Welcome liberties are taken to cut out annoying segments of the original and add more of what works.

This is an engine limitation the Black Mesa development team at Crowbar Collective likely had no way of working around, but it still makes it feel very old because you just don’t see that kind of thing anymore.Įven so, the atmosphere and action that made the original game so brilliant is brought out and highlighted even more in this version. Just like in 1998, they too frequently freeze the action as you’re walking down a hallway for around five seconds, even on an SSD. The most jarring thing, though, is the loading screens. Human character models and animations aren’t quite up to the standard Valve set with Half-Life 2 in 2004 (let alone the new bar about to be set in Half-Life: Alyx) and textures are pretty rough in a lot of places. but not as good as I willfully misremembered.

Everything looks a lot better than it originally did, for sure. That said, the project was in the works for so long – eight years! – that now that it’s finally been declared 'finished' it feels like it’s a prime candidate for its own remake to bring it up to 2020 standards.Īs someone who hasn’t replayed Half-Life since Valve ported it to the Source engine (without updating any of the models or textures) back in 2004, playing Black Mesa and fighting off a familiar interdimensional invasion was like putting on some smudged-up rose-colored glasses. That’s unheard of! It is unquestionably great to have a way to experience such a seminal first-person shooter with a little less of its 22 years of accumulated dust, and almost all of the liberties taken from the original design feel like improvements. Black Mesa is unique in all of gaming history in that it’s a fan-remake of the original 1998 Half-Life that Valve has actually allowed to be sold as its own full game.

Black mesa gluon gun