Black Mesa Reviews

Must-play to any half-life fan. It's good old half-life but remastered and enriched in the best possible way. Xen is remade entirely from scratch, looks and plays absolutely brilliantly.

Игра топ. Отличный ремейк первой халвы. Графика, уровни, музыка - всё на высоте) Мне понравилось) Оценка 8/10.

the definitive way to experience half-life. there really isn't a single way it doesn't improve upon the original.

Honnestly, its a nice game for sure, it is long, hard, but if you play it ones, you get it later on and completing it quickly. I do recomend it for sure. 10/10. -Honnestly.

Apart from some crashes, the game is very fun and a very modern way to play the HL1 story

Black Mesa. The lab, or rather, research complex, in which everything goes wrong, when a physics experiment tears open an interdimensional portal, or I should say, destabilizes our own world’s fabric of reality so that aliens start teleporting in pretty much everywhere, eventually leading to an invasion, a very brief war, followed by occupation, as detailed in Half Life 2. Playing the game that started it all, and by it all I mean the slow paced, story-driven first person shooter genre, especially compared to fast paced arcade shooters like Doom 1 and 2, Quake 3, Unreal Tournament or isometric top-down RPGs like Fallout 1 and 2 which were your only other options in the 90s before Half Life, you come to realize how many other games have been inspired by Valve’s pioneer released in 1999. From Doom 3 to the first Resident Evil movie, many other IP’s have ripped their “all hell breaks loose in a high tech research lab” setting from here. And Halo's flood infection forms and what they do to humans are eerily reminiscent to headcrabs. And Half Life, remastered as Black Mesa, does try its best to offer a mix between classic linear shooter, puzzle game and platformer, the latter probably inspired by the popularity of super mario in the 90s where timing your jumps to avoid death was an industry standard or something. Just like finding yourself in a room full of locked doors and having to find an unconventional way out. Whether it is grabbing a valve (see?) to shut off pipes leaking burning gasses, draining flooded areas, or turning the electricity on or off, MIT theoretical physicist Gordon Freeman has to occasionally do some basic thinking to progress in the game. Black Mesa, aka Half Life, comes with an array of weapons starting from the humble 9mm pistol over the more powerful six chambered revolver, shotgun, assault rifle and chuckable hand grenades to heavier weapons with the crossbow being the least exotic of them all. This idea of an entire list of weapons that the protagonist could carry on his person without having to drop any, was copied by other games like Doom 3, and even Fallout 3, 4 and 76. As for enemies, the headcrab, no doubt ripped from Alien 1979 and the zombified scientists it controls, make up the initial foes, but flesh eating plants hanging from the ceiling, alien dogs that want to give you sonic boom hugs, acid spewing alien gators and one eyed bipedal spellcasters from Xen make up the alien faction accidentally invited onto earth by Mr. Freeman’s unwitting resonance cascade event, while soldiers dispatched to neutralize anything that moves in and around the Black Mesa complex are the human antagonists you have to beat – a concept later copied by the F.E.A.R. franchise, along with its two expansions. Speaking of, Half Life had two expansions as well, in one you play as one of the mercs and in another, as a member of the on-site security team. The latter has also been remastered as a free mod called Black Mesa: Blue Shift, but is still somewhat buggy and you can only launch it in Black Mesa’s stead by downloading it from the workshop and changing the launch parameters after downloading. I might give it a try someday, but until then the official release is worth playing, especially for those who think the OG Half Life’s graphics are too retro and want something more modern (like...previous gen modern). You see, the sheer amount of time (measured in YEARS) it took for the developers to finish the final leg of this game in Xen is something I cant forgive them. Yes, I understand that most of the game up until and including Lambda Core already released in 2012 was free only because it was a combination of passion project and the devs not having Valve's permission to make money off of it (until Valve changed their mind and hired them) along with them being even fewer in number than an indie studio, but at the end of the day, it took them an entire console generation to add the final chapters (or rather, invent their own, because they created a bunch of new levels and what used to be a handful of islands floating in a nebula you jumped down to get to a teleporter that led to maybe another 2x 15 minutes or so of gameplay, one for the Gonarch and the other for the platform climbing in the original Half Life, has been turned into a 6 hour game within a game that didn't exist in the original, taking you through alien jungles, lakes, biomes, crystal cave systems and factories that give you a glimpse into the hierarchy of Nihilanth's realm where the skies turn ever redder and more nightmarish the closer you get to the base of his spire, where Vortigaunts producing Grunts are enslaved by Controllers, before reaching the finale, allowing for your actions here to explain why the Vortigaunts are friendly in Half Life 2), so the game, originally released in september 2012, didn’t see a full retail release with Xen until march 2020, aka 7.5 long years (retail release without Xen was 2015, so 5 years waiting even for people who had paid). Time long enough that made the cutting edge visuals look somewhat dated again. Oh well. They are still pretty. Maybe to make up for it, the devs did another update after launching the retail version where they claimed to have upped the graphics even more, the most visible example being dynamic shadows cast by Gordon's flashlight and sun shafts / godrays. Xen is worth it, but Interloper isn't, although some of the fights are epic. Art direction wise, this game is a love letter to the Source engine otherwise mostly only known for the environments of Half Life 2, Garry's mod and Counter strike. So all I can say is compared to Valve's first attempt at integrating this game into the source engine called Half Life: Source released back in 2004, Black mesa is a worthy Half Life remaster - and then some, in what feels like a brand new game Xen onward. A must have for every fan of the franchise, and even those new to it.

This is, by its very definition, refined excellence. It isn't a 1:1 of the original game, and it isn't supposed to be. It's better in some ways, I'm sure some folks will find things they find worse in some others. But for me, I couldn't stop playing it. Couldn't stop taking screenshots like a little kid with a disposable camera. Loved it, loved the experience. Will probably play through it again at some point later on in my life. Truthfully, knowing what I do now about how the game plays and runs, I'm surprised I only paid $19.99 for it.

The fact the games core was made 30 years ago is baffling. We went wrong some where along the way. It is oddly refreshing to play a game that has no map, arrows, or quests... you just have to use your eyes and brain.

---{ Graphics }--- ☐ You forget what reality is ☐ Beautiful ☑ Good ☐ Decent ☐ Bad ☐ Don‘t look too long at it ☐ MS-DOS ---{ Gameplay }--- ☑ Very good ☐ Good ☐ It's just gameplay ☐ Mehh ☐ Watch paint dry instead ☐ Just don't ---{ Audio }--- ☐ Eargasm ☑ Very good ☐ Good ☐ Not too bad ☐ Bad ☐ I'm now deaf ---{ Audience }--- ☐ Kids ☐ Teens ☑ Adults ☐ Grandma ---{ PC Requirements }--- ☐ Check if you can run paint ☐ Potato ☑ Decent ☐ Fast ☐ Rich boi ☐ Ask NASA if they have a spare computer ---{ Game Size }--- ☐ Floppy Disk ☐ Old Fashioned ☑ Workable ☐ Big ☐ Will eat 15% of your 1TB hard drive ☐ You will want an entire hard drive to hold it ☐ You will need to invest in a black hole to hold all the data ---{ Difficulty }--- ☐ Just press 'W' ☐ Easy ☐ Easy to learn / Hard to master ☑ Significant brain usage ☐ Difficult ☐ Dark Souls ---{ Grind }--- ☐ Nothing to grind ☐ Only if u care about leaderboards/ranks ☐ Isn't necessary to progress ☑ Average grind level ☐ Too much grind ☐ You'll need a second life for grinding ---{ Story }--- ☐ No Story ☐ Some lore ☐ Average ☐ Good ☑ Lovely ☐ It'll replace your life ---{ Game Time }--- ☐ Long enough for a cup of coffee ☐ Short ☐ Average ☑ Long ☐ To infinity and beyond ---{ Price }--- ☐ It's free! ☑ Worth the price ☐ If it's on sale ☐ If u have some spare money left ☐ Not recommended ☐ You could also just burn your money ---{ Bugs }--- ☐ Never heard of ☑ Minor bugs ☐ Can get annoying ☐ ARK: Survival Evolved ☐ The game itself is a big terrarium for bugs ---{ ? / 10 }--- ☐ 1 ☐ 2 ☐ 3 ☐ 4 ☐ 5 ☐ 6 ☐ 7 ☐ 8 ☐ 9 ☑ 10

Black Mesa is a true labour of love. In development for more or less 15 years, a mod team (Crowbar Collective) set out to remake Half-Life, the classic and iconic title that influenced an entire generation of games, using the Source engine. When funds and manpower were short, it was literally passion that kept the project going. Valve eventually even gave them their blessing. The story remains the same, as players take the role as Gordon Freeman in the Black Mesa Research Facility. An experiment goes awry and a rift opens up, allowing creatures from another world to infiltrate and cause havoc. The military is sent in to contain the situation, and eliminate ANY witnesses that are present, including the science team and facility staff. Gordon finds himself on a journey to close the rift, while battling both aliens and soldiers, and has multiple interactions with the enigmatic G-man along the way. The gameplay is faithful to the original, but with improvements to elevate it to modern day standards. Enemy AI is vastly improved, creating more dynamic situations. Of course the visuals have received a complete overhaul. Textures and models are beautifully rendered. The use of light and shadows is amplified thanks to the Source engine. Half-Life was known for its impressive level design and Black Mesa builds on this foundation. Many levels retain their iconic look and feel but have more expansive functionality. The levels are quintessential to the environmental storytelling experience, and are atmospheric and immersive. The Xen levels are the most drastic change in design compared to the original. In what was previously a barren and disjointed final act, Black Mesa has reworked Xen to feel alive with its stunning environments and textures. Black Mesa is a homage to everything that made Half-Life great, with updated mechanics, design and polish. The dedication shown by the developers is nothing short of inspiring. This is the remake we had been hoping for.