Heya! I wrote this review for a website called validgaming.com, but I’m not quite sure if I’m allowed to only post the link, so rather than do that, I’ll post the entire review here, and you can go check it out on the website if you feel like it. Every view helps us! Thanks! - Lachlan.
Half Life is one of gaming’s most celebrated series, and has been the foundation for much of gaming today. Without Half-Life, there would be no Counter Strike, Team-Fortress or Steam. Valve wouldn’t be the gigantic behemoth that it has become, and Half Life 2 wouldn’t go on to become one of the greatest games of all time. The release of Half Life in 1998 would bring about a more streamlined and story-based first-person shooter, and players would experience the Resonance Cascade disaster through the eyes of Gordon Freeman, who would go on to become one of the most celebrated protagonists, despite never speaking.
With all this in mind, it is apparent that, whichever way you look at it, Half Life was one of the most important games in our generation. It only makes sense that somebody out there would try to remake it, with more modern technology, and the upgraded Source engine. I don’t think that anybody expected it to be better.
Black Mesa (Originally Black Mesa: Source) is a community remake of the original Half Life, utilizing the updated tools of the Source engine. It differs from Valve’s own Source port in that it re-imagines the original to an extent. The team have altered parts of the game to appeal to a wider audience. For the most part, these changes are actually welcome, and the subtle differences are scattered throughout the environment and details, all adding up to make an experience nothing short of brilliant.
For those unfamiliar with the story of Half Life, it starts off like any other day for Gordon Freeman, however things soon turn pear-shaped as an experiment goes wrong, resulting in a Resonance Cascade Scenario. Basically, this means that a lot of angry aliens come and try to kill you and be generally angry. Soon after, the military (in stereotypical fashion), try to contain the situation by killing everything involved, which only serves to further annoy the aliens. That’s really as far as I can go without spoiling anything, however you pretty much play Gordon as he tries to escape the Black Mesa Research Facility, where this all took place.
The gameplay revolves around puzzle solving and platforming, with an exciting pace set by shooting sections in between. The puzzles aren’t anything too obscure or difficult, and serve to enhance the setting and the atmosphere to a larger extent. The shooting elements are nothing fantastic, and nothing that wasn’t seen before in Quake two years beforehand. Platforming is interesting, however the difficulty only increases due to the control scheme, which uses a combination of crouching and jumping for a lot of puzzles. These small gripes were easily forgivable fourteen years ago though, since the FPS genre was still being developed, and evolving from the days of Doom.
The team behind Black Mesa have tried to combine the best of the old and the new, however all of the complaints that you may have had with the first game haven’t necissarily been fixed, merely altered. The focus has changed to creating everything on a bigger scale. The atmosphere, graphics, puzzles, physics, and even the feel of the game have all been improved, showcasing what a dedicated team of fans can create in the long term. The Black Mesa: Source project has been in the works since as early as 2004, with the first official team being created in 2005. The mod has been worked on ever since, and it shows.
Even on the introductory train-ride into the research labs, you can tell that a lot of thought has gone into making this a bigger game. The environments just seem huge compared to their original forms, and the new animations and textures really bring the world to life. All of the voice acting and music is top notch as well, just showing the level of detail that the team set out to achieve in all aspects of the game. Even the combat sections are given a lot more life, as the firefights become way more action-oriented and fun to play thanks to the fluidity in Gordon’s movement that just wasn’t present the first time around.
It is important to know that the entire mod hasn’t been finished just yet though. For those familiar with the story, the mod ends when you reach the Lambda Core, which means no extraterrestrial Gordon just yet. However, this does mean that the entire Black Mesa compound is included, resulting in roughly nine hours of gameplay. Although it doesn’t sound like much compared to the original, it should be noted that this is because Black Mesa is a much more enjoyable and accessable experience. Puzzles and platforming have been optimized to make them easier, or at least make more sense. This leaves you dumbfounded much less often, which means that you will progress at a slightly faster rate.
Black Mesa also highlights the atmosphere that the original game struggled to achieve in the long term. This was most likely due to the technical limitations at the time, but with today’s technology, the team were able to use advanced lighting and props to create a very horror-esque setting. The begginning of the game actually reminded me of the first scene in the Resident Evil movie, where all the scientists are panicking and trying to escape, only to meet certain doom.
Black Mesa impresses me on so many levels. For one, I have never seen my friends list on Steam be concurrently filled with 50% of my friends all playing the same game, even with Team Fortress 2 being free. It’s obvious that this release is going to make an impact as one of the most important mod releases of all time. Black Mesa has already been accepted as an upcoming release via Steam Green-light, as voted by the community.
I want to close by emphasizing that people aren’t going to get a different game from Black Mesa. It is still Half Life, and the little gripes that you had will most likely still exist, however I do not see myself going back to play the original now, because Black Mesa just offers a better version of the same game.
Thanks for reading! Please let me know what you think, and feel free to leave a comment, or view the post at https://validgaming.com/black-mesa-review/
Have a good day! 
