Black Mesa

Code, graphics, and sound turned into a spectacular game. The last time I was this impressed was with the first Deus Ex game. Technological art that took something great and made it spectacular! This was a pleasure to play, art to see, and the soundtrack that creates a world of its own. B R I L L I A N T! To all creators who created this game (code, sound, art...) - Bravo!

Back in the days Half Life was truly impressive. Today it is the classic it should be.

But to every piece of art and especially with digital craftsmanship like video games time isn't a dearest friend. So every once in a while classics deserve updates, rereleases and remakes. For half life this is Black Mesa. I played it in 2021 and it is a blast from start to the grande finale.

They kept the spirit of the original but improved so much details that it lifts the game up to an unknown level. Visuals, soundtrack, map design, AI, Riddles and the list goes on. And yes, they even managed to handle the impossible: make Xen fun!

It barely gets any better than this. A deeply recommendation to every fan of FPS games.

I'm not a big fan of the half life series. I played a little bit of the first Half Life game when I was a kid and mostly had fun with the online side with my friends. After many years I decided to play Black Mesa because I was curious about the story. Half Life with updated graphics sounded good at first, but when I started playing it, I realized that it was not like that. The gameplay is very troublesome and does not guide in any way. The game acts as if you have played the game before. Where to go or how to go. For the first few hours I played the best I could but eventually I got stuck. Since the game didn't make any effort for me to play, I gave up because I didn't want to deal with looking up what to do on Youtube every time I got stuck. If you're going to make a game, you can't develop it by assuming that everyone has played it many times before and memorized it. You have to think about new players. You can easily learn this story by watching videos on Youtube. It's not worth all this torture.

I really wanted to like this game. I hugely enjoyed the original and its sequels. The idea of playing a faithful remake was very exciting to me. Sadly this was not my experience and in retrospect a faithful remake was not what I wanted. Let me explain why. This film does not have the nostalgia of the original, it is to all intents and purposes an entirely new game that copies the original. There are some glitches, nothing that will stop you enjoying the game. Although I found the settings were reset a few times which was annoying, especially as the settings are really difficult to navigate. The story is quite slow which wasn't noticeable in the original as it's more engaging. That's the big issue, this remake doesn't hold my attention. There are many more minor issues. It is not as scary as the original. For a modern game it looks quite dated and generic, the lighting especially is disappointing. It is not as scary as the original. The other big issue is that the controls are pretty horrible. I am playing with a controller on a big TV, maybe it would be different with a keyboard and mouse. The controller really doesn't work well. I cannot for the life of me no matter what I do get it to switch to the weapon I want, to the point I walk over to my keyboard and switch that way. I don't get it as the PlayStation 2 version controls perfectly. Oh and ladders are still a pain to get on and off. With the 25th anniversary release of the original and the quality of life improvements that makes I see no reason to play this remake, except maybe it looks like they fixed Xen although I didn't play that far so I'm only speculating.

I finished this game in 2021. It was an amazing adventure. I highly recommend it.