I love the entire game from beginning to “end”, the complaints about it being too hard are from people who play it like Half Life 2, when it should be played more like DOOM.
The only thing I would change is the crowbar animation and buff the SMG slightly.
I thought the mp5 was fine, but it is balls against the HECU. there are much better weapons for dealing with them though.
Yeah thats what I mean, maybe buff the headshot damage for it.
Agreed, my only problem was the apache, and to be fair that was more me not expecting the infinite ammo crate to exist let alone recognise it. Still frustrating rather than fun, but otherwise yeah, this game is a good difficulty.
After all, I’m a theoretical physicist fighting the military (and aliens) - it shouldn’t be easy.
Considering it’s the third (forth?) firearm you get, I’d say it shouldn’t really be a great weapon against one of the harder enemies. I usually use the revolver or crossbow and shotgun when they get close plus grenades.
I agree with OP’s assessment of the difficulty curve. You can’t play it like Half-Life or Half-Life 2, but it’s still fun and possible if you’re willing to adapt your strategy.
Yeah MP5 definitely sucks so I use the Magnum. If only the grenades could be thrown like real grenades I’d be a lot better off. Those things must weight 10 pounds
What do you mean like DOOM?
You mean by running in circles around the enemies??
That would definitely not work against the HECU. Or against the houndeyes. Or the Vortigaut. It may work somewhat against the Bullsquid, but the environment isn’t very advantageous for that considering their wide splash damage and obstacles like barrels that lay everywhere.
What I find slightly frustrating is the accuracy and speed reaction of HECU troops. On Surface Tension, for example, when two HECU troops are being dropped from the copter and I hide in the bunker, they almost kill me before I even see more than half of their lower body. In many occasions, I had to quicksave before a potential encounter, locate where they were, die, and next quick-load, start throwing a grenade or fire where I expect them to be before I even see them to have a chance to kill them fast enough.
For the record, I am playing on HARD, and I enjoy the extra challenge. But sometimes I feel their HP / damage is almost equal to mine and they always know in advance where I’ll show up. Come on now…
That’s another thing. Freeman can lift huge barrels of fuel, but he can’t throw a grenade further than a little girl? I have probably killed myself more often due to bad grenade throws than I’ve killed enemies with grenades. 
You should be able to throw a grenade as far as a baseball ball if you need to.
Well, either you never have played DOOM or you haven’t tried to battle the HECU with the usual DOOM tactics.
MP5 against the HGrunts works fine, IMO. A few bursts aimed at the upper torso = death since a good number will end up being headshots. It’s not the best but it has tons of ammo and a nice high rate of fire, and it’s a LOT easier to aim than it was back in HL1 since it no longer has a ridiculous recoil pattern.
I’m on “Forget about Freeman” on Hard and I think the damage / health numbers on the enemies are fine, but they’re just too hyper aware and never miss a shot. I played HL1 a bunch of times on Hard and they definitely kick your butt if you let them hit you, but you still got into cool firefights with them. In Black Mesa I feel like I can’t afford to get into an actual firefight with them, I need to go for insta-kills every time. So it’s not too hard in the sense that I can’t progress, but it’s a bit too hard in that I have to play the game in a way that’s less fun. I could drop the difficulty but then the enemies die too easily so they don’t live long enough to use their interesting behavior.
Also, the grenade throw is too weak and the explosion radius much too small.
And that’s a problem. I can see changing great chunks of the environments, skipping sections, adding sections, reshuffling what characters say or who they are… But if it doesn’t at least play like Half-Life, why are we even bothering with the surface veneer? The game doesn’t have to be a carbon-copy of Half-Life, but I was led to believe it would, at the very least, have something to do with the original.
This is turning into Star Control 3, and I don’t get the sense that this was the intention. From everything I’ve seen, Black Mesa was intended to be a new take on Half-Life with better visuals and mechanics, but with the feel of the old game intact, because that’s what made it good. Having to “play it like Doom” (the hell does that mean?) takes too much out of the experience.
edit
And yes, grenades feel too heavy, but they felt too heavy in the original. For some reason, grenades in Half-Life were the size of a pineapple. This is one place I wouldn’t mind Black Mesa deviating, if grenades weren’t as much of a pain to use. Sadly, most of my throws either hit the ceiling or fall short. About the only times I’ve had any luck with grenades was out in the open or when throwing them at people directly below me with right-click. What I wouldn’t give for a long-range underhand toss.
I feel this way too. The marines are too accurate so I had to go for revolver headshots and other instant kills all the time.
Yeah, coming from half life 2 to this, the difficulty is rather jarring. I was getting my ass handed to me when i first met the soldiers. I cant remeber if they were that tough in the original. its been years since i played it.
And yeah, the MP5 Definitely needs a buff
Yep the marines are too acurate and from too far a distance you get shot and the dameage is too much.
And I am stuck at the momment with the MP5 that does very little damage when gordon uses it.
It comes down to this either making the soldiers less acurate and deal less damage give them less health but too say that it is too challenging is perhaps how I feel because I have it on Easy settings and I am still being blown away.
Perhaps I am just crap at the game but trying to do the same area over an over for an hour is getting boring… I want to enjoy it but I think it’s getting too difficult
Count me in with the Its Too Hard club. Even on Easy there were too many enemies and not enough health stations. The only way I made it to the Blast Pit level was by cheating through the final segments of the previous level. It stops being fun when you die 20 times in a row in the same spot.
I am playing it on Hard and sometimes it is very hard however it’s not impossible. So please if you were to change the level of difficulty don’t. There’s nothing worse than an amazing looking/sounding game than an amazing looking/sounding dumbed down game because someone finds it too difficult!
i’ve played half life 1 start to finish over 20 times. in hl 1 mp5 was probably the best all around weapon. in black mesa i never used it because it was useless. i gave it a shot, but it costs way to much health and wastes ammo that can be better utilized with a glock.
it went from most used weapon to least used weapon.
for every enemy there is a better choice then the mp5. i dunno what difficulty you are playing, but a few bursts is not death on hard. 1 clip is rarely enough unless you’re in the soldiers face, which is a situation that makes other weapons better anyways.
the weapon wasn’t properly tested. this is also evident by a few unbalance sections like the soldier ambush in questionable ethics. i died many times there until i perfectly memorized all of the soldier locations and crossbow+gauss gunned them all down. any attempt to use the mp5 there wold end up with me dying.
in hl1 mp5 would have been the weapon of choice in this situation.
I understand that point but well I am finding it too difficult so there needs to be more options like easy normal hard ultra hard ridiculously hard.
Because Easy is too damn hard…
I just got some console commands and I am going to dumb it down that way… Hope it works
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.