Black Mesa Overview

WMDogma

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Black Mesa Overview

"They're waiting for you, Gordon. In the test chamber ..."

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Itsthefuzz

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Apr 1, 2010
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The Marines were definitely much harder to tango with in BM, but then again I found HL1 was pretty easy unless I set the difficulty up high enough where the Marines would be hard to tango with.

Regardless, best mod ever.
 

A_Parked_Car

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Oct 30, 2009
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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 will agree that the jumping can be pretty frustrating at times. I had never played the original Half-Life, but it seems like they could have updated that particular mechanic to feel a bit less '90s.

Overall, the mod is simply amazing. I enjoyed every second of it.

Itsthefuzz said:
Your avatar is amazing by the way. XD
 

Bribase

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Nov 30, 2010
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Someone's been lulled into a false sense of security by battling the combine for too long. The soldiers in Black Mesa source were as tough(and as awesome) as they were in the original.
 

Steve the Pocket

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Mar 30, 2009
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A_Parked_Car said:
I will agree that the jumping can be pretty frustrating at times. I had never played the original Half-Life, but it seems like they could have updated that particular mechanic to feel a bit less '90s.
They kind of did: You can't jump nearly as high as you used to. You used to be able to jump over laser tripwires, for example; not no more.

(And yes, I realize that's not what you meant by "less '90s".)
 

Covarr

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May 29, 2009
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Aww, no mention of the audio and voicework? The music is brand new. Most of the dialogue has been rewritten, and recorded with some of the best impressions I've heard, period. Before the game really even started, before I got my HEV suit, I found myself wandering around the facility just to listen to what everyone had to say. There's a LOT of added dialogue, entire scenes that are totally unnecessary and in the background, and they all seem to mesh very well with modern-day VALV[sup]E[/sup]'s sense of humor. Top notch writing is one of the biggest improvements they've made over the original, IMO.

P.S. Thanks
 

Legion

Were it so easy
Oct 2, 2008
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WMDogma said:
Some sections have been made shorter to reduce repetition - there's far less time spent crawling around in vents then I remember, for example.
You mean 'than', not 'then'. 'Then' doesn't make sense in that context.
 

ben---neb

No duckies...only drowning
Apr 22, 2009
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I'm currently playing through Black Mesa and loving it. The better graphics make many of the moments more poignent such as when you press the button for a lift and you kill a bunch of guys. I felt very bad about that.

I would say that they have a stupid bit with flares at the start of the game but once I got my trusty crowbar it was game on!

There are some amusing points in the game as well. Picture below for my current favourite sign!

 

CaptainOctopus

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Oct 5, 2011
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Yes the platforming was still as frustrating as before, not to mention the frikken annoying ladders :mad:. And the game was quite hard sometimes, then again I played it on the hard difficult setting so I can't really complain about that. In fact it was rather nice to get a challenge for a change, which for the most part made the game even more enjoyable.

One of my favorite moment was probably when I...
...encountered the ninjas for the second time and I didn't want to waste too much health and ammo so I put laser trip mines all over the place, then hunted the fuckers down with my trusty crossbow. The feeling of quick-one-shooting an invisible ninja flying in the air with the crossbow and seconds later hearing a trip mine go off is quite damn satisfying.

Anyhow, a fantastic game and probably one of the best first person shooter experience I've had in years, which if you think about it is kind of sad. I mean really, how can a fan-made remake of a 14 year old fps title be so much better than almost every tripple-A fps game released the last 5-7 years or so? Oh well, that's modern gaming for you.
 

Beryl77

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Mar 26, 2010
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Great mod and it exceeded my expectations quite a bit. It really feels like playing Half-Life but with a refreshing feeling.
The only bad thing is that you have to use the crouch-jump so often. If I remember correctly, in the original hl1 it was a new and special game mechanic but here you have to use it nearly for every jump.
Besides that, I really like it. What really surprised me the most is the music and voice acting. I didn't expect that to be good at all.
 

ciancon

Waiting patiently.....
Nov 27, 2009
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Also worth mentioning the new/remastered soundtrack which really shows the detail that these guys went through.
 

Soviet Heavy

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Jan 22, 2010
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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!
 

flying_whimsy

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Dec 2, 2009
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I missed the long jump from the original game; although I found using the sprint function for some of the jumps considerably more effective than crouch jumping at a snail's pace. Of course, I was 3/4 of the way finished with my first play through when I discovered that. The level design definitely reminded me a lot of the portal games, and some of their little tricks to guide players (a shorting out light where a ladder was, etc.) were kind of fun but a little obvious compared to the original.

They are working on an official steam release of the game, and whenever they release that along with the xen chapters I'll be really happy to pick it up again (had to uninstall due to some space constraints on my harddrive).

Really missed the gravity gun, though. Utterly fantastic mod overall: totally worth waiting all these years.
 

DugMachine

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Apr 5, 2010
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I feel kind of bad getting the thing for free. Is there a place I could go to pay or something? That was a seriously good mod. More fun out of that then I get out of most triple AAA titles nowadays.
 

Oskuro

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Nov 18, 2009
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I personally love it, although it does have it's flaws, specially with pacing.

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


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

YodaUnleashed

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Jun 11, 2010
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Sharp difficulty indeed; that battle with the chopper was pain-stakingly difficult, so much so I lowered the difficulty down to easy and still struggled. It was simply just far far too accurate with it's machine guns and even when you took cover you would very likely still be blown to pieces by its rockets......annoying as hell....but other than that most of the more challenging battles were just challenging enough without being too frustrating (for me at least).
 

Goofguy

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Nov 25, 2010
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Haven't made it far enough in to the game to try the tricky combat. Looking forward to seeing what it holds in store for me.