Black Mesa released

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noswal

Executive Member
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Jun 26, 2004
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Anyhow... a week or so on and I assume everyone who posted in this thread has now played it.
 
Moosedrool

Moosedrool

Honorary Master
Joined
May 24, 2012
Messages
11,482
Finished it on medium (N00b) But it was hard. hehe
Great mod, can't believe valve didn't take care or notice of these designers. This thing is worth money IMO.

Quick review. Spoilers!!! ..... :twisted:



For anyone asking it is basically a recreation of HL1 without the Xen part, every section has been included. There are some differences in the flow and feel though but that is not a bad thing. It obviously behaves like the newer versions which makes it even more interesting. Some sections are a bit different in a way that keeps you playing but the entire black mesa experience is still there. Youngsters/Newcomers wanting to know about the origins of Half-life and pc games in the stone age should really try this one out if you are horrified by the games we played that still had that software rendering button. lol

Pro's:
Great recreation visually and audio. From an artist's perspective this MOD actually shows what today's level designers lack in their creations. Half-life 1 was 50 times game of the year in 1999 for a reason. It's unique environments and Visual candy established the game as top class. Black Mesa Mod took this to the next level. You can almost say it shows you what HL1 wanted you to see but didn't have the hardware back then to do so.

Effects and sequencing (triggers) was also seamless and felt way more genuine than the original.

The weapons are just as bad ass as always and the mp5 really stands out as the gun of choice for me. Stuff still goes boom and plenty of times.

Good AI and characters to boost the experience even more.

Cons:
AI didn't really seem to smart environmentally as the newer versions does. The paths are almost exact duplicates of those in 1999. The game wasn't easy tho but IMO they should take a little slack off on the damage some AI causes and add the difficulty more to their methods.

Extended platforming experience didn't cut it for me. Some ledges took me a lot of time before I actually made the jump etc... It felt a bit like a waste of time eventually cause you know what to do but struggle at the physics of it all.

There are some glitches here and there but it's actually very smooth for a version 1 release. It crashed on me once but I believe that was non related issue.

All and all this is brilliant game and I can't see myself playing the normal HL1 very soon, apart from Opposing force and Blue shift but hopefully some skilled people will have a look into those gearbox releases as well. ;) The Xen part was terrible in HL1 So it's no surprise that they kept it out of the MOD too but a big To be continued is at the end of the credits though. Maybe they will, maybe not, I'll still play it.

That should be it. :)

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