Except that Alyx very clearly focuses on the core plotline rather than a side story like the expansions.

Also you forgot the coop game for the Dreamcast.

Not that it invalidates your points at all but I played HL Alyx sitting down on an original oculus quest on a computer with a 1060 and an r5 2600. It was great but it and Beat Saber were basically the only two VR games that were fun enough for me to play for more than a few minutes at a time.

That quest has been collecting dust since I beat Alyx.

Really hard for me to recommend spending several hundreds of dollars on hardware when there's really only one game worth playing. But if you can find a cheap used quest or WMR headset it might be worth picking up and then selling just to play Alyx. Alyx is probably one of if not the most well optimized VR games out there. You really don't need that powerful of a rig to play it.

I've said this plenty of times but this stigma of VR is a REALLY REALLY weird one, especially since I keep seeing it. There are so many arcades and whatnot you can try VR where it's just tethered in place. So many VR experiences are designed such that you can absolutely play them sitting down in a chair. The idea you need a "holodeck room" breaks down the second you look into it all.

Not only that, but the Quest can play VR games, and it's running a phone processor. You don't need top of the line hardware, just enough to run a normal video game, which I'm willing to bet if you're a pc gamer, you literally have more than enough.

I beat Alyx on a $250 headset and a laptop with an underclocked 1060. In my shitty 800 sq ft apartment's dining room. And it was still an absolutely phenomenal experience. Was it top of the line? No. But it was still plenty playable. These days my pc is in my bedroom and I just hook it up and play in the empty space in front of my bed. You absolutely CAN sink thousands of dollars and a dedicated space into it if you really want to. But it's hardly a requirement.

People are buying entire consoles for one or two games. If folk can afford a 450 USD switch 2 for mario kart they can afford a facebook (ugh) quest for 300 bucks that regularly goes on sale.

Can EVERYONE? No. But this is a luxury hobby and plenty of discourse online is "I bought a PS5 for Demon Souls" or "I love Welcome Tour" and so forth.

Nah. Alyx was just completely ignored. Likely due to a mix of chuds not wanting to acknowledge women and... people don't ACTUALLY care all that much about a new Half-Life. They just love meming about it.

Or not having the space to do motion controls

I’m just hoping for some good games moving forward that aren’t trying to milk us for everything we have with slop we don’t want.

... There is plenty of that?

The thing to understand is that influencers pretty much always fall back to the "us vs them" mentality. We could see it with early youtube where they accused magazines/websites of all being corrupt and getting paid for reviews (never forget Jon "It's about ethics in games journalism" Bain...). And we saw it in twitch when they instead said it was the youtubers and their sponsor deals who were doing the same. And we saw a huge rise in "I need to watch tiktok because that informs me about things that mainstream outlets don't want me to hear!"

Some outlets go political. Most are aggressively "apolitical" and all that entails. But that means that "the game devs are trying to screw you over" is a solid talking point. It is why everyone and their mother needs to say they hate live service games (with the added bonus of avoiding any chance of having a regular game they arer expected to stream) and so forth.

But if you actually PLAY games? It is still a golden age where basically every sicko gets their fetish in game form (and Microprose and Kitfox are apparently the sleazy club I slink off to...). We are in for a pretty bad drought after the past two years or so of funding drying up and studios being gutted. But if you actually are looking you are gonna find a LOT of games that know what you want.

I'll also add on that "game devs want to ruin gaming" is a great excuse to play "retro" games. Which drastically reduce operating costs for the part timers because... even IF they are showing you their console and cartridge, you can bet your bottom dollar they are running an emulator with a game they grabbed from their local internet library.