A section of the game just not to your liking? Tell us what your least favourite chapter was and why.
Mine would be Residue Processing.
Conveyor belt mazes are still plentiful, and in the larger portions of the factory there are few ladders to use for backtracking after miscalculating a jump. Whoever was in charge of these levels probably aimed to stay true to the original, which they did very well, but some of these parts of could have benefit from a little reinventing.
Mine has to be Surface Tension. It felt like the only truly “rushed” chapter in the entire game. The specific sequence in which you’re crawling through the vent which gets peppered with bullets, the oddly blurry orange light peering through the holes looked really bizarre, low-quality and really quite out of place in contrast to how beautiful the rest of the game is. And then the vent floor just “breaks” rather suddenly and it feels a little… I don’t know, stiff? And then you get to the radio with the airstrike/mortar bit and the touch-screen is flickering and buggy, the Gargantua is shaking your view all over the place and you’re mashing away at the unresponsive touch screen a dozen times before finally killing the thing and moving on.
When I look back on that part, on both my playthroughs, that’s truly the only real “rough patch” in the entire game. The rest of Surface Tension is absolutely fantastic even, but that 2-3 minute section really puts a dampener on the whole thing, for me.
In the old Half-Life there were some chapters that I could easily point out as being utter shit. But in Black Mesa they did a pretty good job of balancing out the chapters so that they all stand pretty well on their own. But if I were forced to pick a least favorite I would have to agree with residue processing.
I really don’t have any least favorite chapter. I also liked the touchscreen mortar “co-ordinator” however I didn’t experience the flickering textures on the touchscreen, the display was crisp.It was waaaay better than the original imo. However the orange light-shafts really felt weird.
I wasn’t too fond of the middle of Surface Tension… while the dam and cliffside were so true to the original and were awesome, the section in between just felt really wrong. It was boring and didn’t have any of the charm that the original section had. I didn’t get to go running around hiding under rocks. 
The other part I wasn’t the most fond of was the first half of Lambda Core. It’s a giant god damn maze… and this is one of the few places where I think the added detail is a detriment. The 15,000 catwalks and ladders and passageways make an already confusing puzzle even more bewildering. It’s easy to just wander around and get lost, even if you know exactly what you’re supposed to be doing.
As always though, the mod was insane, better than a lot of AAA titles out there today… but nothing is perfect.
Yeah. I honestly felt like the coolant pumps and tanks in lambda core were insanely complicated in overall design. They didn’t even look very good, with catwalks and fences and pipes and boxes all over the place. They at least kept the white-with-orange & blue color setup, but there were several different shades of those colors all around, which really kinda ruined the effect IMO.
I didnt get that impression at all of Lambda Core… my least favourite was probably On a Rail… but i still like it more than the original (just my opinion!)
The snark vent that leads to the sudden garg encounter felt silly to me.
Oh yeah, I loved the idea of the touch screen. Far better than the 2 levers in the original, but it was really buggy and spoiled what should have been an awesome upgrade from HL for me.
residue processing… i already didnt like it in the original half life… they should have cut this chapter, instead of surface tension… btw: mortar screen was buggy for me too.
Residue Processing and Lambda Core would benefit from more subtle guidance. More signals in Residue Processing, and maybe some communication with the scientist in Lambda Core to remember where to go. I don’t have problem exploring but many people feel frustrated with this things.
Surface Tension is great, just that a lot of things are missing…what a pity, because it’s the most epic chapter in the game.
Lambda Core was probably the only place I actually felt lost/stuck. But the fact that I got lost and stuck is just a testament to the level of detail and the expansiveness of the level design.
Lambda Core coolant puzzles were the most confusing and unnavigable areas ever.
Let me guess: Coolant Unit 02?
Hints missing I guess. FPS are just too linear in PC nowadays. Hell, backtracking has a bad rap this days (even when you have games like Metroid Prime, Castlevania or Darksiders that do it well).
There were signs in the coolant puzzle to orient yourself but required to hear the scientist carefully to be useful…you know, like in real life.
Is there a youtube vid of this somewhere? The touchscreen works flawlessly for me. I want to see how it looks for someone who is seeing a problem with it.
Also, I still don’t like residue processing. It’s better than it was. I still don’t like the jumping and navigation though.
On A Rail. It was just so short and I was excited to see a lot of the cool things from the original, but 90% of it was cut and made to be extremely streamlined and linear. You didn’t get the feel of going through an old monorail system broken down from the residence cascade and filled with aliens and army. I think I plugged like one plug in a wall that was unplugged lol otherwise the place was spotless clean.
There were no tripmine traps, no dynamite on the walls traps, no mounted gun sandbag traps, the guy who shoots rockets at you etc. also the rocket building felt a little weird. Why would the only entrance be an underground tunnel that leads to a glass wall? There was also no trap here either. It’s like the army didn’t even want to get freeman that badly. That whole chapter was just meh to be honest.
Strange, I didn’t have any trouble navigating Lambda Core. I thought it was pretty simple to get around and figure out what to do.
Yes.
Goddamn elevators to nowhere and half-locked doors. >
I hated that part so much. There was just so much stuff in the level design that didn’t even make sense.
Case in point, there was that one elevator that went down next to another elevator that only accessed a door in the wall? What the heck was that about?
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.