5,932
Thats dissapointing for Alyx, guess im dropping my pre order..
 
thirtypercent

thirtypercent

Member
Oct 18, 2018
680
Monday. Preload done. All those cute Alyx bits and byte on my drive. Love every single one of you.

And good to see Hunt slowly but steadily growing, getting recognized, yet still far too many people out there who dismiss it as nothing special instead of taking a closer look.

Also I hope the same happens with Dreams, as far as I can tell it didn't set the charts on fire and few people pay any attention, needs a bigger audience that is more into that sort of stuff. And yeah, with that I mean a PC version sooner than later.
 

Deleted member 2254

user requested account closure
Banned
Oct 25, 2017
21,467
Surprised by the Hunt score. Last time I played it was a janky mess, and I didn't feel that the concept underneath was THAT good to warrant waiting months/years for it to come together. Guess I'll give it another shot.
 

Deleted member 21996

User requested account closure
Banned
Oct 28, 2017
802
Hunt review is going to do wonders for the game, delighted for Crytek. No excuse for people to sleep on it now.
 
Acquiescence

Acquiescence

Banned
Oct 26, 2017
10,257
Lake Titicaca
HueyFreeman said:
this is IMO the weirdest review score I've ever seen from Edge. LBP3 is a shadow of the prior two.
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Absolutely. I love the first two LBPs, but 3 was broken at launch. For instance, I never even got a single opportunity to play a level in co-op because the netcode was borked beyond belief. Not to mention the progression-hindering bugs I encountered in the single player campaign. And the game was ridiculously short.

9 out of 10 my arse.
 
Akronis

Akronis

Prophet of Regret - Lizard Daddy
Member
Oct 25, 2017
5,452
EatChildren said:
Hunt Showdown is masterful, glad to see it score high. Completely original gameplay loop that provides some of the most authentically emergent and tense PvP you'll find in a multiplayer game. Also probably the best sounding game out there right now..
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This 100%.

I really really really hope they have a spinoff that is focused on PvE, I would love a coop experience with the same level of polish and gameplay alongside the setting
 
wafflebrain

wafflebrain

Member
Oct 27, 2017
10,254
Nice to hear about exploration being an emphasis in Alyx, one thing I've been a bit worried on is if the environments would feel too boxed in and linear for the sake of room scale VR. Glad to hear that isn't the case.
 
Don Dada

Don Dada

Member
Oct 27, 2017
1,093
Someone on Reddit posted the subscriber cover. Looks great.

gcMXc7t.jpg


M4ctMY5.jpg
 
Wok

Wok

Avenger
Oct 26, 2017
3,258
France
Skittles said:
Any excerpts for alyx?
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Every Half-Life game has had its defining tool. Half-Life: Alyx has the Gravity Gloves. Here is what the Gloves actually do: they extend out the range of your arms in VR, enabling you to reach any item you can see. So the Gloves don't revolutionise interactivity in quite the way their forebears did — they're arguably more solution than invention. But that's all in service of the larger leap in interaction, as Alyx removes the keyboard-and-mouse-shaped barrier between you and Half-Life's world, and lets you get your hands dirty. The hole the Gravity Gun was patching over, we start to realise, was that tapping E to grab a crate and hold it in your hands never quite felt satisfying — so instead HL2 gave you a superpower, the ability to blast objects around as if they were weightless. Alyx goes the other way: you don't need to fling objects because, not only can you pick them up and hold them, you can sweep them aside dramatically or prod with one outstretched finger to see if it'll cause them to topple. These are the nuances of motion Alyx is interested in — letting you express yourself in the way you open a door or handle a rag-dolled body. Every action comes with added physicality.
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The action has a very different rhythm to what you're likely used to as Gordon Freeman. Cover is a much bigger factor, and — if you use the default teleport-based movement system — evasion is a matter of blinking instantly from spot to spot rather than strafing and back-pedalling. In every other way, though, this is unmistakably a Half-Life game.
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By the time head-crabs start launching themselves at your face, you should be proficient enough to pick them out of the air, or at least know how to sidestep. Not that this makes encountering them for the first time any less horrifying. Head-crabs are, after all, essentially a fleshy VR headset so the threat of them enveloping your skull is uncomfortably real. VR is great at scares, and Alyx, frequently dials up the horror elements, a couple of sections that are seemingly waiting to be branded 'the new Ravenholm'.
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Like the other Half-Life games before it, the campaign is built out of this kind of set-piece, each introducing a new spin on the formula then riffling on it for half an hour, before dropping it entirely and moving onto the next idea. The whole thing is strung together into a story, but for the most part it just feels like an excuse to move you between set-pieces.
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This is, by far, the chattiest Half-Life game you've ever played. Unlike her predecessor, Alyx Vance is a far from silent protagonist, and she has almost constant company from a voice in her ear — provided by Russell, a would-be Black Mesa scientist and inventor of the Gravity Gloves. There's a large helping of Portal in Alyx's script — no surprise, given the game shares two-thirds of its writing staff with Portal 2. Russell, played by Rhys 'Murray from Flight Of The Conchords' Darby, recalls Stephen Merchant's role as Wheatley in that game.
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For a shooter, the pacing is relatively contemplative, with gunfights portioned out sparingly. It's a long while before you go head-to-head with your first Combine soldier. But once those battles do arrive, they're some of the most thrilling we've ever experienced. What the game asks of you might be fairly standard shooter stuff, but the act of playing it out with your own hands lends it a fresh magic. The Gloves aren't the new crowbar or Gravity Gun, the defining tool of Half-Life: Alyx. Your own hands are.
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Provided you are able to play the game at room-scale, it's clearly the best option. 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. And with that in mind, here's the ugly truth: your enjoyment of this game is going to be directly proportional to the amount of space you have to play it in. With VR, physical space becomes an extra system requirement to take into consideration — and even those of us who find the allure of Alyx enough to drop a grand on an Index are unlikely to also shell out for a new living room. And even that might not be enough. We play in optimal conditions — a spacious room, all but cleared of obstacles — and still frequently find ourselves brushing up against the translucent boundary wall in-game.
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The simple fact of simultaneously existing in two overlapping spaces means you're playing not just playing the game itself but often a second metagame, as you try to reason where you are outside of the headset and whether you're about to bump into something. Occasionally, even with the presence of that gridded wall, we manage to let go of that second layer. The game envelops us entirely, and it's a magical moment - until we bump shin-first into a chair, or punch a wall. Honestly, the experience of playing Alyx is worth these minor battle scars, but VR more broadly? We're not sure whether it ever will be.
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sleepnaught

sleepnaught

Banned
Oct 26, 2017
4,538
Have to admit, little disappointed to hear there's very few actual combine soldiers encounters. I really hope the Xen creatures fill the void. I have little desire to pick up objects and oooh and ahhhh over them, I did that in Boneworks and grew tired of it. I was hoping for a fair amount of Half-life action, but in VR. If we don't get that, I'm going to be sorely disappointed.

Also, Edge saying your enjoyment of the game is directly related to the amount of space you have is worrying. I have a 6x6 space, which isn't a lot. Hope they're wrong on that.
 
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plagiarize

plagiarize

It's not a loop. It's a spiral.
Moderator
Oct 25, 2017
27,569
Cape Cod, MA
At least video games have showed up in number and in quality right when we needed them to. I remember just a few weeks back, everyone thought this month and next month were too crowded and were wondering when we'd find time to play all these games.

It's only a silver lining, I know, but what a glut of riches we've got right now.
 
Charamiwa

Charamiwa

Member
Oct 25, 2017
6,059
In the magazine they say Alyx is the best VR experience ever (they mentioned Tetris Effect also bbut they consider that one just as good flat so not as essentially VR).
 
StraySheep

StraySheep

Member
Oct 26, 2017
8,294
Just a reminder for people who click this thread just to see the numbers: consider subscribing. The magazine is great.
 
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