So, I just finished the current iteration of Black Mesa.
Wow. As it currently stands, 8.5/10. I ran into a couple of scripting issues, the change made to the creature of my nightmares is a strange kind of unfortunate, and every damn jump is a crouch jump, also, there were a couple of spots that just stood out as, “Why did you do that?”
But at the same time.
This mod is better than most AAA games in the market today. With professional level voice acting, visuals, modeling, texturing, lighting, map design, streamlining of almost all of Half Life’s old problems, excellent odes to the original game (Such as the voices themselves being perfect impressions, and how cheesy the marine dialogue is, just like the original) and the sheer attention to detail is just absolutely astounding. It was both fun, oddly original, and really, really something else to play.
Half-Life had a major impact on me as a kid, most notably defining my biggest fears in life (Falling, swimming, sharks, drowning), and introducing me to the genre I would end up playing the most.
To see that original game from 1998 treated with such respect with a remake that came out roughly 14 years ago, when I was but a wee child of six years old, to see it given such an amazing remake that took almost eight years to make was just brilliant.
A majority of changes were good, most welcome, a couple not so much, and a couple kind of irritating but understandable. Each memorable moment of Half-Life was recreated with a particular creative, new flair that made these just as memorable as the original’s.
If I were to tell somebody to play Half-Life as a series today, I would tell them to -buy- Half-Life 2, and download Black Mesa instead of playing the original, it’s that good, that comparable in quality.
The only true, honest to god downside to Black Mesa, is the fact that it’s not quite finished yet. The final, hardest chapter of the game, Xen, has yet to be completed, but this is okay. Black Mesa could honestly end at the teleporter in the Lambda Complex.
But I digress. I wish to see the final chapter created. I wish to see their take on it, and see if it can be done justice. Don’t make it easier, Black Mesa team. I love your recreation of this game, and I want to see the rest.
As a note, if the issues I ran into, like the horrible Apache battle sequence (Really, it was god awful.) and one particular, “I wasn’t here but now I am, and I didn’t even teleport! RAR!” problems are fixed, the score will be raised to a 9/10.
And if Xen is done justice, an extremely solid 9.5/10. Unless they literally fix everything. Then I’d be tempted to 10/10 it. But that’s really really daring.
Note: I’ll be glad to elaborate on everything I thought given the go ahead.