It always feels like you just kinda “snap” to them and have to press use to let go of them. Ladders still have that Source engine quality of not feeling quite right though. This means you no longer have to worry about crouch jumping everywhere, which is extremely handy. The game also features a bunch of quality-of-life upgrades. Granted it’s not to the same extreme, but it does make Black Mesa feel substantially different in progression from Half-Life. Like for instance plugging cords into sockets, or physics puzzles. Grunts seem much more grenade happy, and yet somehow less likely to blow themselves up like in the original.īlack Mesa also tends to add in a lot of the types of puzzles you’d see in Half-Life 2. Though I notice the AI has been revamped a bit. And that’s another spot where Black Mesa shines. One thing that set the original Half-Life apart was of course the AI. In many ways it feels like what Half-Life should’ve been if the technology would allow for it at the time. In my opinion, the remake fully embraces the chance to make changes to the pacing where needed. This is what makes Black Mesa worth playing as a remake, even for those who have completed the original Half-Life. And you spend considerably more time with your trusty crowbar before you obtain the pistol. The weapons are much more spaced out, forcing you to either rely on security guards or flares to survive the hordes of headcrab zombies. Which does a lot to make Black Mesa seem more of a real place, instead of the more “gamey” design of the original game.īlack Mesa does a lot to enhance the survival horror aspect of the game’s early levels. And levels are altered to look more believable and realistic. And it doesn’t straight up remake the game as we know it, as much as it tries to expand on it and develop it further.įor instance, it straight up puts Eli Vance and Kleiner in there, ensuring it works much better in the Half-Life 2 continuity. And their approach to the remake has been rather interesting.īecause instead of simply upgrading the visuals and sound, Black Mesa is more of a reimagining of Half-Life. Remaking Half-Life was probably no easy task for Crowbar Collective, the team behind Black Mesa. But it cannot be understated the lasting impact Half-Life had on the gaming industry, and the gamers who experienced it. Nowadays the game is nothing special, as a lot of its features have become common in other games. It’s one of those games I really wish I could play for the first time again. And when I later got the game on PC for myself, and played through it, it truly felt like a groundbreaking experience. All I wanted was to keep playing, keep exploring that world.Īt that point I knew Half-Life was unlike anything I had ever played before. And I couldn’t stop talking about the experience I had just had. Then the game continued, and my friend came by to pick me up. Because at this point, this was the only game I had played where the story wasn’t told to you in cutscenes. I legitimately felt like I had messed up the game somehow. I genuinely couldn’t understand what was going on and that frightened me. My first thoughts were “what did I do?”, “what’s going on?” and “do I have to start over?”. I followed the instructions given to me by the scientists. The internet café around me disappeared and I was there in that world. It was the first time I had felt so immersed in a FPS. And I remember spending probably a good chunk of time just exploring the starting area. The concept of starting a game like this was entirely new to me. Up until this point, the only first person shooters I’d played were Sin, Duke Nukem 3D, Doom and such. “Okay, when does the action start?” I thought to myself. I found myself interestingly on some sort of tram. So I fired up Half-Life, with a lack of anyone else to play with. But it also had this single player game called Half-Life, since that was required to run Counter Strike. It had the expected games, mostly Counter Strike. It was a pretty normal day and I was in an internet café waiting for a friend, looking around on one of the PC’s there. To this day, my first encounter with Half-Life remains one of my strongest gaming memories.
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