So... Black Mesa

[Beryl77]

This is really great! Totally worth the wait.
They've improved so much more than I expected. I always thought of it as a graphical overhaul of Half-Life 1 but they've remade pretty much everything and it still feels like Half-Life. The best part is the soundtrack, I love it. I wouldn't mind at all paying for this mod.

I'm really eager to see now what they're going to do with Xen. I can understand if they need more time to make it not suck.

 

[The Artificially Prolonged]

Played a bit, love the updated visuals and voice acting. Was slightly confused by the new layouts but the new set pieces are great. Well worth the wait.

 

[ScaryAlmond]

Snip

Snip

Well, I actually have used torrents before and even with legit torrents they always seem to go VERY slowly compared to my download speed normally. Like, 30kb/s at most! My normal download speeds are just more reliable. Even if I'm getting only 180kb/s...

... god I hate living in the one part of my whole town that hasn't got fibre-optic broadband yet.

You don't know the worst of it i'm located less than one km from a one gigabit hub the problem is i'm not eligible which means I am currently sitting a 50kb/s 20 hours left for BM:S yay

 

[Azex]

As someone who replays the original Half-Life at least once a year I was at first really thrown by the layout changes and when you get certain weapons, but after a few more hours it was nice as even though this is a game i have played many, many times, there where still surprises there for me.

Love this Mod and All hail the amazing men and women who made it.

 

[distortedreality]

Anyone know what the go is with it being greenlighted on Steam?

I was thinking of waiting until the Steam release so that I don't have to download it twice, but if I can download it now and easily and add it to steam later without having to re-download it, I may justgrab it now.

 

[Phlakes]

It's pretty much exactly how it should be. A faithful update that mixes it up a bit but doesn't make it all too different. And it feels like something Valve did themselves, which is really, really impressive for a mod.

 

[Kayevcee]

I've just moved out to the US, and my flatmate has a pretty hefty connection. I should have this downloaded in about 2 hours I'll leave it to seed overnight. Good luck to all our friends in broadband-limited regions. It sounds like it'll be worth the wait

-Nick

 

[Amgeo]

Mac. Sad times.


A friend of mine will be downloading it soon, so I plan on joining him on this journey.

 

[Tanis]

I hate Steam, doesn't seem to enjoy working on my computer for some reason.

So, yeah...

I'll probably skip this, for now.

 

[ResonanceSD]

The torrent file is probably the best way to go until it gets onto Steam GL, the other download mechanisms are getting hammered by requests.

I hate Steam, doesn't seem to enjoy working on my computer for some reason.

So, yeah...

I'll probably skip this, for now.

What on earth are your specs? Steam is one of the lightest programs.

 

[CommanderL]

lol your speeds are funny

here`s mine:

I was actually thinking of replaying the old Half Life, good thing this came out before I did.

I envy you and you download speeds at my highest speed I push around 900kbs and you trippled looking forward to this my first half life game yay

 

[Evil Smurf]

Mac. Sad times. A friend of mine will be downloading it soon, so I plan on joining him on this journey.

Me too, only I don't have a friend with it.

 

[Kopikatsu]

I've noticed that the game is a lot easier than HL1. Like, everything seems to do a lot less damage and take less hits to go down.

 

[matrix3509]

I've noticed that the game is a lot easier than HL1. Like, everything seems to do a lot less damage and take less hits to go down.

You know the game defaults to easy right? Did you check the difficulty before you started?

 

[dessertmonkeyjk]

I've noticed that the game is a lot easier than HL1. Like, everything seems to do a lot less damage and take less hits to go down.

You know the game defaults to easy right? Did you check the difficulty before you started?

I have to agree. The military will shoot your head off if you stand around for one second. Then again, turning Always Run on kind of helps since you'll need to do alot of dodging.

 

[NLS]

Damn, it's so good...
It's obvious they've been working on something here for 8 years, and not something they've slapped together in 6 months. Immense amount of detail to models and layout, voice acting and characters are also great. Barney sounds like Barney, but each Barney looks different. Kleiner looks and sounds like kleiner, and the rest of the scientists are just as great. My only complaints would be some of the female scientists' voice work didn't seem s convincing, and Eli looks like Eli, but his voice doesn't have that same warm and fuzzy feeling to it.
Other than that my only minor game-play oriented complaint would be that jumping is a little bit too short, or the obstacles a re little bit too high. You really have to time your crouch-jumps a lot in sections where you'd usually just jump over it and be done with it. In Black Mesa though it feels like I have to try 1-3 times before I can actually get on top of something.
Also only had 1 crash so far.
Music is great, better than the original.
EDIT: More

 

[Bagged Milk]

Music is great, better than the original.

Spoiler

My god, yes. That part made me feel like such a bad ass and it was all thanks to the music. although that broken elevator shaft at the end was really annoying since the soldiers kept bugging out and were almost impossible to kill

Also, it's set at least 15-20 years before Hl2. So Eli might not have developed his warm, fuzzy, amazing voice yet.

the jumping is pretty annoying as well.

 

[Olas]

Should I feel bad that this will be my first playthrough?

Damn strait. You should feel terrible. What's wrong? You couldn't fork over the measly $5 steam charges to download one of the greatest FPS classics of all time? How can you even call yourself a gamer?
But all joking aside, a part of me envies you since you'll get to experience everything in the game for the first time in this glorious new quality. Another part of me thinks having played the original will give me fuller appreciation of what this mod is and has done. Perhaps the mod will be so different it won't matter. Hopefully I'll begin finding out in about 46 minutes.

 

[K1CKER]

lol your speeds are funny

here`s mine:

I was actually thinking of replaying the old Half Life, good thing this came out before I did.

I envy you and you download speeds at my highest speed I push around 900kbs and you trippled looking forward to this my first half life game yay

uhm.. not sure if you misspelled or not but

900kbs = aprox 100KBs and 1MBs = 1000KBs

sooo my speed is actually aprox 60 times bigger that yours for this particular torrent

just sayin, 60x is a lot more than triple and my highest possible is ~10Mbs so 100x


anyway, it`s a shame you never played the original, it`s harder to appreciate the changes; hell this might not even be such a good game for 2012 if you don`t know the first one

 

[ToastiestZombie]

I'm currently downloading it and have waited so long for this. I actually wish they made a deal with Valve to make it retail because they really deserved to make money off of it. I would have gladly paid for it.

Damn servers! I want to play damnit! I've been waiting so long! Argh!

Will edit when I get to play.

The torrent only took about an hour-ish to download. And it should be even less now since there are even more seeds.

I don't get torrents, way too fiddly and risky in my eyes. Still, the download is at 1.9gb out of 3.1gb at 175kb/s. My internet is shit like that. I'm gonna wait.

Ouch 175kb/s if that is the best provider and speed in your area I would seriously move. I'm not even exaggerating. I thought my 2 MB/s was getting unbearable.

Well I can't exactly move since I'm 14, and I don't think my parents would really want to move just to get better internet. But, once BT or Virgin gets of their lazy arses and makes it so that my specific street can get fibre optic broadband then I'll get that, and hopefully it'll be better. My worst experience is probably waiting 4 DAYS to download Max Payne 3. It was about 27gb at 70kb/s at most. That shit was excruciating.