(Though jokes aside, Half Life: Alyx is one of the best single-player games I've played in years, with no micro-transactions, tacked-on online mode, forced crafting systems, tons of collectibles and sidequests to pad out the game, etc; they do have collectibles and crafting in the form of resin and fabricators, but they're incredibly lightweight compared to most games.)
I wouldn't call turning exploration rewards into a mindless grind for weapon upgrade currency "lightweight" crafting. It's pretty central to the game. It may be better than other recent games in the nickle and diming department but it is not free of the modern skinner box game design plague.
Exploration is also extremely limited with e.g. no manual control for the flashlight. And many things that are supposed to be physics interactions are entirely scripted or unimplemented, e.g. try leaning something on one of the rolling shutter doors and then raise them.
Changing Alyx' voice actor was also a pretty meh move - they would have been better off keeping the protagonist mute.
Don't take this that I think the game is bad, but I do think they could have done a lot better. There were many impressive things in there (entirely shader-based fluid "simulation" in bottles) as well some parts that are simply cool (being able to doodle on the windows at the start is such a VR wow factor).
And in their other games, Valve are as bad as other publishers when it comes to unethical monetization. Don't forget that we can thank Valve for normalizing loot boxes and doing their part in pushing microtransactions.
Now I don't want to shit on Valve too much because of their contribution to Linux gaming and because Steam isn't that anti-competitive compared to what other companies would do but Saints they are not.
1) you can’t move irl enough to dodge bullets. You can duck behind cover. But moving is hard. I also suspected some enemy types would target you based on where you had last teleported not where your body should be.
2) enemies hitting you in melee are awkwardly far and you have no ability to hit them in melee. For good reason. Melee in VR is kind of dumb. See boneworks.
3) teleporting and stick movement is very overpowered in addition to nausea. When you can move by stick, it is far superior to moving irl, which undermines the point. This is a fundamental problem in VR. You can’t do both irl movement and stick movement at the same time. And enemies have to move at irl speed to be “fair” to people who want to “do the motions”.
The reloading and general sense of ducking is good. Very good. But it only goes so far.