i've just played black mesa for the first time

Black Mesa Archive The Cafeteria
#1

i’ve never followed black mesa closely, just bought it and gave it a playthrough. man, what a great purchase!

it stayed true to the original but also added more complex NPC interaction (you keep this guy alive, he has a conversation with that guy and so on).

it also smoothed out areas that i always found tedious, like the Lambda reactor teleports, pretty much all of residue processing, overall just great work. i am a little sad one of my favorite scripted moments - soldier tossing a satchel charge into a pipe - didn’t make the cut, but cest la vie.

after i saw news of an update on Steam, and the comments were just pages and pages of banal self-involved complaints, i just wanted to come in and thank the team for how awesome this work is. thanks for giving fans a breath of fresh air for an all time classic.

#2

That pipe part is in the cut areas of Surface Tension. A mod called Surface Tension Uncut recreates all the missing parts of Surface Tension including that scene. The maps were made in 2013 and are pretty buggy when used with the Steam version but IIRC soon they will be added to the campaign (if not, they will be on the workshop). There’s also On A Rail Uncut, and I’ve used those maps on the Steam version without encountering any bugs.

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.