Half Life Alyx - the Virtual Reality game, and my surprise.
How was Half-life Alyx not the "killer app" that made everyone jump on Virtual Reality? It came out one year ago. The reviews were universally fantastic when it came out a year ago. No real competitor has been released since. It was the highest rated game of the year, actually, and even tied at 93% with the highest rated game of last year. The game's execution is perfect. the franchise is one of everyone's favorites, people have been begging for the next one for years.
And the release timing was pretty good because everyone was stuck in their homes for the first lockdown.
Yet the whole month after it came out, the game boards were full of people talking about Animal Crossing and Final Fantasy 7 being modernized.
For those that don't know, a "killer app" is software that makes people buy hardware just for that. For old computers, Visicalc was something businesses immediately knew was a game changer. Word processors too. The Atari 2600 supposedly doubled all of its sales in the weeks after Space Invaders came out. I'm surprised VR needed one, but I knew if it did, it was going to be either a game, or something spectacularly educational. Like realistic training drills for something like flying a plane or driving a car. (Of course something pornographic was always an option, because for VCR's it was of course porn, and probably even the motivation for the web and computers for a lot of people too. But I can't imagine anything dirty that is truly immersive is going to be done in VR anytime soon.)
How is Virtual Reality still not mainstream in the gaming community? Some people spend $600 on their graphic cards every two years, so a $500 or even $1000 VR rig shouldn't be out of the question.
I do want to add that Valve missed a golden opportunity to have VR headsets shaped like head crabs!
Here is one great video reviewing the game. And it's pretty funny too.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NnwsL6BO8ls
No comments:
Post a Comment