Reliving Gordon Freeman's Worst Day

[Steve the Pocket]

The Cynical Brit also did a playthrough of it, and one thing he mentioned that I can't unsee now is how silly the crowbar animations look, compared to any of the official Half-Life games. That, plus the jumping and ladder issues, seem to me to not be deal breakers in any way but still kind of unforgivable given how glaring they are and how long they've probably gone unnoticed by testers. Also is it just me or do some of the openings, like the ones looking out onto the blast pit, not afford as good of a view anymore?

Guild Wars 2 anyone?

Or maybe DayZ?

Remenber how XtraPunctuation used to be a reflection on ZeroPunctuation? A more elaborate diatribe on what they did right and wrong and what they could do better?

I do. And I also remember before it was, back when he used it to talk about whatever game design related topic was on his mind and people didn't bug him for not sticking to a formula.

 

[flaming_squirrel]

The ladders were fine (if a bit odd to get used to) up until the bit where there's a whole bunch of soldiers with a tank surrounded by underground pipes, at which point I realized that for some batshit insane reason sometimes on ladders pressing 's' makes you go up them. Along with 'w' and pretty much every other key.
Which nearly made me ragequit a couple of times as I got to the top, fired off a shot and then happily leapt up out of my hiding spot in order to get ripped apart in 2 seconds flat.

The difficulty in general does seem a little wonky, playing on hard mode the large fishy type critters are laughably easy compared to the original whilst the heli fight left one hand constantly hovering over the quickload key..



One of the best moments though, the hornet gun. I'd always wondered how Freeman held it, now I know.

 

[90sgamer]

Black mesa really surprised me on all fronts. I loved the way the difficulty ramped up, there's no better feeling than overcoming odds placed in front of you. You are playing as the "free-man," after all.

What I was shocked by and I think is a real shame is that people no longer give respect for a challenging game, much less a shooter which nowadays are complete cake-walks. The same goes for platforming in these environments. To this day since I played the first game, platforming never bothered me in a FPS. I guess this was a real treat for the old-school where challenge was expected and gratification was only found by overcoming it.

Overall, The Black Mesa team gave us more than an hd skin pack, they delivered a fresh look on what half-life is in today's gaming world and I might be too bold saying this but something that Valve needs to take note of.

Time for my 3rd playthrough.

I agree, which surprises me. I generally dislike very hard games because I'm in it for the story, progression of the game and feeling like a bad ass. But, I played through on medium and, holy shit, the game was tough but rewarding. Interestingly, the parts people said were hard I found easy. For example the laser trip wire warehouse from hell. I got though it without dying. I also managed the boss helicopter after only a dozen tries. The part I found most hard no one else has yet mentioned: the helicopter appearing at the damn in Surface Tension. Holy balls, I had to reload several dozen times on that one. I also found the ding ding monster in the silo a little too eager to find me even though I was crawling on my belly at 1 mph.

 

[Agayek]

Judging by the title of this article, I was totally expecting to see mention of this somewhere:


I am disappointed that it didn't even get mentioned

 

[cobalt358]

Ah, Black Mesa was going alright for me, but there are times were it can be vvery unintuitive about how to progress. I've temporarily abandoned the game, because I've gotten stuck at a point and can't see how to progress.

For those interested in responding to a thinly veiled request for a walkthrough, I've gotten stuck in a big flooded area, right after the "on the Rails" section. It's a big, circular room with a partition down the middle, cutting off two flooded areas. There's a broken ladder, an underwater tunnel that leads to seemingly nowhere but a pointless, flooded garage, and a Gordon Freeman who has no idea where to go next. What the fuck should I be doing?

Otherwise, its a nice remake. I don't think it beats the original, but it makes for a welcome excuse to return to Black Mesa.

if you are where i think you are there should be a broken hole in the floor to the right, near the large garage doors, i got stuck there for a while too.

 

[Animyr]

Having never played the original, I very much liked Black Mesa. I grant that the difficulty was excessive at times and the occasional glitch or instance of confusion as to what to do next left me frustrated, but I stuck with it and overall I had fun. The pacing was well done, like most valve games, the weapons were balanced, and the enemies and environments varied and interesting. The story was incoherent(I love how the existence of the main villain is revealed through an offhand comment by a nameless character at the very end of the mod) but I was impressed at how well the game did atmosphere and put you in Gordon's shoes through simple gameplay; on that count I think it did better then the actual Valve games, in part due to the custom soundtrack.

It was a small thing, but personally I also liked the bloodstains on the weapons. It added to the immersion and allowed you to imagine Gordon being splattered with goo after shooting a houndeye point-blank in the face with a shotgun. Personally I sort of hope that feature gets into official half-life games.

 

[Bindal]

I didn't think the difficulty was that bad. Yeah, it was a little unnerving how quickly the soldiers could get a bead on you, but if you're seeing them at all you should be ducking behind something anyway. Then it's just a matter of getting some headshots with the magnum, or shotgunning them.

Black Mesa was totally worth the wait, lives up to the original in every way, and is better than many games I've paid full price for. Totally stoked to see what they do with Xen.

If I try that, I get instantly filled with more lead than my suit is made off before I can pull the damn trigger. No, soldiers are OP in every single way. And together with pretty much everything else in regards to gameplay make Black Mesa the biggest disappointment of 2012 for me.

 

[svenjl]

Not sure what Yahtzee's (used to love playing Yahtzee btw) idea of a job one doesn't have to give a shit about is. Farked if I know. Most of those probably don't pay so well and they just end up being shit jobs -_-

 

[Oirish_Martin]

This is hardly a mere remake, I thought the motivation for Black Mesa was because of what a piss-poor offering Half-Life: Source was.

I plan on hanging on to both for posterity.

 

[YodaUnleashed]

Finally....that bloody ridculously hard chopper boss battle gets mentioned as being....well bloody ridculously hard. It was a horrible edition that even on the easiest difficulty (which I had to change it to) was still painfully annoying as f**k. Overall though, Black Mesa was a great, mostly faithful experience that I'll definitely be playing from now on instead of the original.

 

[maninahat]

Ah, Black Mesa was going alright for me, but there are times were it can be vvery unintuitive about how to progress. I've temporarily abandoned the game, because I've gotten stuck at a point and can't see how to progress.

For those interested in responding to a thinly veiled request for a walkthrough, I've gotten stuck in a big flooded area, right after the "on the Rails" section. It's a big, circular room with a partition down the middle, cutting off two flooded areas. There's a broken ladder, an underwater tunnel that leads to seemingly nowhere but a pointless, flooded garage, and a Gordon Freeman who has no idea where to go next. What the fuck should I be doing?

Otherwise, its a nice remake. I don't think it beats the original, but it makes for a welcome excuse to return to Black Mesa.

if you are where i think you are there should be a broken hole in the floor to the right, near the large garage doors, i got stuck there for a while too.

That's the one. Thanks for getting me out.

 

[tehweave]

I'm glad I'm not the only one who found Black Mesa more difficult. I beat Half Life 1 on all difficulties. Hard mode gave me some teeth-grinding moments, but was still beatable. I'm on meduim right now with Black Mesa and I'm having tons of problems getting through it. Do all the enemies have better aim this time around, or just hit harder? Once I got to the point where the military guys showed up, I was killed faster than I could think.

Still. It's a really good remake.

 

[flaming_squirrel]

The ladders were fine (if a bit odd to get used to) up until the bit where there's a whole bunch of soldiers with a tank surrounded by underground pipes, at which point I realized that for some batshit insane reason sometimes on ladders pressing 's' makes you go up them. Along with 'w' and pretty much every other key.
Which nearly made me ragequit a couple of times as I got to the top, fired off a shot and then happily leapt up out of my hiding spot in order to get ripped apart in 2 seconds flat.

The difficulty in general does seem a little wonky, playing on hard mode the large fishy type critters are laughably easy compared to the original whilst the heli fight left one hand constantly hovering over the quickload key..



One of the best moments though, the hornet gun. I'd always wondered how Freeman held it, now I know.

People keep complaining about the crowbar animation, and quite frankly I find this complain silly. Going back in playing half-life, I found the crowbar animation immensely silly but I didn't make a huge deal about it. I mean think about i. That crowbar swings like a mofo.

Quote button has moved to the top now!

Not sure why they moved it, everyone's making this mistake now.

I'm glad I'm not the only one who found Black Mesa more difficult. I beat Half Life 1 on all difficulties. Hard mode gave me some teeth-grinding moments, but was still beatable. I'm on meduim right now with Black Mesa and I'm having tons of problems getting through it. Do all the enemies have better aim this time around, or just hit harder? Once I got to the point where the military guys showed up, I was killed faster than I could think.

Still. It's a really good remake.

Especially the gunship, bloody hell does that thing kill you fast on hard mode. It also takes ~10 rockets and 2 fully powered laser blasts to take it down. I cant remember exactly how many hits the original took, but I'm sure it was a fraction of that.

 

[RJ Dalton]

I did like the redesign of the facility making sense as to what all the rooms are supposed to be and whatnot, but I'm on par with the other major complaints being made. The jumping puzzles never bothered me in the original Half-Life (I'm just good at them, I suppose), but the change in the physics and especially the reduction of your jump height and changing how the duck-jump works makes a lot of the jumping puzzles frustratingly difficult. Getting through that damn section where the soldiers set up a bunch of trip mines around a missile (seriously, who the fuck does something like that anyway? I mean, I know soldiers don't have a reputation for being geniuses, but that seems like stupidity above and beyond the call of duty) gave me so much pain just getting over the first mine. The jump height really does need to be increased.
Also, the reduced amount of ammunition you can carry and load in each clip for the weapons makes what ought to be reasonable sections much harder than they should be. You end up reloading so much more often while there are big groups of enemies shaving off your health. They're only little changes, but they make such a bloody huge difference in how you would need to play that the redesign does not account for.

 

[nowhere]

I waited years for this game (when I first found it I thought it would be something nice to tide me over until Half Life 2 Episode 3 came out - and I expected that to be out a couple of years after The Orange Box - what a naive fool I was!) and I have to say I'm pretty impressed. The jumping does annoy me and I do find the difficulty level to be a bit excessive. I'm not really surprised at this because I assumed that they wouldn't be doing any play testing with casual, fairly unskilled players such as myself. I wouldn't be surprised to find out that all the play testing was done by the developers themselves because they were justifiably afraid of leaks if they sent it out to a larger group for evaluation. I don't expect a game to be too easy nor do I consider myself particularly skilled but I was able to get through all the Half Life games, Fallout 3 and New Vegas as well as Borderlands without dying so frequently that it broke the sense of immersion in the game. This wasn't the case with Black Mesa. That said, I really did enjoy it. A lot of love went into making it and it shows.