Black Mesa Overview

[The Rogue Wolf]

It seriously is an excellently-done conversion of the original to current-gen standards. My only complaints were that the music tended to overwhelm the game sounds (I'm a very sound-based gamer), and those damn tentacle creatures always seemed to figure out where I was way too quickly (and the ladder problems didn't help that any either)... also, the voices for the soldiers weren't exactly high-quality (which is a shame, because the scientists and guards were spot-on). On the plus side, running into a couple of (not-so) old familiar faces was a nice touch, the redone Gargantua was downright scary, and the bit with the unshielded reactor core spouting energy beams everywhere was nicely reconstructed.

The tiny details and references, though, are way too awesome.

Spoiler: Like these on her ankles...

I didn't even catch that! I was too busy bringing them down from a distance with the Hivehand. EZ-moad, lol

 

[Korten12]

One thing I don't like is how it doesn't save your changes to the options menu. The graphics options save, but the Black Mesa exclusive options keep defaulting every time you start the game. I don't want auto aim dammit!

Odd, it doesn't do that for me. o.o

 

[Denizen]

Black mesa was very impressive. My favorite part is the challenge it added over the original which is something I sorely miss. There's no better feeling than the insurmountable odds placed against you and overcoming it. Jumping around in some rooms old-school style let me reach areas where hidden ammo/health was is a really nice bonus. Too bad people nowadays lost their platforming skills, mine must have been on hibernation.

What they did for the half-life series can easily be overlooked by someone who hasn't played it or can't go in with an open mind. It truly is the original half-life redone with the technical improvements of the 2007 source engine but more-so, it is improved in areas that long time fans like me would have overlooked. The team gave us more than an hd skin pack, they gave us a fresh viewpoint on the black mesa facility.

Either way, I like many of you here can't wait to see what they do with Xen.

 

[Rad Party God]

Spot on review (overview?).

There's just not a lot of stuff that could be said about this game, other than despite it's shortcomings, it's not only one of the best mods ever created, it's one hell of a game.

I felt like it was '98 all over again (actually, I played this game back in 2002 and it was the PS2 version, but whatever), all the parts that surprised me the first time still surprised the heck out of me this time around, Valve should seriously consider hiring these guys. I echo the sentiments of everyone who's played this mod, I can't wait for Xen.

 

[That Greek Guy]

Positive
1. Looks incredible. For me this is the best looking source engine game yet.
2. Music is awesome.
3. Stays very faithfull to original but tries to do a few new things too.

Negative
1. the areas (especially in the beggining) are too busy. There are stuff everywhere and you keep bumping into things and jumping over others a little too many times.

2. Chapter 10: Residue Processing. This part was pretty frustrating and confusing in the original but here... Its easily the worst part of the game but not because of the platforming. Doing constant jump-ducks is easy to get used to, the problem is how much of a fuckin maze the maps are. There are so many terrible level design mistakes here. incredibly long and frequent forks in the path with no indication which is way is right and which is a long and confusing dead end that has a battery at the end. It was so fuckin infuriating to just keep going and going thinking i am making progress and then reach a dead end and realize that was either just a path to get an extra fuckin health pack or the path to use to return if you mess up and fall from the platforms above. And then you go back and keep looking but there are too many doors because theres always something everywhere so you have to look for at everything to figure out where you have to go.AAAAAAAA i hate this part so much.

3. The AI is... wrong. In the original the enemies (soldiers mainly) were very predictable, couldn't fire while moving and stood very still when shooting making them really easy to kill. So valve made them run fast, shoot with no to little pause and be VERY accurate. Well one of the mod's devs thought it would be a great idea to move that over to the new engine. Well....its an incredibly retarded idea. The source engine has good AI now with no big weaknesses ragarding npc movement, so when you port that here you have enemies that move fast, react fast, move all the time, shoot all the time AND NEVER FUCKIN MISS. *pant*pant* I mean seriously, the enemies have absolutely no weakness besides ignoring explosives. There is no way to get in a fire fight without getting hit. As soon as they are alarmed and have a clear line of sight to you, they will just unload EVERYTHING on you without miss. Even when using the most inaccurate weapon in the game they will rip you apart from any distance.

4. Weapon animations look very stiff and robotic which stands out when everything else looks and moves so well.

5. Music is too loud sometimes.

Thats all for now. 4am. sleep.

 

[Sylveria]

All I'm hearing as criticisms are "UGH where's my regenerating health and chest-high wall cover!"

 

[Eggbert]

I personally love it, although it does have it's flaws, specially with pacing.

The tiny details and references, though, are way too awesome.

Spoiler: Like these on her ankles...

Can't wait for Xen and the long-jump madness.

Holy crap. Now I seriously need to play this thing. That's a brilliant touch.

 

[TheScientificIssole]

You actually found the game too hard? I found that one part with the soldier ambush super easy. The music during that part was awesome too.

I have to disagree with the difficulty comment as well. I beat it on hard and loved it. Yeah, it was super difficult at times, but it also made me feel like John McClane: strategerizing on how to go about the tough situations, knowing what enemies were to be taken down with which weapons, conserving supplies, and understanding how to use the environment to your advantage. Because in hard mode, most enemies can kill you one on one(especially the HoundEye).
But then again, Dark Souls is my favorite game of all time.

 

[praetor_alpha]

This is an awesome thing. I didn't have much trouble with any part that I can remember. Death is a good sign that you need to change your strategy or gun selection, unless it's in that nuke building. I made it through most of Lambda core before being interrupted by Borderlands 2.

 

[Proverbial Jon]

My only gripe is the ladders, which are horrible

Ladders have always been horrible in the Half Life games. The amount of times I have fallen off a ladder from the very top because dismounting is so arse-backwards is incredible. Argh!

I'm enjoying the game so far but I think I have an issue with my graphics card because all I seem to see are screens like this:

It's really annoying because I can see how great it looks underneath but just can't solve the issue.

 

[Bindal]

My only gripe is the ladders, which are horrible

Ladders have always been horrible in the Half Life games. The amount of times I have fallen off a ladder from the very top because dismounting is so arse-backwards is incredible. Argh!

Never had problems with ladders in any Source game. EXCEPT Black Mesa, where they are apparently covered in glue. Get off by look to the side? Nope. Press E. Jump off? Well, only seems to work when you don't want it to.
Got a physics-object stuck in your ladder? Well, sucks to be you, you can't remove it anymore because you DISMOUNT when pressing E.
Even getting off of a ladder on the ground by walking backwards is hard now.

Overall, I was more than disappointed with Black Mesa. Gameplay sucked, simply put. You can't jump properly unless you are crouch-jumping all the time. The weapons got nerfed when not needed (What's the point of Burst-fire at the MP5? It just wastes ammo if you need only one shot. And if you double-tap, kill six of your lovely bullet goodbye instead of only two). Animations look half the time just stupid (I am looking at you, crowbar!), most of the relocation of weapons is pointless and just an artificial way to rank up the difficulty (once again, I am looking at you, crowbar. And at you, too, shotgun!)
I didn't even bother finishing the damn thing, kicked it off less than six hours after downloading it. Instead, I played the original again, because that was FUN to play.

 

[R3dF41c0n]

I'm currently doing a Let's Play of this game. I played the original back in 2000 and I say these guys did a awesome job.

I can't wait for them to finish it. Maybe Valve will hire them and we can see HL3 soon.

 

[Bindal]

Maybe Valve will hire them

Good twice as many people already left the team again before the release (got replaced by others, of course). AND they all said they would decline.

 

[Arif_Sohaib]

All things aside, Black Mesa lost the contest of which game comes last between this and Half Life 3/Episode 3.
But it won the race between a turtle and a snail.

In all seriousness, for small team working without the resources of a AAA game studio, this is a very big accomplishment and its fine that it took them so long as they weren't even getting paid for it and it should receive the Counter Strike treatment from Valve.

 

[freaper]

If anything it looks effing gorgeous. Never having played the original Half Life, I really appreciated this one, and I hope the last part will be as good as the previous.

 

[erbkaiser]

Cool find on the female assassin... didn't see that. I am overall very impressed by this mod/remake, they did an excellent job.
But oh god the crouch-jumping. It is so annoying, I ended up adding some binds to my autoexec to automatically crouch-jump just to bypass it.

 

[8bitlove2a03]

So I played Black Mesa, had no idea what I was doing because I'd not played the original game yet, and found it to be a joke on easy. I've now got a copy of the original game, I'm playing it on easy, and it's much more difficult. I never died in BM except during platforming, but I die regularly in HL. I must be the only person in the world having this problem.

 

[Bindal]

So I played Black Mesa, had no idea what I was doing because I'd not played the original game yet, and found it to be a joke on easy. I've now got a copy of the original game, I'm playing it on easy, and it's much more difficult. I never died in BM except during platforming, but I die regularly in HL. I must be the only person in the world having this problem.

Probably because I found Black Mesa too hard to be fun. Mostly because the difficulty was done by unfair elements.