As Jeff Goldblum’s Ian Malcolm famously taught us in 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Jurassic Park, "Life, uh, life finds a way." That mantra certainly applies to another individual called Jeff, the hulking, mutated monster who serves as the boss of 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Half-Life: Alyx's most memorable level, also called 'Jeff.' That’s a lot of Jeffs.
Half-Life: Alyx Used Every Tool In Its Toolbox For 'Jeff'
In 'Jeff,' Alyx Vance finds herself alone in an abandoned distillery with the titular zombie, and needs to find ways to navigate the space without alerting him. That proves to be a bit tricky as the building, wouldn't you know it, is filled with bottles of alcohol that Alyx can inadvertently stumble into, causing a racket. She can also use those bottles as noise making tools to distract her sensitive-eared friend.
I Can’t Replicate The Circumstances I Enjoyed VR Unde𓄧r
The world was a very different p🃏lace when Half-Life: Alyx came 🌌out.
Valve is terrific at setup and payoff, seeding ideas into games early on so that, eventually, when the new reality arrives in full-force, it surprises you, but doesn't derail the story. Portal did this by allowing you to find hints of lore hidden behind walls and in back rooms throughout the game. When the cake turned out to be a lie and you had to make your way through Aperture HQ, those early hints paid ꦿoff.
Jeff Gets A Slow, Steady Introduction In Half-Life: Alyx
Alyx does something similar with Jeff. At the beginning of the level, you meet Larry, a man whose leg is stuck to a Barnacle's tongue. After you shoot the Barnacle, you hear a monstrous noise in the distance and ask what it is. "Oh, that's Jeff," Larry says, before informing you that the unseen monster is blind, but has an "ear like Mozart." Alyx doesn't know who Mozart is, so the reference is lost on her. It's a smart little prelude that primes our expectations for the level ahead, gives us a hint of how to deal with the coming threat, and builds out the world through Alyx's cultural ignorance.
When you first see Jeff, you're at a safe distance, perched on a crumbling metal platform above him. Larry gives you a neat little tip here, too, chucking a liquor bottle which prompts Jeff to chase after the noise. The game continues this process of introducing you to something in a safe place first with the spores. As you approach an orange cloud of the particles, Larry appears and warns you to cover your mouth.
That's because the greatest danger in 'Jeff' isn't bottles, it's your own breathing. As Alyx passes through the factory, she runs across a number of areas where the air is filled with spores which, if breathed in normally, will cause her to cough. When that happens, you need to manually hold your hands up to cover your mouth, preventing her from breathing the cough-makers in.
It's a great mechanic that makes smart use of Half-Life: Alyx's greatest asset: your hands. Alyx uses the greater kinetic freedom that VR allows for in other smart ways, too. You can peek around cover, push doors slightly ajar, manually carry objects around, and parry grenades back in your opponents' direction. But, 'Jeff' pushes it furthest, forcing you to think about your character as a real person with real human frailty. In most shooters, you're a disembodied pair of arms with a gun, so Alyx pushing you to consider your character's mortal flesh felt fresh.
Of course, you eventually need to come face-to-face with Jeff, and Half-Life: Alyx ensures that you're in close proximity when it happens. The level's tensest moment puts Alyx in an elevator with the humanoid beast. In virtual reality, with its heightened representation of space, you really feel like Jeff is right there, about to find you. When you finally escape, trapping Jeff in a trash compactor, you at last get to breathe a sigh of relief. Half-Life: Alyx has moments that matter more for the future of the series' story, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:like its conclusion. But, there's no other level in the game that squeezes as much juice out of its premise. In that way, it's '168澳洲幸运5开奖网:We Don't Go To Ravenholm' for the 2020s.
Half-Life 3 Doesn't Need To Be Revolutionary
Half-Life 3 doesn't need to redefine the FPS genre again, it just needs to tell a satisfying, long-overdue con💯clusion to this decades-old story.
