Just completed the long-awaited playthrough of Half-Life: Alyx, and I'm sharing some fresh impressions.

Alyx serves as a bridge between the games of what we might call the past (from a 2020 perspective) and the future. It shows us what games can and will be. That very first scene is breathtaking—you’re standing on a rooftop in City 17, and you’re overwhelmed. You lose yourself for a good half hour, sketching on the wall with markers. And when you’re hiding from Jeff, literally holding your hand over your mouth (both in the game and in real life), your heart pounds. You’re terrified to even turn your head, let alone make a sound. When you finally get to the “Vault,” you’re having the time of your life, using your hands as if they’re a gravity gun.

Here’s what I’ll remember forever:

• The Strider battle. The power of VR and controllers hits its peak here. Reload, aim, fire; reload, aim, fire. Amazing.
  
• The space and time distortions in the final chapter are spectacular. I wanted to stretch that moment, jump from the ceiling to the walls, manipulating objects like magnets.
  
• Jeff. Good ol' Jeff. You just have to get used to him, as Alyx rightly notes.
  
• The music and visuals are top-notch. I loved the deep crimson hues, the palette of greens and blacks that appear when you’re disconnecting the floating “Vault” from its gravitational tethers.

All this alone is enough to give the game an 8.5 out of 10.

However, there are some downsides, mostly related to the game design.

• The puzzles. Linking up the electricity lines behind walls becomes annoying and tedious. You start sighing heavily, looking for yet another junction to connect the wires. At this point, Alyx stops being a game and starts feeling like a monotonous, dull task. The chapter with the electric dog—where you need to extract energy to advance—is a slog. It’s one of those sections you never want to replay. I watched a playthrough on YouTube where someone installed a mod that auto-solves the puzzles. I get it.
  
• Lack of melee weapons. The game turns into an endless episode of Ravenholm with constant ammo rationing. Except in Ravenholm, you had sawblades and a gravity gun.
  
• The environments. The initial excitement fades into a feeling of “closeness.” There are almost no open spaces, just occasional courtyards. Soon enough, the sense of grandeur gives way to a local, confined vibe.

Perhaps these downsides are simply design choices to extend the game’s length. But the game doesn’t need artificial padding—you’d return to it anyway.

This game has been a long time coming (thanks to VR), and the experience is truly indescribable. Once again, Valve has set an incredibly high bar for game creation. Alyx stands as a full-fledged chapter in the series, both a prequel and a continuation. The impact on culture and Half-Life fans is immeasurable.

The verdict: play it. Absolutely play it.