The first Half-Life: Alyx gameplay footage was released today by IGN and Valve in the form of three gameplay trailers and a nine minute stretch of gameplay footage. This is the best look yet at how Valve’s first full fledged VR game will play.

Half-Life: Alyx is set to launch on March 23rd, just three weeks from today. We’ve been patiently waiting on getting a real glimpse of the gameplay and today Valve has delivered. Via IGN there’s 19 minutes of new footage to sink your teeth into right here:

Half-Life: Alyx Gameplay Trailer #1

This trailer gives a glimpse of the headcrab zombies and the kind of slower paced combat that these enemies will bring to the table. We also see the ‘grab and pull’ mechanic for nearby objects which is a sort of gestural tweak to the typical ‘force pull’ seen in many other VR games. We also get a look at the upgrade stations which the player will use throughout the course of the game to improve their weapons.

Half-Life: Alyx Gameplay Trailer #2

This trailer reveals one of several ‘hacking puzzles’ that players will encounter, as well as a small environmental puzzle where you need to quickly grab a grenade-like object from a tentacle and then throw it through a window above a door to blow the door open from the other side. We also see the the player needing to find a battery-like object which activates a lift.

Half-Life: Alyx Gameplay Trailer #3

Compared to the other gameplay footage, this one shows high-action combat, revealing how the pace of Half-Life: Alyx will vary between puzzles, slower combat with zombies, and faster paced combat against Combine troops.

Here we see a later stage of the game where the player’s weapons have seen several upgrades, including an automatic reloading mechanism on the shotgun and a grenade-launching ability. We also see how the game’s environmental interactivity plays an important role in the pacing of combat (like when the player opens a car door for cover or lifts the lid on the toilet to find a health syringe).

Nine Minutes of Half-Life: Alyx Gameplay

This Half-Life: Alyx gameplay footage shows more headcrab zombie combat and the crafting machine at work. Players will find ‘resin’ throughout the environment which will act as a crafting currency. In this video the player upgrades their pistol with a scope, but we’ve also seen (in Trailer #3 above) that other weapons will be able to be upgraded as well. We also see another ‘hacking puzzle’ where the player must move a node to make several lines intersect other nodes.

The video further shows two different locomotion schemes; the first half being teleportation while the latter half shows smooth locomotion (hand-relative and head-relative options are visible).