If you played through Half-Life 2, then there is a good chance that you will never forget your feelings the very first time that you set foot in City 17. The G-Man’s cryptic introduction, the bleak 1984-like environment, Dr. Breen’s strangely reassuring voice – they all combined to create one of the most memorable video game openings of all time. You may never forget your first experience with the gravity gun, setting traps for zombies in Ravenholm, or the first time that you crushed a Combine soldier with a toilet. Whatever your favorite aspects of Half-Life 2, the game suffered no shortage of set pieces, unique game mechanics, and joyous moments. And, if you are fortunate enough to play through Half-Life: Alyx, you will compile another impressive list of “wow” moments and first-time experiences, and ways in which virtual reality gaming will never again be the same for you. With Half-Life: Alyx, Valve has once again drawn a historical line of demarcation, and everything from this point forward will be measured against it.

It might sound like fanboyism to sum up my opinion of this game as “Valve has done it again”, but the expression fits perfectly -- Valve really has done it again. Half-Life: Alyx surpasses its peers in VR so profoundly that the biggest drawback of the game is that it might ruin future VR experiences for you once you have played through it. It looks incredible, sounds incredible, and plays better than any other game that this medium has to offer. It includes all of the hallmarks of a Valve-designed game and it carries a distinct Half-Life feel from beginning to end. But like Half-Life 2, it also introduces a handful of new game mechanics, enemies, and characters that fit into the series perfectly. And, to top it off all, it ends with arguably the most jaw-dropping narrative moment so far in the series.

In making Alyx the protagonist and ditching the silent protagonist that has defined Half-Life and Portal, Valve demonstrates a bit of wisdom that shows why Half-Life: Alyx is such a great game – they understand where to make changes and where to keep their formula intact. It wouldn’t have made sense for Alyx to be silent for the entire game, so Valve has embraced her being who she is – a resourceful, observant, and rebellious character who has grown up under Combine oppression and has made it her goal to rid the planet of their presence. Alyx frequently interjects her thoughts and emotions into the game, and they always seem to perfectly mirror what you, the player, are feeling at any given moment. It is one of the many subtle ways in which the game excels. Alyx and Russell exchange a lot of dialog, providing some much-needed exposition, a few hints, and a lot of quality humor.

Source Filmmaker is a powerful tool that works with the Source engine to create a flexible, modifiable 3D recording that can be exported as a movie or as a still image. The 3D recording you create in SFM can contain recorded gameplay, objects, cameras, lights, particles, animations, effects, and sounds—and the motion information for how each element changes over time.

With Source Filmmaker, you can essentially film "on location" in your favorite Team Fortress 2 map whether it's one that Valve released or one that you modded yourself. You can use SFM's large library of maps, models, animations, objects, sounds, and effects, or you can import your own from the Steam Workshop. Because you're working with a virtual world, and your recording stores all the 3D motion data about every element, you can modify any aspect of the recording at any time, which makes it easy to make the kinds of last-minute changes that would be extremely expensive in a live-action studio.

The Source Filmmaker Workshop is bigger than ever with over 16.000 items to download! So now, even if you aren't a professional when it comes to 3D modeling, you can still make animated shorts with the graph or motion editor. Valve has also released many "content packs" for Source Filmmaker that allow users to utilize assets from other Source games easier.

Source Filmmaker is the movie-making tool built and used by Valve to make movies inside the Source game engine. By using the hardware rendering of a modern PC gaming machine, SFM allows storytellers to work in a "what you see is what you get" environment so that they can iterate in the context of what it will feel like for the final audience.

There is a caveat, though: despite the deceptively simple-looking UI, Source Filmmaker is a very powerful and complex tool without a lot of safeguards. Think of it like a tractor: it doesn't have handrails or a lot of padding like you might find in a normal app or game. We recommend that you watch the video tutorials first and then read the documentation to familiarize yourself with the tool as much as possible before you dive in.