I am on chapter 6, like 7-8 hours in and it's been great but clearly a step back from Half life 2. I have been with VR from the beginning, I know it has to be slower. I know you have to introduce mechanics and let players get used to them longer. I know combat has to be slowed down. And I know that moments where you are on the floor shooting over imaginary cover and doing cool things you could never do with a normal controller is magical.
That said level and encounter design is still measured the same and while this has great level design the enemy encounters are lacking. Most of the time the game is a series of rooms with 2 or 3 enemies that don't pose much of any threat. Enemies slowly telegraph every attack, the wind up for a headcrab is like 4 seconds, you just slowly side step and that's it. Gun fights are intense but so far it's been like 3 regular guys and a heavy or two and that's it.
Now they do mix things up in the way some of these battles take place like being trapped in a room with a heavy shooting at you from above. A hotel window being shot out by enemies on a far off balcony. And some really creative headcrab sections, all that is good but the intensity is still low when compared to the rest of HL.
Also I am shocked at how the puzzles have forgone the physics and instead are all weird hologram puzzles that don't really fit into the world. HL2 was a physics showcase and you had to manipulate objects to create weights, pullies, all sorts of natural solutions to environmental puzzles. Here you can pick up and move almost any object and it's all for nothing, very little in the way of any environmental puzzles, you can't use things as makeshift weapons, it's all stuff to rummage through for ammo or resin.
I know the final parts of this game are supposed to be insane and everything I am asking for but why is it only for the very end, why can't the whole game be like that? It's still great but there is a whole segment of people that criticize VR games because the games don't match up to a "regular" game. It can't be as fast, the action can't be as good, corners are cut. Alyx could have been the game to refute all that but it kind of reinforces that. So yes I enjoy it a lot but so far it's no HL2, I don't even think it's that close.
