It is not a tech demo. This piece of interactive software defines a whole style of VR gaming. HL:Alyx is a story driven VRFPS survival 'horror' game, where you play as a character named Alyx living in some Russian town controlled by Combine. Duhh.

The world is impressive and immersive as it gets. The amount of environmental detail encapsulates you and brings you in to the game with all the interactions, which are plenty, natural, and takes advantage of VR well. You get to hold and fiddle around with pretty much everything you find lying around you. Sound design is beautiful. It keeps you from rushing place to place due to the thrill it induces on you with all the weird sounds and noises you hear as you walk around. You can even hear Alyx's clothing as you move, crouch, and manipulate objects. Did I mention it is a fully physics-based game? TL;DR, when you press your hands against an object, they do not go through it. Animations says your hands pressing against a wall or holding an object. You can feel the vibration motor going on your controllers, reinforcing the visuals with touchy feedback. You can feel the beat of an electric monsters’ heart in a complex way as you hold it. Combined this all in a masterful way and you become the MC of the claustrophobic, thrilling world of Alyx.

Yes, you. You’re the one experiencing all that, diving into all that action, instead of some virtual character you remote control with KB/M. Ever got angry to your character in a flat game because they cannot do some action to progress the game? Not with this one. Magic of VR, I suppose.

The progression is made in a way that it never gets old or boring. When I think there cannot be more this game can offer in terms of tools and novelty, it just offers more and more whilst rising the intensity of action along with it. Story is well written and unveils at just the right pace. It does not feel rushed or too slow. Cutscenes does not disconnect you out of your character but limits you in a place where you get to enjoy the spectacle, or the small talk. The jokes are screaming Valve. I mean, who the hell thought about the zombie x toilet joke?

Combat? Ahh, yes good ole’ combat. You have a gun, you aim, and fire. Easy. Three guns (pistol, shotgun, and submachine gun), limited ammo that you have to scavenge for, and you. You have you to do the aiming and firing thingy and all the other actions mentioned here and there. Do you think you suck at aiming with a mouse or stick? Try aiming yourself. Remember combine has guns too and they can shoot as well as you can, may be even better. Duck and try not to die. Zombies and other crap usually get you in tight spaces, so don’t you dare underestimating them. NO CQC, Valve i’m looking at you, you cannot take the sweet sweet nailing hammer resting right next to you and nail some heads to the squeaky wooden floor unfortunately. Make your bullets count.

There’s a touch of crafting. You collect resin and use it to upgrade your weapons with new attachments. Most of the writings I noticed in game were in Russian. I knew how to read the alphabet, but Я не понимаю Русский. If you can’t play horror games or thrillers, don’t worry you’ll do fine. There are no jump scares or stupid “hurr durr horror” kinda stuff. Make sure you have a nice large play space. It was a huge problem for me, because I keep finding myself so immersed that my brain wanted to walk up to stuff to interact with them. I ran into my PC, a vase full of water that I hit while trying to throw a consumable object to free my hand and drowned my PC with water, and also I almost had my bookshelf become a blanket for me. Thank you Valve for Alyx and your contribution to VR. Now you, the reader, quit reading this mess of a review and play the darn game.