Ren - Moved to chitter.xyz @Nine@computerfairi.es

Me: huh. Half life Alyx is out. That's neat.... Ooh, and it's got good reviews! Nice. Shame I don't have a vr headset...
[Later]
Miq: wait what?? Half life Alyx is out?? Oh dang I gotta get that!
Me, standing right in front of the Oculus rift we have had for nearly a month now: ...?
My brain: ... Oh right, yeah. *Flips on memory switch*
Me: ?! Oh right shit we HAVE a vr headset don't we?

good point: There's a huge plush beanbag furniture item that's an anthro rabbit Amiya! It's even got her coat and everything! It's adorable!!
bad point: ...it was only available to people who pre-reg'd for the open beta ;w;

...better point: There's an etsy listing for a REAL WORLD tiny little bunny plush of Amiya and it's bloody adorable.
slightly bad point: There's only 3 remaining ;o;

...crap can't remember if I took my pills five minutes ago or not. I have a vague memory of taking them out of their respective boxes etc, but... now I don't know where the ones I took out (if I indeed DID take them out) are... and I do not at all remember swallowing them...?

Oh wait... Wait a second. There's JAPANESE audio for the VA! fuck it I'm putting that on. The English va track is pretty bad. Again I'm pretty sure it's a direction problem rather than the actors themselves.

As for the girls, Reizs, Jessica (I think that's her name?? I always forget) and even Charlotte are exceptionally well rendered and animated too. Visually, the game is a real treat. The combat and movement are awesome as hell and there are so many really nice quality of life improvements that it's really worth checking out...

It just... Feels like it's let down by some really minimal effort feeling additional stuff, and whoever directed the VAs needs a slap I think.

The character models however are incredible, despite some clipping issues. While hair is just a lump of stuff on the heads with some jiggle physics, they're really faithful to the original artwork, and are extremely, and dare I say IMPRESSIVELY expressive. If only the dialogue and voice acting were up to scratch, it'd fall less flat.

Also Hawk is every bit the pretty boy he was in the original and then some. Duran is cute too. Kevin is legit badass too.

On the upside though, the gameplay has clearly received the most love and attention. It handles great, the world is beautiful and nicely detailed, exploration is rewarded with extra goodies to find in chests and on the ground, and because you can JUMP now, the world has been given more verticality in its layouts, leading to far more impressive locales and hidden objects to find.

Plus you can dodgeroll now. No more being forced to facetank boss moves!!

Also there's some... Kinda blatant clipping issues with the characters and their outfits at points, and also certain visual glitches that make the game feel like it came out a decade earlier. There's a certain level of polish that makes it feel kinda lazy.

The music, while amazingly faithful to the original SNES ost is perhaps just a little TOO faithful. It honestly feels just like someone took the original tracks and slapped new hd instruments on them. There's no other changes

Charlotte's va was clearly given the direction to be the most annoying character possible, which, considering that Charlotte was the most annoying character possible in the original game anyway, has been given a whole new dimension of awfulness with her talking "wike this constantwy!!!" And ohhhhhh my god I hate it so much. Like, cmon squeenix, you had a chance to turn the most annoying character into someone likable aaaaaand... You did not. You did the exact opposite.