Incredible Awesome Features Thread

Black Mesa Archive The Cafeteria
#1

So Mont Blanc talked about an incredibly awesome features thread on the incredible minor gripe thread and I decided to make it :smiley: .

One feature I really loved was in the start, when the guard commented on that you cut your ponytail.

#2

Alright, let’s do this.

It’s incredibly awesome how much dialogue is in Anomalous materials. I actually didn’t hear all of it until my third or fourth playthrough, when I finally decided to backtrack a bit after getting the suit. There were at least three conversations that I hadn’t noticed before.

It’s nice to hear them express themselves a bit more before I start laying tripmines everywhere and watching the gibs fly.

I also really, really love the gargantua. It may not be as bulky as the original, but it’s just as terrifying, maybe even more so. That big glowing eye it has is just awesome. And its death scene was really satisfying.

Oh, also I like the pools of blood under dead NPCs. It makes the aftermath of a big fight look just that much messier.

#3

I also liked the huge amount of dialogue and choreo in Anomalous Materials. It must’ve taken me near an hour to get to the test chamber. So fired.

Do I even have to mention Questionable Ethics? That was just the best chapter.

FCS. That added some pretty nice variety in faces. Even small facial variations seem to make a huge impact (unless you get that dreaded face with the mustache. You can always tell it’s that guy).

#4

I loved AM, QE and most of all Blast Pit! That fuckin tentackle thingy was so much more awesome (awesomer?) in BM than in the original HL :smiley:

I also loved the noise on the screen when near toxic waste, and the gib system!

#5

Blood pools under bodies is a nice nostalgia moment, always thinking back to Turok2.

Picking up gibs is also awesome :slight_smile:

#6

I really hated Questionable Ethics in the original HL. I thought of it as more boring than Xen, but whatever the BM team did, they made it one of my favourite chapters.

#7

I enjoyed the soundtrack, how they made OAR shorter, how the houndeyes are not a worthless enemy any more and the fight at the end of QE.

I like the blood pools under the bodies too but I discovered a bug about them, if an explosion kills a soldier and he doesn’t gib but flies away, the blood pool will appear in the first place he touches the floor even if he rebounds a couple of feet away from that point before stopping completely.

#8

In the original HL QE kind of just happened for me. It really wasn’t memorable. BMS does a fantastic job of making it stand out.
I did a second play through of AM today and spent ages hitting E on every character until they ran out of dialogue…which was a surprisingly large amount.

#9

The hgrunts voice acting (yeah, seriously!), and all the other voice acting in general. Debeerguy and CornetTheory voices are astonishing similar the original voices.

The attention to every little detail on level design.

Weapons smeared in blood/xenian blood/bullsquid’s glowing goo. Oh… and did I mention the bullsquid’s glowing goo?

#10

If the BM tentacles actually made something that can be called noise when they smash the platforms in the silo, it would have edged them over the HL1 ones for me.

#11

I love the “random” dialouge between npcs. How if you have “X” npc in your party and you reach “X” moment, the npcs will have new dialouge, like if you have that security guard with you when you reach the big ammo room in Surface Tension, the two guads chat, but if you go alone the guard just talks to you.

#12

The metal handrails in the tentacle silo get smashed when the tentacles hit them.

brilliant. Just brilliant. :evil:

#13

UC in general was really wicked, felt really cool going through those dark hallways full of zombies. Really awesome.

One of my favorite moments was at the Rocket Launch, that was really awesome and satisfying (Not to mention I loved OAR in general, while I hated it in Half life, I actually wish it was a bit longer in BM)

#14

The Rocket Lift puzzle was a great addition to On A Rail. Also, until the part where areas were skipped, Surface Tension was more memorable than in the original Half-Life.

#15

Yeah. The attention to detail with the computer-calculated physics sequences are truly nominal.

#16

The recreation of Half-Life 1, that’s a cool feature. (Not even kidding)

#17

Agreed. I feel like this mod’s very existence is basically a miracle. I mean, it’s a total recreation of one of the greatest shooters ever made… developed by a small team of unpaid modders over the course of 8 years. And instead of dying or falling prey to its own ambition, they basically pulled it off. How did the universe allow such a thing to happen?

Also, another awesome feature is the lighting in On A Rail. It really adds to the atmosphere, and it makes me wish that chapter was longer.

#18

My favorite is in Anomalous Materials when you destroy the casserole - the guard tells you to “make like an atom and split.” If you keep talking to the guard he goes on:

“You better make like a baby and head out”
“You better make like traffic and jam”
etc for like 10 lines.

#19

“you better make like a prom dress and take off”

#20

I agree with almost every awesome thing stated so far.
As for my own thing, I thought it was pretty awesome for the tram to have a dead man’s switch (failsafe). Hell, I missed that there was a checkbox in the options for it until after OAR, lol… That was one thing that pissed me off about HL - you’d be cookin’ along and BAM, you jump off/fall off/get knocked of the tram and it just leaves you in the dust.

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