Recent reviews by Chris 💞

Sometimes you can tell a creator decided to be uncompromising in their vision and create exactly what they intended, and it's fantastic to see it land.

This is a lovely blend of unique, interesting visual identity, a style of FPS that regrettably seldom gets made these days (linear, narrative-driven, singleplayer), and a great suite of mechanics and gameplay that not only stands on its own, but also pays homage to a variety of greats. Runs well, has good performance options if needed, and demonstrates a lot of potential. Excited to see what this team cooks up for the rest of it!

This is a very pretty, ball-based puzzler, so it's accurately described as pretty baller! Fantastic environments, great spatial puzzles, leverages cool engine tech, and has great vibes.

With confidence, the best third-person shooter out there. An improvement over the original in nearly every way, from formula, to narrative, pacing, level design, art, sound, the list goes on. An outstanding refinement of an already outstanding game.

Short and sweet campaign, simple but satisfying gameplay, well-written and acted dialogue and very pretty environments. There's some general less-polished areas, but nothing unreasonable or deal-breaking, especially for a game of this scale and graphical fidelity coming from such a tiny indie team. High marks!

A lot of older games, despite their legacy and being groundbreaking at the time, aren't very palatable these days because we're so used to the landscape they founded. Quake on the other hand is still a fast, snappy shooter that feels incredibly satisfying to play. The remaster especially helps with this, bringing some more modern options for a tasteful touch up without butchering the experience. Solid stuff.

Half-Life: Alyx is simultaneously the greatest love letter and most genuine apology to the fanbase that Valve could ever offer. The game knows its context within the real world. It knows what people want and expect, and turns it up to 11 in every way. It knows what the title Half-Life carries and respects that enough to not squander it. This isn't an IP revisit to keep you interested in a tech demo. The level of detail and care put into every interaction, environment, story beat and technical component is so well thought out, it truly earns its place in the Half-Life franchise.

It knows it wants to sell you on VR, so it's incredibly compatible and physically accessible. Seriously this game works on cheapo VR kits and has a mode for if you happen to only have one arm. You don't have an excuse, you gotta play it. It's also one of the few shooters that respects that it might be someone's first VR game, so there's plenty of customizable options and the game gives you whatever time you need to get your bearings.

Personally, the mood to take a break from a VR game hits after an hour or two. Even during the top ones that I enjoy a LOT. I played HL:A for 8 hours straight. I only paused because my controller died. Now that I've beaten the game (which genuinely prompted the shedding of one (1) tear), I've already begun a second playthrough.

I obviously went into this game excited, and I expected it to be one of if not the most polished VR experience. I didn't expect to be as absolutely floored as I am. I expected nothing more than a hopefully fun VR game with the biggest graphical budget and some HL/HL2 nostalgia. I didn't expect a game that genuinely reminds me why I fell in love with Half-Life, and why Valve is legendary. Friggin' Bravo, Valve, I didn't think you could live up to this series's history after all these years. You dug yourselves a hole I never thought you could get out of. But you fixed everything and I'm truly amazed.

Even in its early, buggy state, it's a heck of a lot of fun. The controls feel very convincing and intuitive, even though there's a tad bit of a learning curve, and aiming/shooting feels fantastic. I find myself playing other shooters, missing this game's gunplay. Usually I'd list any drawbacks, but pretty much any gripes I'd have at this point seem to be an obvious byproduct of Early Access incompletion.

First and foremost, I want to be fair in that this review is based off a Beta build. I've played two separate ones, a year apart. However, Beta being a near-complete state, I doubt too much will change in the final release.

Unfortunately, some very pretty level design is this game's only real saving grace. And that's all the level design truly is: Pretty. It doesn't play particularly well, objectives or purpose is pretty much never conveyed and some obstacles aren't obviously obstacles until you figure it out by accident. For example, you may not know you need to go through X door until you stumble across Y button, and later realize X door is open. Not to mention an instance where a once-closed and locked door opens for literally no logical reason. Or perhaps you didn't know you needed to pick up a key that looks like plain decoration. There's lots of this type of stuff throughout and it's incredibly annoying.

A big facet of level design is to use some cues, either obvious or subtle to nudge the player - often subconsciously - in the right direction. That never happens here. You're essentially left to your own devices and end up simply walking into areas you haven't already walked to and hope you end up somewhere new, or something happens. Even things that should be easy to get right, such as whether a door is locked or even usable or not also follow no obvious standards. A usually unusable object is now usable with no indication, an invisible wall on obviously surmountable objects, that sort of thing. There's a segment where there's lots of hallways blocked by closed fences with buttons that are unusable. All except for one, which you can only really figure out by accident.

Asset quality ranges from high-quality, to low-quality, to outright stolen. Some models and textures were clearly made by a very competent designer, others either horrendously rushed or placed in the hands of a beginner. With that in mind, I'm very conflicted on game's visuals. On the one hand, a lot of the maps are pretty nice to look at, but it's hard to see passed the overblown lens flares and insanely opaque explosion and smoke/dust particles. Firefights are hell because you can't see anything.

Additionally, some rooms don't look detailed so much as dirtied. It seems every ceiling is covered in dirt, every floor is ridiculously broken and papers are everywhere. There's a line between "catastrophically destroyed" and "just slap dirt wherever there isn't some," and this game crosses it quite a stretch back.

Sound design feels like an afterthought. As does music, which is usually unfitting or badly timed. Soundscapes are basic, but at least present.

Big points for Xenian enemies brought back from Half-Life 1 era games, but I have to take some of them away considering they were never used in ways they should have been. It seems the enemies weren't placed in spots where their behavior is complemented by the environment, they were just placed at random. Obstacles slapped into environments at random as an afterthought. A lot of the enemy placement is strange like this. Throwing them a bone, they did use zombie torsos in small crawlspaces which in my opinion is a good placement, but you start to wonder why there are so many half zombies. How did they get there? Why are they in half? How come every single area with a few feet of vertical height has half a dozen zombie torsos?

Story is non-existent. Any information about anything comes from prior knowledge of Half-Life games. You're just wandering and killing things trying to kill you. I can count all of the friendly NPCs in the game on one hand and none of them have anything to say.

Overall, some ideas were nice and I can appreciate the projects scale and ambition. I'm a sucker for total conversions. Buuut it's hard to have fun amidst the level design frustration and big issues with visuals. I understand the team put a lot of effort into the game, and I hate to dock points with that in mind, but it's just a very conflicting, frustrating experience. The game's worth a play if you want to look at something nice for an hour or two, but don't expect to really enjoy playing.

An incredibly well-written and emotionally gripping game with a focus on its superbly acted, engaging characters and a roller coaster of a mystery plot. Wrapped together with interesting game mechanics, a hand-painted art style and a great soundtrack, the game has a unique charm. One of the few games I without hesitation can give a 10/10.