Hi guys!
First of all, I would like to say that Black Mesa is really amazing. You have done a great job. I say it as a gamer who played Half-Life for the first time 8 years ago and I have had regular contact with it since then.
I have played Black Mesa for a few hours already and these are things I have noticed, things that could improve the game:
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Normal difficulty is too difficult. I am an experienced gamer and while playing on this difficulty I had about 1-5 HP most of the time and had to keep on reloading the game. I changed the difficulty level to easy at one point and since then it was way more enjoyable to play BM. The easy level is the most balanced one. Actually, the easy difficulty should be the normal difficulty, and the normal difficulty should be the hard difficulty.
Also, what I have noticed and I think it’s very important about the difficulty level is that the enemy soldiers shoot you instantly when they see you (the player has less than half a second to react), they almost always if not always hit you at first sight and also when you do not move. In other words, their accuracy is way to high at first sight situations and when the player does not move (but this might seem natural). Another thing about the AI is that after you shoot or do something that could alarm them, they immediately know where you are. There is no way to surprise them. Connected with their first sight accuracy, there are many situations, when your location is somehow discovered and you are shot immediately. It’s obviously wrong. It should look like this, that for example you shoot with your weapon from behind a cover, they are alarmed, but don’t know where you are, they try to search for you, and when you move out of the cover, they should be surprised, thus not shoot you immediately, but take some time to react. -
I don’t know the chapter’s name, but when you see a soldier for the first time, that soldier kills a scientist. You see this scene from above. There is a container which seems could be dropped on the soldier’s head by pressing a button, but the button did not work for me. There was no reaction while pressing it.
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Jumping is quite troublesome. It’s not that bad, because it seems more realistic, nevertheless I think the classic jumping style was better.
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The glock pistol lacks the quick fire mode that we had in Half-Life.
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I really like the way you zoom the view with a revolver. Regardless some people might say, I am convinced this should be copied to other weapons as well.
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It is amazing how the scientists’ looks differ so much, but it would be twice that good, if every single one would look different. I know this might be a hard and demanding thing to do, but it would make a huge impression on players (I know because I had this impression until I realised some scientists look the same). Oh, and I loved those women in Black Mesa.
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The ability to walk slowly (without making any noise) like in Half-Life would be nice and useful in some situations.
- The way your suit and weapons become covered in blood is fantastic.
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I would like to see things written on blackboards and generally other written things that you could read in game to be in higher resolution. Those are things that attract player’s attention and it’s a little disappointing when you can’t read them well because of the low resolution textures. It also makes the game less realistic (seeing pixels does it).
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It is almost impossible to avoid bullsquid’s long range attack (he shoots acid I guess). In Half-Life it was quite an easy thing to avoid it. I think it was better in Half-Life, because in Black Mesa he always hits you and it’s just irritating.
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I hope you will be updating Black Mesa using automatic Steam updates. I guess some non Steam download mirrors will also be necessary, but Steam updates are the priority.