Regardless, you act as if the snipers are impossible to find, which they aren’t. My first playthrough of that part I didn’t get shot by either sniper, because the laser 9 times out of 10 will appear in front of you and then swing towards you instead of just being a spot on hit like in HL1, and even so they can’t hit you if you sprint and move away from the laser
You walk into an abandoned parking garage with a few simple Xen enemies like headcrabs and bullsquids in it. If you’re a new player, you charge forwards and attack. If you’re an old player, you look around for the Garg that you know is in the section. Then you hear a muffled Garg flamethrower sound… coming from under you, and it winds up collapsing the ceiling of its floor/the floor of yours, leaving you to scramble out of the rubble and run away from the Garg.
So the answer is… clusterfuck?
I might be a little late to the game, but I think the best solution to the landmines part of surface tension might have been to make them Bouncing Betty mines. it may not be Vietnam, but they would be an interesting gameplay compromise. They would be invisible initially like in Half-life (but still possible to shoot to explode), and when stepped on, instead of exploding outright, they would pop up with a ping noise to chest level and explode horizontally. This way, if the player has quick reflexes, they can make mistakes and step on the mine and still survive by crouching when they hear the ping, but also have the challenge of invisible mines.
Surface Tension after getting the Snarks starts to get tedious, seeing as the chapter is very long in the original. (next in line to OAR)
It’s pretty much like broken building after broken building, concrete corridor after concrete corridor… The only key thing in that part of the chapter was relationship with the Aliens and the HECU. They need to add more strength to that relationship since they cut that part of the chapter where it was really apparent. For example, you go into a big warehouse-like building where the HECU crash through a wall and begin engaging the Alien Grunts. Or you go through the pipe where the Grunt threw the satchel, and you end up in a small room with assortments of pipes, where you see the HECU get bullied by packs of headcrabs. Add more Xen Vs. Military situations to that chapter, it really gives the impression that Xen and Freeman are closing in on the military, and the military is losing, so all of their effort is to just resort to airstrikes, which builds the key points to the next chapter, “Forget About Freeman!”
I actually would really like this
So is something as unrealistic as landmines that are clearly visible.
The landmines in HL weren’t that hard to navigate. As long as you were careful (and smart) they really weren’t much of an obstacle. It only became trial and error if you were dumb enough to walk through an area without testing it first with bullets or a grenade, etc.
What’s to stop the player from crouching the entire way through the mines?
If I were remaking Half-Life (make no mistake, I’m not equating myself with the BM devs, they’re obviously much better developers than me since, y’know, they actually developed something) I would solve the “Surface Tension outstays its welcome and gets boring by the end” problem by making it longer, splitting it into two chapters, giving each one a different narrative focus, and adding some more standout set pieces. I’m not sure what I would call the first chapter - maybe Cliff Hanger, from the really old HL1 prerelease video, albeit that might not fit, as the entire chapter doesn’t happen on the cliffside. It would focus on the military’s dominance over the BMRF, and would feature the toughest HECU battles in the game. The second of the two chapters, Surface Tension, would make it gradually more obvious that the HECU is, in fact, losing, full of battles between the HECU and the aliens that the HECU cannot win. I’ve thought of two new set pieces already, and one of them is detailed enough in my mind that I’m going to describe it.
I’m thinking that the end of the first chapter/the start of Surface Tension would be Gordon getting on a glitchy, military-hijacked tram, going through a quick rail shooter segment, and then having the entire tram blown downards into a HECU ambush by preplaced satchel charges. The way the tram crashes leaves Gordon trapped, but covered from any kind of fire, though, and as the soldiers are about to clean up the rubble, and, presumably, find and kill Gordon, teleportation noises are heard, and the soldiers are caught in a fight with alien forces. The aliens win the fight and then break open the crashed tram (at which point you kill them.)
Am I the only person who hates how in every game now Snipers are so obvious? I hate laser sights and obvious glare/lens or whatever.
I think just putting a tracer on the round is enough, but you don’t even need to go that far.
I mean, in HL you get a scripted scene to televise the sniper’s presence and elsewhere in the level you can spot them too if you are very observant.
Even in HL2 I never felt the laser sight was necessary, especially when the sniper’s were getting board and shooting physics objects and crows.
Maybe crouching will cause them to explode in the ground?
Yes, and welcome back, you have been missed.
It is dissapointing that there wasn’t another tentacle to fight, but despite that, Surface Tension is hands down my favourite chapter of Black Mesa. It’s just awesome from start to finish and I’ve loaded up the game a number of times just to replay through that section again. Beautiful vistas, nice variety in gameplay scenarios, great environment with a couple of nice hidden areas… The only major disappointments are how badly they handled calling in mortar strikes at the finale and the aimbotting soldiers. But those black marks pale in comparison to the 90% of gaming bliss that is the rest of the chapter, and can be addressed in a patch.
Hopefully we’ll get a proper mission statement from the BMS team sometime about how they’re going to proceed from here. Will they continue to add content to the existing earthbound levels? Or just dutifully bugfix and give us Xen? The devs have to be the biggest Half Life fans in existence, so I’m sure they’d love to restore the cut sequences as much as we’d love them back. It’s just if they have the manpower, I guess.
I didn’t die ONCE because of jumping heights, so i can’t fucking understand why literally EVERYONE is so mad about it. Including the warehouse. ST was okay, especially dat feel when you get outta the tube, in my opinion.
No I don’t. They’re easy to find. The point I’m making is that back in 1998, on our first playthroughs of Half-Life, none of us looked up and saw that camo netting and went “I bet there’s a sniper up there, better throw a grenade up there before I trigger it.” Yet we all saw that sign that specifically tells you you’re about to enter a minefield, and we all picked those grenades up and knew exactly what the game intended us to do with them.
That’s my point. One is an example of trial and error in which you will more than likely take damage purely because you didn’t know you were in danger, one has clear signs warning you of the danger.
Of course we dodged the snipers in Black Mesa, because we all knew that they were there. But did you dodge the turret in the back of the truck, that you had no idea would be there? No, no you didn’t.
Not to mention that epic fight in the warehouses filled with HECU and alien grunts. There were some amazing moments in that fight like the HECU that gets thrown through the wall by an alien grunt and the LAV bursts through into the warehouse and troops pour out. That was epic and sorely missed by me.
There’s another interesting topic around here about Surface Tension lacking the sense of a Xen invasion. In the original, Xen fungus and plants are popping up all over the place and the buildings get more and more destroyed. In Black Mesa, as amazing as it is (and it is), they cut out literally half the level and it was left feeling lacklustre.
But it was useful and interesting to see it in the open and attacking other forms of life. Plus, I played it once and the Tentacle took out the helicopter. That was amazing to watch.
I like this idea. The mines in BM were incredibly obvious and remarkably underpowered. I blew one up close to me and it felt like it has less power than a grenade, when I wanted it to be far more powerful.
Mines are meant to create tension and force the player to be slow and methodical. These did not and were more of a nuisance than genuinely frightening. Perhaps change the model to be simply a small pressure-pad on the surface, nothing more. Visible, but not so visible that you can see them all at once.
I must say that I like this chapter but at the same time I’m disappointed. In “On A Rail” I did not miss the cut content, but the Tentacle Fight, the ware house fight, the grenade in that pipe and probably more scenes were really memorable moments. If the devs cannot find enough man power, I’d suggest they should release the important source files for that chapter so that the community can recreate the missing moments. They would really enhance the experience in Surface Tension.
Furthermore, I have to agree with you on the mines. They really should be less visible for the player. In Half-Life 1, you had to throw grenades intelligently to kill most mines and then move from explosion decal to explosion decal. But since you could not see the mines, this created a lot of tension. In Black Mesa, you throw some grenades and kill the rest of the mines with the glock. It’s just an annoying shooting exercise. And they are underpowered.
On top of that, Surface Tension has quite a few bugs. For example, the dam has obvious map leaks.
The boobytrapped warehouse is hilarious. I ended up doing it 100+ times because I forgot to kill a headcrab and it was walking around setting one of the traps off all the time.
Another time, one of the boxes I broke a piece of wood kept falling on one of the traps.
Just whore the F6 button every time you make a jump successfully, and stop complaining.
if u do fast (like i and dev did in speed runs) the head crab jumps on u, and u run fast at the best path and u go out of there the crab wont have time to touch it. he wanders around
I have also noticed some bad mapping/not-textured holes in walls in the chapter