Half-Life: Alyx – Combine Shotgun
The next shotgun we’re looking at is the utterly unique shotgun from Half-Life: Alyx. This shotgun feels excellent, but I gotta start off right at the top and say the only major thing it’s missing for me is that it’s not pump-action!
Granted, the developers of the game clearly made it a priority to avoid two-handed weapons, which is why we ended up with this crazy pistol-like, breach-loaded, automatic shotgun. There’s really nothing else like it.
It might not be pump-action, but the way Valve did the chambering with the little flip-out lever still feels great.
And we can see this shotgun is great for so many of the same reasons we talked about with the Sunshine Shorty.
But I want to call out one of those things that was missing with the Sunshine Shorty. In Half-Life: Alyx, when you reload the shotgun, you get a unique sound when the gun is completely full of shells. Players quickly learn this noise means they can’t put anymore shells in the gun, which stops them from trying and accidentally throwing their shells on the ground.
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Alyx also has a custom hand pose to show the player pushing the shells into the gun, but it has hand-pose transitions as well, making the whole thing look smoother overall.
It’s also worth pointing out how great the recoil feels on the Alyx shotgun. Not only does the recoil animation strike a great balance between conveying the action of firing and the weight of this big metal weapon, we also get some sectionary motion with the slide kicking back which further sells that this is a real, working object.
And I have to say, the Alyx shotgun might have the best firing sound of any shotgun in VR. Listen to this thing. Again, this isn’t a realistic sound, but it sounds deliciously powerful and matches the deadliness of the weapon and the impact on the target.
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Not only does this shotgun have an incredibly unique design and killer sounds, it’s clear that Valve also thought carefully about exactly how it should work. This is evident in the fact that Alyx pulls out two shotgun shells every time. This cuts down the number of gestures needed to reload the gun from seven to just four. That means the player gets the benefit of having seven rounds in the chamber, but without needing to load seven individual shells into the gun. Valve added this clever little detail to support the pacing of combat they were aiming for.
There’s also multiple ways to close the breach after opening it—you can push it with your hand from several different areas or you can flick it closed which always feels awesome.
