Stress Level Zero's Boneworks was Half-life: Alyx before Half-Life: Alyx released. Released in December 2019, its combination of deeply tactile interactions with a campaign heavily inspired by Half-Life 2 represented a major step forward for VR experiences at the time. It had a fair few rough edges, and you needed a cast-iron stomach to play it, but for about four months it was the ambitious, all-encompassing VR experience that the medium had hitherto lacked.
Then Half-Life: Alyx came around, raising the (crow)bar so high that you'd need to be Mr Fantastic or some sort of bird with hands to reach it. Which is partly why Bonelab, the newly released sequel to Boneworks, hasn't quite gelled with me in the way its older sibling did. Technologically, its still very impressive, and noodling around with its massive interactive potential remains undeniably fun. But it often feels like a lot of good ideas with too little connective tissue between them. It's also even less compromising on your physiology than Boneworks was, seemingly determined to make existing in VR as uncomfortable as possible.
