I dont really mind the tentacle not being there, going the other way could be presented a little better though. The mines definatly should be invisible or extremely difficult to see, as it is theres no challenge whatsoever.
What I really miss is the gunship, the helicopter should be dogging your tail in this section. Its part of the sequence, first shows up at the dam where you chase it off, continues to dog through this section then you finally toast it in the next section (cliffs)
That’s a good thing. Trial and error is an utterly terrible thing to include in any game.
this.
the only reason old games had trial and error coz it was imposible to make anything else, they made it as “hard” but infact it is not hard it is just trial and error u will fail playing for first time not bcoz you suck and have no skill but bcoz game makes u fail whit unfrair stuff. And since games are very young indurstry and developing and growing every day it changes for the best. insted of trial and error now games are making u to think and use skills appropiat for that genre, and u will fail not coz of the game unfair but coz u actualy failed.
ps. Hi OBE. and one path in your map should be taken away or make harder (the one u did in your stream). imo it just defeats the quality of other paths and the puzzle in all. but that just me, and it is one of the most enjoyable(w/e it is spelt xD) parts of the BMS.
I liked the new mines. They’re fairly easy to see, but not so easy to see that you won’t walk into them if you’re not paying attention (or is that just me?). It’s also fun to lure headcrabs into them.
What? Black Mesa is absolutely riddled with trial and error. As was Half-Life. Trial and error is not inherently bad.
Yeah but forgetting what he said, 90% of things in BM and HL1 are possible without trial and error to some extent at least.
The mines in Half-Life, however, are not - if you don’t lob a grenade or manage to get an extremely lucky shot, you will die. You have no idea how to navigate around them, it’s based on luck the first time if you do manage to make it past one of them.
Throwing grenades to clear a specifically designated minefield isn’t trial and error though. Walking out into the open and getting shot in the back by a sniper you had no idea would be there is trial and error.
That’s why they added laser sights. And why I said 90%.
A lot of people didn’t know the first time through HL that you were supposed to throw grenades at them, or they already used up a lot of them in other situations.
And that’s why the game provides you with grenades and shows you the minefield signs. The point is, by the time you see the sniper’s laser sight on your first playthrough, he will have shot you. If you make the decision to walk out into a blatantly signed minefield despite warnings given beforehand, that is entirely on you.
No, he won’t have. The scientist gets shot before you even get in the sniper’s range, and his laser sight stays on indefinitely, showing you clearly where he is before he can shoot at you.
Now that you mention it, there was an awful lot missing from the original, but I still enjoy the new version. I don’t see anything wrong with the mines or anything else, if I’m honest. I actually liked the visible mines. The random running through nothing and getting blown up in the original was just annoying, and wasn’t fun at all.
And the 2 following that? Their sights appear after you’re already in the open. There’s no sign saying “lol btw snipers here” a la the minefield, which is my point. One is clearly trial and error, one isn’t. All of which is rather irrelevant, seeing as trial and error isn’t bad just because it’s now become a buzzword in modern gaming that some people apparently cringe upon hearing.
I would disagree. It’s still possible to get a view of his laser before he shoots you, unlike the one in Half-Life which always hits. They also don’t fire too quickly, so it is possible to move before he gets you.
Isn’t that entirely on you then, since the whole purpose of that sequence is to introduce them and prepare you for when you don’t have someone dying to warn you of your presence? The game never introduces just one enemy and then forgets about them until a completely different section.
Surface Tension left me wanting for more 
the tripmine warehouse was awsome imo, felt like that one part in hl2’s overwatch nexus
as for the “tentacle/minefield part” i agree, it was a very memorable area for me in hl1 (and especially freeman’s mind 
) mostly because of how non-linear it felt (i remember crawling through the rocks to sneak past HECU soldiers or to hide from the chopper)
speaking of which, they also removed the chopper that would hunt you down during the area mentioned above
I just played through Surface Tension in Half-Life and I think the biggest problem with the parts that were cut for this mod isn’t so much that they are amazingly fun or memorable, but that they really are a big part of the storyline.
The part with the mounted gun where you have to gun down at least fifteen vortigaunts teleporting in is followed by a room with a HECU body strung up by rebar on the ceiling. You use one of the alien jump pads to get up on a ledge of a severely destroyed building and witness two more HECU being pinned down by a vort and an alien grunt.
After this is the snark section where you drop down from the vent and kill the guys in the garage. You can tell the marines are getting jumpy at this point by them shooting up the vents just from hearing something. Then there’s a few on a cannon that you have to kill and use the cannon to break a hole in the wall where there are two more alien grunts. You get the feeling at this point that the aliens are literally everywhere and the HECU are starting to lose.
The next room is a giant battle between the HECU and alien grunts and a few vortiguants where a tank busts through the wall with marines coming out of it. The HECU loses this battle and after you cleanup the very next hallway has an alien grunt tossing a marine through a concrete wall.
After that you drop down on two marines hiding in a mostly destroyed building from an alien grunt and a few vortigaunts. There’s yet another alien grunt way up on the roof of that building. You use the jump pad to go up and drop inside and go into the pipe that a marine throws a satchel charge into. After killing him the next room is a bunch of HECU running around like crazy trying to avoid multiple headcrabs.
By the way there’s alien terrain scattered throughout the buildings in this chapter. From multiple defunct jump pads to webbing in the corners etc. I like to think of it as the creep from starcraft. The whole area is clearly being taken over by the aliens.
After getting the guard to open the door to the garage area the gargantua completely gibs two marines against a wall by pushing a vehicle into them.
Needless to say the HECU is getting slaughtered at this point. There are a bunch of small numbers of them cut off at every turn by aliens. The entire point of the last half of Surface Tension is to show how badly the HECU are losing at this part of the story. This is why the cut parts of the map are so important as Forget about Freeman is the next chapter.
I’m talking about the ones in Half-Life. An example of something similar from Black Mesa would the turret that’s in the back of the truck.
No, because the game doesn’t point you to those specific spots where the snipers are holed up, so on one’s first playthrough it’s hardly expected you’ll be scouring the area to the point where you’ll locate and kill them before you trigger their lasers and are shot. The minefield is shoved in your face and grenades are thrust into your hand, the game practically beats you over the head with what you’re supposed to do.
I do kinda miss the cut bit of Surface Tension for the same reasons said earlier…it sets the scene for the HECU retreating out of the facility. Still, being dropped in front of an angry garg is worth it for the sheer fun value. Not sure how that’d be done if the missing area was added again.
And I actually really like the visible mines. If they were invisible, you wouldn’t be able to throw dead headcrabs at them, or lead the living ones into them. I’ve set up really nice combos of “throw dead headcrab into mine, blowing up a live headcrab and throwing another one into a second mine”. They could live with being just a little less visible,but making them too hard to see would kill the fun of throwing corpses at them. Which is a perfectly viable tactic right now.
They don’t even have to make the cut passages back to the chapters, that’s a lot of work… some enemy placement-rearrangement and more scripted sequences is the answer.
Founded in 2004, Leakfree.org became one of the first online communities dedicated to Valve’s Source engine development. It is more famously known for the formation of Black Mesa: Source under the 'Leakfree Modification Team' handle in September 2004.