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[Explosive Zombie]

I'm all about hardcore games with a bunch of enemies onscreen, super fast paced PC games,. I used to play unreal tournament, and Quake 3, but Alyx is its own animal. It's just damn good. The combat interactions are intense and intimate in a way I haven't experienced in gaming. It's next level in practice.

"This still highlights the limitations in Dark Souls, everything is very slow, there's only so many enemies at a time."

This is how weak that argument is.

I'm not making an argument against Alyx as a game but the idea that it's a representative of what next gen is.

 

[Wonko_C]

This still highlights the limitations, everything is very slow, there's only so many enemies at a time.

This is due to game design decisions, not the fault of VR. Serious Sam is playable in VR with motion controllers and it isn't dumbed down at all.

The style of Alyx seems to be more akin to Resident Evil 7 (or even the remakes of 2/3) with deliberate pacing and a small but threatening enemy count. And nobody complained about that game being slow even in TV mode.

 

[Resenge]

I'm not making an argument against Alyx as a game but the idea that it's a representative of what next gen is.

OK, I understand. I am not oppose to your idea that Alyx is not next gen, I just feel that slow gameplay and less enemies does not highlight limitations as a design choice. Did Half life as a whole ever have many enemies coming at you? I will admit I wished there was more combat but I loved what was there.

 

[Romulus]

I'm not making an argument against Alyx as a game but the idea that it's a representative of what next gen is.

I get it, but I just don't see enemies onscreen and fast gameplay as indicative of next gen either.

 

[Explosive Zombie]

I get it, but I just don't see enemies onscreen and fast gameplay as indicative of next gen either.

This is all getting kind of bogged down in semantics, we're pretty well aware of what the limitations of VR are.

 

[Romulus]

This is all getting kind of bogged down in semantics, we're pretty well aware of what the limitations of VR are.

Not starting an argument, but what are they? I've played some brutally fast games with lots of enemies onscreen in VR.

 

[Matt_Fox]

It may seem a bit unfair on PC gaming but the definition of video game generations is console based, and so sorry to say Half Life: Alyx is not our very first Ninth Gen title. It just isn't.

The Ninth Gen will start with the release of either the XSX or PS5, whichever comes first.

 

[Explosive Zombie]

Not starting an argument, but what are they? I've played some brutally fast games with lots of enemies onscreen in VR.

Yes and those games usually have very low quality visuals to handle it without the framerate falling apart.

 

[Gavin Stevens]

I have a Rift S, played the game maxed out without dropping a beat on ultra, of course with walk and not teleport. Because I’m not a bitch.

Damn thing was like no other experience. Absolutely incredible game that really is worth the price of VR alone. That tease at the end left me with proper blue balls mind you.

The videos of the game don’t do it justice at all.

 

[Romulus]

Yes and those games usually have very low quality visuals to handle it without the framerate falling apart.

So visuals? I just don't have that problem with any game I've tried in a long time. Great visuals, high settings and I'm not even running a super built PC. Maybe 3 years ago VR games were like that, not now. I think optimization has come a long way.

 

[Explosive Zombie]

So visuals? I just don't have that problem with any game I've tried in a long time. Great visuals, high settings and I'm not even running a super built PC. Maybe 3 years ago VR games were like that, not now. I think optimization has come a long way.

Framerate is arguably more important in VR than a regular game, the performance sacrifices some games make to do new things visually or otherwise don't translate to VR, it's too easy to make the player sick without a stable framerate. This is why games that are faster with more enemies than Alyx don't look as good as Alyx does. You might get "great" visuals but we're arguing next gen, next gen has a lot of meanings but it's hard to deny the visual component.

 

[Romulus]

Framerate is arguably more important in VR than a regular game, the performance sacrifices some games make to do new things visually or otherwise don't translate to VR, it's too easy to make the player sick without a stable framerate. This is why games that are faster with more enemies than Alyx don't look as good as Alyx does. You might get "great" visuals but we're arguing next gen, next gen has a lot of meanings but it's hard to deny the visual component.

I honestly think Alyx's less enemies onscreen is more design than "we can't do more enemies or the fps will crash." I mean even then with my middling PC I feel like I have a ton of headroom with more enemies etc, its just not that type of game.

 

[Balducci30]

I honestly agree completely. It’s the only game in a VERY long time that felt like a new experience. (And yes I played boneworks and the rest - Alyx is far and away better)

 

[SketchyGamerMan]

Well I've had a lot of fun with other VR experiences although many aren't technically games. I 100% agree that majority of the gaming industry is going in the wrong direction. Not to say that flat gaming won't have its place, but VR is clearly the next step for gaming. The obsession with graphic fidelity should have ended with the PS3 because improvements aren't as obvious anymore. Like Nintendo, gaming companies should be innovating on HOW we play games. There's been minimal thought put into it, but now that we have VR it should be obvious where things are heading.

 

[Romulus]

Well I've had a lot of fun with other VR experiences although many aren't technically games. I 100% agree that majority of the gaming industry is going in the wrong direction. Not to say that flat gaming won't have its place, but VR is clearly the next step for gaming. The obsession with graphic fidelity should have ended with the PS3 because the next generation never wowed me on the same level after that in terms of graphics (art style is another thing).

Agreed 100%. Since 2010, everything since feels like a shinier version of those old games. I think that's why remasters sit so well because we haven't really progressed.

I almost stopped gaming until I randomly tried high end VR. It was a holy shit moment.

 

[lastmessiah]

It may seem a bit unfair on PC gaming but the definition of video game generations is console based, and so sorry to say Half Life: Alyx is not our very first Ninth Gen title. It just isn't.

The Ninth Gen will start with the release of either the XSX or PS5, whichever comes first.

lol no.

 

[Matt_Fox]

lol no.

Um... yes?

Home video game console - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[Droxcy]

I was always a hater of VR until I tried a cheap little version of it. Then the thought of a really high end verison boggles my mind and now I want a Linus setup.

 

[lastmessiah]

Um... yes?

Home video game console - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

This thread is about next-gen experiences, not just figures of speech to describe consoles with updated components. HL: Alyx is already leaps and bounds ahead of anything possible on the current PS and XBOX so it is silly to disqualify it from being next-gen based on some arbitrary metric.

 

[Deleted member 17706]

Alyx was definitely the most interesting and fresh experience I've had this year in gaming.

 

[Tesseract]

i agree, nothing will top it for some time

now is a great time to jump back into the source sdk, the new hammer editor is excellent

 

[Spukc]

yeah after meeting jeff i am pretty sure it will take a while

 

[Romulus]

3 years ago I would have thought reading the replies in this thread were paid VR trolls. lol It really is fucking awesome though, and I think flight and racing sims are unplayable without VR now.

 

[Shai-Tan]

The CPU the new consoles should enable more ambitious design. For example, Battlefield scaled back its destruction to fit within weak Jaguar cpu limits on current gen consoles. But we will never arrive at "next gen" if you're going to expect something fundamentally different. Alyx takes advantage of some of what's good about VR but fundamentally it's just another shooter with object interactions auto aimed to bespoke grips that don't go far beyond "hold this up to your face and look at it". We can get a more ambitious simulation of worlds but at the end of the day you cant put a universe in a bottle so we get games that can fit in the scope of a game and dress it up with predetermined events and story.

Even devs with absurd amounts of resources like Rockstar arent going to be able to fill the world with more than a pastiche of life. It would be cool if someone tried to make an more elaborate NPC life imagined way back in e,g. Ultima but at the end of the day it's like watching a tram ride on rails pass by, There's a lot of hang wringing in press about why games are all shooting but it's an obvious consequence of other verbs requiring a complexity in the world that can't be delivered. The same follows for physics. It can be made look like it is more real but there's no really fundamental physics driving it. To this day the best water I've seen in games is fake physics in Bioshock 1 and it will be a long while before we can even get somewhere close to that with simplified Havoc type physics with style-transfer on top of it to imitate more complex simulations.

 

[Croatoan]

Gameplay wise, beyond the instant streaming thanks to SSD, and major improvements in AI, I don't see where we can go that's a tangible improvement. It takes a lot of imagination and brainstorming to come up with fresh gameplay in each genre. Graphics on the other hand still has a loooong way to go before its there, and is easy to improve.

If we can ever get real life physics/fluid/soft body destruction simulation then that would really open a lot of new game play ideas.

We are basically still using physics and animation techniques from the late 360/ps3 days in most titles.

I am excited for what UE5 brings though. The fact you can sculpt environments in zbrush and basically bring them in with no real need for normal maps or decimation is incredible. This will rapidly speed up level design pipelines.

I imagine the next big step for animation and character rendering is going to be real time soft body volumetrics to simulate actual muscle and fat deposits accurately.

 

[Matt_Fox]

Some of us still like facts. A console isn't a figure of speech or an arbitrary metric, it's a tangible physical object. It is reality.

But, I understand - if in your 'head canon' the 9th Generation is already here, and it's not hardware it's a game, then more power to you.

 

[Explosive Zombie]

So generally speaking you can do the PC in generations you simply adhere to win the new console generation started especially since the console generations 10 to set the tone for what PC games are capable of if you don't think this is gen has been holding back PC gaming then I don't even know what to tell you. There's certainly no crysis this gen.

 

[KormaChameleon]

Dont like pavlov recoil mechanic, its clumsy, mod support and workshop is its biggest selling point, and contactors now has that

Contractors and onward has better gunplay to me

I play wardust mainly, its extremely janky, but its BF in vr........that's basically the dream (again this is a very janky version)

Nedd to get a wheel fir racing games and a price for fps games too

I use a pulley system too for pc vr, game changer

I don't personally own the game. I tried it while I was at a friends house. I absolutely loved it! I was considering getting my own VR set up until I lack the room. Would love to see what else has been added and what other games was inspired by Pavlov.

 

[INC]

If you're a air soft or paintball player, VR is like second n

I don't personally own the game. I tried it while I was at a friends house. I absolutely loved it! I was considering getting my own VR set up until I lack the room. Would love to see what else has been added and what other games was inspired by Pavlov.

Dont need alot of space, I play full 360 in 4x4 square, no problem, you get use to being central after a while, and with a pulley system and turn signal.

Games like blade and sorcery might be a little different tho

 

[hemo memo]

R&C is a smart use of fast streaming in a creative way. Deathloop is another example and that’s just launch. I’m sure dev will use fast streaming in very creative ways. Just give them time.

 

[Stitch]

Sure there aren't any cinematic AAA games with epic storylines about being a LGBTQ person in a post-apocalyptic world, but VR can give you gameplay where you feel like a total badass

 

[namekuseijin]

that's funny considering how conservative in VR design Alyx is - it pretty much draws from 2015-16 VR indies and never surpasses them, like both Boneworks or TWD Saints and Sinners did. Heck, it doesn't even have jumps or melee and that "innovative" "gravity gloves" thing has been a staple in most VR games for ages

It brought AAA shine, but so did previous Sony and Oculus exclusives. Probably a bit more content than these, but that's a game years in the making...

it's obviously a great game, and a big known name to flatlanders. That's the best it did for VR: awareness

 

[namekuseijin]

This still highlights the limitations, everything is very slow, there's only so many enemies at a time.

Borderlands 2 is an integral port if you want fast-paced crackhead shooting. I love it.

but here's the deal about VR: you'll quickly realize that aiming with your own arm all around you requires more skill and is more physically demanding than flicking the wrist over a mouse or the thumb over an analog stick. That's why Borderlands 2 gives you the BAMF bullet-time gauge: for those moments when you realize your not really a badass ninja or commando, you're really just a puny human player overwhelmed by crackhead flat gameplay really made for mouse or analog sticks. That said, it's quite an adrenaline rush that you can't stop.

native VR games take a more moderately paced action meant for human players, not tireless game heroes with steel muscles

 

[Balducci30]

that's funny considering how conservative in VR design Alyx is - it pretty much draws from 2015-16 VR indies and never surpasses them, like both Boneworks or TWD Saints and Sinners did. Heck, it doesn't even have jumps or melee and that "innovative" "gravity gloves" thing has been a staple in most VR games for ages

It brought AAA shine, but so did previous Sony and Oculus exclusives. Probably a bit more content than these, but that's a game years in the making...

it's obviously a great game, and a big known name to flatlanders. That's the best it did for VR: awareness

I can’t get down with this at all. I’ve played almost every major VR game - none of them has compared to Alyx for me in terms of a immersion or otherwise. It brought an intuitiveness that just wasn’t there in past VR - TWD and Boneworks very much included in the lack of intuitiveness department.

 

[namekuseijin]

Oh, and BTW, Iron-Man is out today. That's another nextgen experience for you.

yea, PS2 graphics wubba lubba dub dub

graphics and pixels play no part in the VR experience. Go play Super hot. When you're there in the game world, pixels are dust in your helmet, graphics is just the world, stylized or not

flying around Tony style through buildings and mountains or high up in the sky, shooting and punching your way. That's a nextgen experience you can't get out of a small flat window and pushing buttons

 

[INC]

I can’t get down with this at all. I’ve played almost every major VR game - none of them has compared to Alyx for me in terms of a immersion or otherwise. It brought an intuitiveness that just wasn’t there in past VR - TWD and Boneworks very much included in the lack of intuitiveness department.

Lone echo?

 

[EverythingsOverrated]

I think if we had an Elder Scrolls Oblivion moment but for VR (and open world) in the same setting, that would be amazing. Or perhaps some kind of MMO in VR would be pretty game changing.
Then again... might kill the whole collecting armor stuff because you wouldn't see what you're wearing.

For sure. I'm genuinely surprised we haven't seen one of the bigger devs try to be first in having the first true VR MMO.

A couple days ago I loaded up Steam VR and noticed there was a mos eisley cantina public room. I ended up joining it and while the room wasn't all that polished it nailed the vibe. Had the trademark cantina music and some cool looking aliens and whatnot. Then I noticed people actually talking to each other. It was cool seeing other peoples avatars in vr - I had this moment where I was looking at another player and they just started waving at me, I thought oh ya maybe I shouldn't stare? It was weird but cool at the same time.

I was thinking how awesome it could be to have a true open world with vr players chatting it up and just hanging out. "Hanging out" in other online games mostly felt like a waste of time but in VR I could see it being a much more social experience

 

[INC]

For sure. I'm genuinely surprised we haven't seen one of the bigger devs try to be first in having the first true VR MMO.

A couple days ago I loaded up Steam VR and noticed there was a mos eisley cantina public room. I ended up joining it and while the room wasn't all that polished it nailed the vibe. Had the trademark cantina music and some cool looking aliens and whatnot. Then I noticed people actually talking to each other. It was cool seeing other peoples avatars in vr - I had this moment where I was looking at another player and they just started waving at me, I thought oh ya maybe I shouldn't stare? It was weird but cool at the same time.

I was thinking how awesome it could be to have a true open world with vr players chatting it up and just hanging out. "Hanging out" in other online games mostly felt like a waste of time but in VR I could see it being a much more social experience

So you mean VRChat then.....and yes that's very popular

 

[namekuseijin]

For sure. I'm genuinely surprised we haven't seen one of the bigger devs try to be first in having the first true VR MMO.

A couple days ago I loaded up Steam VR and noticed there was a mos eisley cantina public room. I ended up joining it and while the room wasn't all that polished it nailed the vibe. Had the trademark cantina music and some cool looking aliens and whatnot. Then I noticed people actually talking to each other. It was cool seeing other peoples avatars in vr - I had this moment where I was looking at another player and they just started waving at me, I thought oh ya maybe I shouldn't stare? It was weird but cool at the same time.

I was thinking how awesome it could be to have a true open world with vr players chatting it up and just hanging out. "Hanging out" in other online games mostly felt like a waste of time but in VR I could see it being a much more social experience

for MMO to be a virtual reality (lol) you need a massive audience, and it's just not there yet. Well, there are actually many people, but they're all in freebies like Rec Room and VR Chat already

 

[namekuseijin]

So you mean VRChat then.....and yes that's very popular

it's just not a game, but nothing's perfect

 

[INC]

it's just not a game, but nothing's perfect

Rec room? Paintball is great fun loads of shit to do

Big screen vr is awesome to watch a film with films in a IMAX vr cinema, or a private lobby room, playing retropi on a huge tv (even split screen)

Theres tonnes of options

 

[EverythingsOverrated]

So you mean VRChat then.....and yes that's very popular

I'm talking about taking those aspects and expanding them into an actual MMO of some sort. Whether it's a mmo lite, looter shooter or whatever. I just imagine popping into a server in a Diablo esque town, hitting up the cantina meeting up with some people after bullshitting about baseball and then killing some monsters all in vr.

for MMO to be a virtual reality (lol) you need a massive audience, and it's just not there yet. Well, there are actually many people, but they're all in freebies like Rec Room and VR Chat already

Yeah, I was messing around a little bit in rec room. I thought playing dodgeball was a good idea but I got destroyed.

 

[Resenge]

Rec room? Paintball is great fun loads of shit to do

Big screen vr is awesome to watch a film with films in a IMAX vr cinema, or a private lobby room, playing retropi on a huge tv (even split screen)

Theres tonnes of options

I love that, being able to play flat screen games inside a cinema on an Imax screen feels great. I sometimes just browse YouTube in a cinema room. Being able to escape my real life for a while is nice while lock down is going on right now.

 

[INC]

I'm talking about taking those aspects and expanding them into an actual MMO of some sort. Whether it's a mmo lite, looter shooter or whatever. I just imagine popping into a server in a Diablo esque town, hitting up the cantina meeting up with some people after bullshitting about baseball and then killing some monsters all in vr.

Yeh sounds dope, that's the issue with VR, theres loads of awesome features, spread across multiple indie games.

Theres no gold standard yet, alyx is close tho.


Heres a link to oculus new super sampling solution

'Neural Supersampling' Could Give Future Oculus Quests Console-Quality Graphics

A new neural network developed by Facebook’s VR/AR research division could enable console-quality graphics on future standalone headsets.

uploadvr.com

 

[Wonko_C]

Borderlands 2 is an integral port if you want fast-paced crackhead shooting. I love it.

but here's the deal about VR: you'll quickly realize that aiming with your own arm all around you requires more skill and is more physically demanding than flicking the wrist over a mouse or the thumb over an analog stick. That's why Borderlands 2 gives you the BAMF bullet-time gauge: for those moments when you realize your not really a badass ninja or commando, you're really just a puny human player overwhelmed by crackhead flat gameplay really made for mouse or analog sticks. That said, it's quite an adrenaline rush that you can't stop.

native VR games take a more moderately paced action meant for human players, not tireless game heroes with steel muscles

I don't play many shooters but using your Borderlands 2 VR example I never needed to use BAMF with the Aim Controller, it's much easier to aim with a physical gun than fiddling with an analog stick, (seriously I suck at FPS with stick or mouse, can't aim for shit). Only thing I hate about that game is that you still have to use a crosshair instead of aiming with the gun sights, which is even cooler.

(And the headache-inducing hitches when turning my head, 2K never fixed those, ugh.)

 

[namekuseijin]

Rec room? Paintball is great fun loads of shit to do

I was talking about VR Chat being just a chat with interactive avatars, not a game. It does have a few games, but not like Rec Room, which allows users to create games and game worlds from within the game itself, in VR to boot.

it was Dreams before Dreams. Tbh, it's fully multiplayer and games can be created by several users.

 

[namekuseijin]

I don't play many shooters but using your Borderlands 2 VR example I never needed to use BAMF with the Aim Controller, it's much easier to aim with a physical gun than fiddling with an analog stick, (seriously I suck at FPS with stick or mouse, can't aim for shit). Only thing I hate about that game is that you still have to use a crosshair instead of aiming with the gun sights, which is even cooler.

(And the headache-inducing hitches when turning my head, 2K never fixed those, ugh.)

you can turn off the crosshair and aim downsight just fine. You just won't have much time for that in the middle of a frantic gunfight, but luckily looks like you're a real ninja.

yeah, the hikes are a bit annoying but don't give me nausea or headaches. I think they're related to how the game handles walking through terrain, not very smoothly. I hate the way the game pushes you back whenever you try to inspect things too closely. Little annoyances that don't quite get in the way of most of the exhilarating shooting gameplay, so hey

 

[SketchyGamerMan]

VR isn't tied to a "gen". Frankly, neither are consoles any more.

Mainly though, people underestimate the SSDs in the new boxes. I know, PCs have had them for years, but we've never had huge console developers working with them yet. Knowing that every machine is going to have (roughly) the same technology allows developers to create experiences specifically catered for that lack of loading. Again, yes, PCs have had them for ages, we know. But the millions and millions and millions of people who play only console are about to have their minds blown.

Seriously? Faster loading is what is going to blow people away? If that's all it takes to blow people away then these people need to ditch their consoles. That's just sad.

 

[Alexios]

Alyx was a bit disappointing for me, I expected Valve to bring innovation but they basically just brought production values to things I'd already seen. It didn't feel next gen when I had already played great games like The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners or Onward (not Bonewonks, hyper janky half-life wannabe imo, without the gameplay and level design to match, just the flawed full-physics premise, I'd rather have well implemented features that work right instead of that personally) and other non-FPS games that just showed what is possible with the tech, like Lone Echo (which also had the production values, but not the action) or Blade & Sorcery.

Edit: also it was naff when it required teleporting, how hard was it to let you go through this window or other tight space or jump down that gap in free locomotion after they implemented it for the rest of the game? I really hope fan maps and campaigns, never mind official expansions and new games, don't do that bs.

 

[supernova8]

for MMO to be a virtual reality (lol) you need a massive audience, and it's just not there yet. Well, there are actually many people, but they're all in freebies like Rec Room and VR Chat already

Yeah the massive audience isn't quite there yet. Maybe they could do the sort of instance style mechanic that Guild Wars was good for. Lots of open world to explore in between and then you can bump into people in villages/towns and join a party to do a quest/mission/instance whatever where it's just you guys.