A lifetime ago, I ranted from the heart about how I got some closure in regards to Half Life when Marc Laidlaw, the lead writer for the Half Life series, quit Valve and later put up a blogpost that distilled his ideas for the Half Life 3: Episode 3 sequel we never got.
A continuation of the Half Life series was simply the game I most looked forward to for literally over a decade... even though as the literal years rolled by, it looked like it'd be vaporware. Obviously I would've been all over any Half Life sequel though... like I said... back in 2017... I got a fair bit of closure on the whole plot after Laidlaw leaked out his thoughts on it and I figured... oh... Half Life is probably dead. Ah well... that sucks.
I moved on.
Then of course... a few months ago Valve announces
Half Life: Alyx and I'm pretty much... ambivalent to it. I would've probably bought it early even though it's a prequel if it wasn't a VR port... and I'm sure it would be a well made game at the time, but any desire for another Half Life property was pretty muted by that point, especially if it wouldn't be a sequel.
But the fact that it was going to be VR only just got an eyeroll from me. I know that VR is the probable future, but it's not something that interests me now. First Person Shooters in general aren't exactly the game genre I'm into anymore (I've spent far too much time playing RPG's and strategy games now) and the idea of purchasing a janky and expensive VR system just to play a Half Life prequel that is fleshing out a story (which I'm sure will be great and fanservicey) that's already happened isn't something I was terribly interested in.
In my humble opinion I think Valve is pretty lame for releasing a Half Life game (a prequel no less) which I'm sure they put a lot of Triple AAA effort into developing right and just use it as a marketing ploy to push the apparent VR revolution and Steam's new VR glove system or whatever it is. Fuck that...
I'll just watch a lets play of that slow paced, awkward VR game action.
Maybe a few months/years down the line I'll get an Oculus Quest or whatever and give it a whirl, perhaps during a
Steam sale... right now... just not excited. And from how soft the landing seemed to be... I don't think there's actually that many people who were excited about the release. I've heard more interested word of mouth over
Animal Crossing and
Doom: Eternal and even the
Resident Evil 3 remake.
Guess I'm not a true fan or whatever... but having seen a few episodes of a playthrough of the game... it certainly looks neat and is probably pretty cool in a VR system. Just doesn't inspire or interest me enough to get excited enough to drop a few hundred dollars on their well crafted cash grab.
Definitely a more successful cash grab then
Artifact it seems.