Weapons Review

Black Mesa Archive The Cafeteria
#1

Long time lurker, first time poster. Let me start by saying “Thank you” for this incredible mod. Finished it yesterday, and I am thoroughly floored. I got to fall in love with Half-Life all over again. It was without question the BIGGEST does of nostalgia I’ve ever had.

The weapon selection in Half-Life was one of the more memorable aspects for me. And due to the fact that everyone seems to sounding off one specific weapons…I’ll give my take on the whole list.

Crowbar

  • Had no issues with it. Thought the animation, while different, was perfectly fine with me. Still good for vents, crabs and zombies.

Glock 17

  • Liked the new version a lot. No secondary mode, but it’s semi auto as quick as you can pull the trigger. Accurate, effective and your best friend through the starting levels.

.357 Magnum
-Loved it! Great animation (love the real world shells falling out when they get dumped. Secondary is a great re-imagining of the original’s zoom. Personally, never used it much as I know can zoom with the suit. That function was more to scout around for me. Seems to be more ammo for it throughout the game, and I certainly wasn’t complaining! My preferred weapon for HECU marines.

MP5
-I don’t get most of this hate towards the new version. Yes…you can’t snap off single shots. You’ll get a 3 round burst. And you know what? I like it. It helps nail those pesky Marines easier. Close range-hold it down. Mid range-burst into head. Rinse, repeat. Long range-use something else. The MP5 is NOT a perfect weapon. It’s not particularly damaging gun and the Marines seem to be better with it than you. But that was what I remember it being like in Half-Life! It only holds 30 rounds, but that just makes things more intense. I found myself liking it better as the game went along and I used it more. The model looks great to boot!

SPAS-12
-Good looking model. Shotgun is still very useful in the close up levels like Blast Pit. My new preferred method of dealing with Houndeyes now that they actually are a threat! Still wrecks faces at close range.

Crossbow
-The only model I didn’t love. I know the original was quite ugly, but maybe that was the problem…it had grown on me. Like the use of the real-world scope. With my playstyle, it’s used sparingly…so what little I did use, felt right on.

RPG
-Great update to the model! Felt suitably powerful in my hands. Now, if only that damn Apache wasn’t so nimble!

Tau Cannon
-Model was effective, and I loved the sounds during overcharge. Never really used it all that much, but it was cool.

Gluon Gun
-HOLY SHIT, YES! The effect on firing this thing brought a huge smile to my face. It now FEELS like you’re unleashing the dump valve on the Sun. Easily my new favorite! As soon as I got it, I never wanted to put it down.

Hive Hand
-I loved the initial animation when you first got it. Made me laugh so hard! Still kind of a kitch weapon, but overall it looked and worked great!

Throwable/Deployable

-Grenades flightplan felt a little odd, but it still worked for me. Love clearing mines with it.
-Satchels…never really used all that much.
-Trip mines…about the same.

Overall, I think you devs did a fantastic job! You should be very proud of your work. If you’ll excuse me, I’m off to play through again on Hard!

#2

Might just be me, but I find the satchels don’t throw far enough. Several times I tried to use them cunningly with guards or turrets that hadn’t seen me and they almost fall where I was standing rather than sliding towards them. The underarm grenade throws are much better, but they make the satchels quite pointless in that regard.

#3

I think I would agree with you on that. I remember them sliding more in HL. But now, I can deploy one, pick it up again and put it where I want.

#4

Yes, I agree the Satchel throwing range could be further. I found myself using them quite a bit, so they are okay.

BUT!!!: to all the devs, the Trip-mines are absolutely useless. Simply, BlackMesa’s gameplay doesn’t allow any practical application of them… maybe when camping in that hangar passage(or what’s that)upside in the room facing the helicopter, setting them there waiting for the Assassins to blow themselves :jizz:

#5

I pretty much agree with everything you said. Except I used the crossbow a ton, and it absolutely WRECKS.

#6

I love the Glock, but the fact that it doesn’t eject shells is really getting on my nerves.

#7

My feedback:

Crowbar: Is ok, but It seems the texture on the red parts is aligned in a wrong way.

9mmhandgun: Is ok, but the crosshair looks strange on 1920x1080

Magnum: The most overpowered gun in the game. ironsights are unprecise on far distances. when you aim via sight your shot won’t hit the middle but on the right edge of your corn. I don’t like how gordon holds the gun right in front of his face. please change the viewmodel-fov to HL2 default.

9mmar: nerfed too much, wasn’t fun to play. it was one of my favourite guns in HL1 but now it seems absolutely underpowered. I hope they will change the clipsize to 50 again (or speed up the reload). The flyarch of the grenades is rather like a Call of Duty- noobtube than the HL1 or HL1 grenadelauncher. Also… The low ammolimit of 3 nades always made me want to not use them (and be economical)…

Shotgun: The secondary firemode always seems too weak. I nearly always used primary mode because secondary was too unprecise and not effective enaugh.

Crossbow: The way the gun is hold looks really strange since there is some spacing between gordons thumb, the hand and the bow…
in-zoom-sensitivity is too fast… Now I play on 400dpi, sensitivity 2.0 and zoom_sensitivity_ratio 0.2… It’s alright then but bm never saves my settings (when I make changes using the console).
The worst thing about the crossbow is, that your bolts never spawn in the middle of your crosshair… When I want to shoot over a railing or some cover, mostly my bold hits my own cover. Even if I aim directly on my enemies (It’s the same problem with the 9mmar-grenadelauncher).

Tau-Cannon: It doesn’t make any splashdamage when shooting through walls (Check Tau-Cannon wallbang in HL1 and HL2… It always causes some explosion-like splashdamage behind the wall you spam (I think it must be radioactivity).

Satchels: Can’t throw them far enaugh.

Tripmines: Can’t plant them fast enaugh. (Rest is ok… I used them vs the assasins in lambda core)

Longjump-Module: Nice boost, but you generally don’t (with and without LJ-Module) jump high enaugh. While you were able to climb up 64x64-unit-crates in HL1, you rather seem to slide over the floor in BM.

#8

I didn’t know Glocks took shells, is there a 410 version of the Glock I am not aware about? I thought about getting the Glock 40 but those are just Glocknades really.

#9

Was the hive hand that effective in HL? You could litteraly just spammed a room from a hidden corner and kill everything in it. Even the assassins where a no brainer with this.

#10

imo, the hivehand was complete ass in HL1. I’m so glad it got a proper buff.

#11

I used the trip mines on two occasions. The first one was with the assasins. The second time was power up returning to the tram station to kill the Gargantua. I was low on health and couldnt get past the 4 marines that was being thrown at me but with trip mines, satchels, and a single grenade to get them to move around they pretty much killed themselves.

Besides that I typically focused on Grenades rolling them under closing fire doors or rolling them near unknowning soldiers.

Black Mesa doesnt. Trip Mines are fairly useless unless you were like me in Power Up where you were too low on health to go head to head with four HECU grunts then you get creative using trip mines, satchels and grenades.

I never noticed the secondary fire on the shotgun had a problem. I treated the shotgun as if it had no secondary feature considering even in Half Life 1 I thought it was odd to give a single barrel shotgun a double shot ability as if it was a double barrel shotgun.

He was talking bout the spent shell casings that are ejected after firing. Even my government issue manuals refers to the casings as shells for pistols.

#12

Yeah, but it’s so overpowered. Like I said, just hide and shoot in a random direction, you’ll get everything. I didn’t even see on assassin in the second encounter :frowning:

#13

It does eject cases, but they aren’t thrown up and out. For some reason they are being ejected toward the ground.

#14

Totally agree with the OP. Except, I also liked the crossbow :slight_smile:

#15

9mm: feels great although BM seems to require more precise aiming than HL1. I miss the alt-fire but am getting along fine without it. The alt-fire in HL1 wasn’t very useful but it was fun.

Magnum: Feels over powered and too accurate at range in BM and ammo is plentiful. In HL1 it was powerful but less accurate and since ammo was scarce I saved it for special situations.

MP5: This was my go to gun in HL1 but I use it far less in BM. Mostly used on headcrabs in BM where in HL1 I mostly used it against the military grunts. It seems nerfed and since Magnum ammo is plentiful it isn’t terrible useful. Maybe change to the grunt’s AI also make it less useful since they tend to see me sooner I can’t get close enough to make use of it.

Shotgun: targeting is different than HL1. I seem to miss a lot. In HL1 it was my “oh s**t” boom! gun and it didn’t miss when something popped up and surprised me. It seems a little more powerful than in HL1. There it took 2 shots (or a secondary) to take down a Vort. In BM a single shot usually takes them out.

Crossbow: I miss the HL1 model. Firing some kind of home-made bolt of radio-active rebar was unique and satisfying. The new cross bow works fine but feels average. I’m impressed with visual execution of the zoom feature but I don’t find it very usable.

Note: Playing through on Easy. Haven’t finished yet.

#16

I find the Hivehand useful for killing Snarks. The tracking effect makes it easier for hivehand shards to connect than something like the MP5.

#17

In Half Life 1 the cross bow fired tranq darts just like it does in Black mesa. The “radioactive” rebar bolts was only used in Half Life 2 and the Episodes.

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.