Black Mesa (2020)

Faithful recreation of the original Half-Life. Superb visuals for a Source 1 game, great music, great gun-play, etc.

The only thing that I found to be annoying in this game was the repeated use of scientist models and voices. I know that the original is like this as well, but I feel like an opportunity was missed to diversify the Black Mesa Faculty.

9/10 or 5/5 stars

I completely forgot that Daemon X Machina came out on PC, so I'm gonna temporarily put the rest of the game on hold (I reached Forget About Freeman) for a bit until I try out that game.

So far, my feelings on the game have changed a bit. I still think around... 40-50% of the game is just outright boring. Mostly because pre-Questionable Ethics, the game just does not throw enough enemies at you at all, gives you too many ways to cheese the enemies outright, gives you too much ammo, or, and this is mostly the case, is entirely just navigating level geometry. This is really the biggest issue, you spend so much time navigating areas that are neither interesting or fun to move around, you're going to spend so much time in vents, tubes, crouch jumping, hopping between areas. There's so much weak platforming that you do in between weak combat encounters that it's irritating if not condemning.

That being said, Questionable Ethics and Surface Tension both are two absolutely incredible levels, and really shows where the game shines. The atmosphere hits on point, the combat encounters are well balanced (still gives you a bit too much ammo imo), and the enemy design is solid. I love how it adequately uses alien soldiers, vortigants, and marines in tandem in these levels.

The game finally gets really good here, but holy hell does it take so long to get to this point. Blast Pit is the only part before Questionable Ethics where I'd say it really hits at all, and that's a solid 3-5 hours of dumped time (3 for me since I'm very very familiar with this kind of level). I think it might be overall good, and I still have Xen to cover, so I'd say Black Mesa is mostly a worthy recommend as of now.

Black Mesa - First Impressions

One step forward, several steps back.

From a technical level (other than optimization, there's several issues there as of now) and graphical, Black Mesa is a direct improvement so far. The new art is great, especially in tandem with the new kickass soundtrack, leading to a somewhat immersive experience on offer that somewhat rivals portions of Half-Life 1.

Unfortunately, the gameplay and level design has been gutted as far back as the early levels. The early levels were never too interesting in HL1 which is a shame, but your movement has been relegated to slowwalk or sprint, and neither is faster or as satisfying as the old bunnyhop. This leads to many several stretches of boring level design being unable to just be sped fast by utilizing your once interesting movement. The vortigants do have new tricks that are nice, in that they sidestep your aim and fire, as well as a new ability to compensate. But overall, you're far more overpowered for the obstacles ahead to a point where the game is significantly easier than the original.

I'm just clearing Blast Pit, and overall I think it's not looking to be a pretty good fps as I would've liked. There's of course, still the later levels where HL1 peaked and the redone Xen, so many of what I'm saying could change from now. But it's still unfortunate that of all the things to keep, they kept HL1's lowest points, with unnecessary downtime and didn't retool the levels to be more interesting and with FAR more enemies with your slower movement.