Black Mesa is a Half-Life 1 remake which has been around for many years now but its completion nearly turned into a sheetstorm (!) due to never-ending development process of Xen chapters. Although calling this game a remake may not do justice to the game itself but since developers themselves also call it a remake, we can safely proceed doing so, albeit I’d like to call it more like a reimagining.

Black Mesa was first released in 2012 as a free mod, then it arrived in Steam in 2015, but last three chapters of the game, which are called “Xen chapters” were missing. Until very recently, the game was ending in the final chapter of Lambda Core, which we depart from Black Mesa Research Facility and get teleported into the alien Xen world for 5 years, but March 2020 saw the completion of Xen chapters and release 1.0 was finally with the gamers. I was only able to complete these new episodes very recently, partly because of the ongoing pandemic since March 2020 around the globe.

As to talk some about the already-present parts of the game since 2015, Black Mesa really managed to capture the spirit of original Half-Life and carried it forward. Since Black Mesa is a reimagining of a game from a bygone age, in which the games seldom took the players’ hand and carried them forward, it had difficult chapters compared to today’s standards. However, carefully sculpted chapters from tip to tail, heavy atmosphere brought by the game’s story and Half-Life’s world which started as an extremely ordinary day morphing into complete chaos were brought to life very exquisitely.

Meanwhile, I’d like to give a brief summary about the game’s story, since the game is now 22 years old and some of the people here were not even born yet then. Black Mesa Research Facility is a high-tech underground research laboratory (there really is a mesa there in the real world in New Mexico). You are playing as a 27-year-old scientist called Gordon Freeman, who is already late to a very unusual experiment that day. After a train ride and changing outfits, getting into the iconic HEV – Hazardous Environment Suit and greeting your fellow colleagues, you enter the giant experiment room where the Anti-Mass Spectrometer device is located. This is where all the ordinary and normal parts of the game end. As soon as you start the experiment, portals start to open to an unknown world and unidentified creatures storm the facility. After this event, which is called as a “resonance cascade” in the game, you get up and try to find your way out of this giant facility as one of the few survivors. After some time you learn that military has arrived to the facility but your hopes of rescue shatter to pieces when you understand they are not here to help exactly but to silence any and all personnel in the facility, primarily you, so all hell starts to break loose.

I’d like to emphasize something about Xen chapters without too much detail. The most boring parts which I have avoided to play in the original game that I have finished numerous times were the Xen chapters in the original Half-Life. But Black Mesa transformed the Xen chapters to another level, also the recently added three chapters nearly equal the length of all the previous chapters which are around since 2015, such is the magnitude of these new maps.

Of course some people will be bored to death of the repetitive puzzles after a while but Half-Life was a puzzle game as much as it was action-packed. As someone who remembers and gets frustrated by the puzzles from the original Xen chapters, I can say I find Black Mesa’s puzzle mechanics much more feasible.

Graphical capabilities of this game which runs on Source engine is seriously extraordinary. Black Mesa was not looking this good when it first came out but the developer team made many corrections, additions and lighting improvements in the following years and the chapters which take place in the facility itself are already looking great compared to today’s standards, but the environment of Xen chapters is really breathtaking (of course not as much as Keanu Reeves). I stopped in my tracks and gazed around the endless space with colors and void too many times in the first chapter, which is also named “Xen”.

From the new enemies developed from scratch by Crowbar Collective to many altered chapter designs, Black Mesa not only gives credit to its predecessor and original, but stands tall in the shoulders of the already solid Half-Life legacy, raising the bar further. Newly composed soundtrack for this game is really successful and captures the spirit of original game, which is available on different platforms like YouTube and Spotify.

Caution with mild spoilers here. I want to talk about Gonarch and Nihilanth, who are the bosses of new Xen chapters. Gonarch battle is much longer than the original, some people complained about this, but I really liked it. Some of the pursuit scenes are forced and the fact that Gonarch is invulnerable in many of those moments can easily escape the player, causing them to waste ammo, but playing hide and seek with this gigantic, single balled creature surely created a feeling of struggle which was definitely absent in the original game.

Nihilanth is ultimately more majestic than how he was in original Half-Life, like he is supposed to be, since he is the endgame boss after all. Entire battle with Nihilanth really gives the vibes that this is the endgame boss and you have reached the ultimate end of the journey. Also, they removed his frustrating ability of teleporting player out of the room, instead they blessed him with many different abilities which he uses in various phases according to his remaining health, lower the health, higher the abilities. This really helped Nihilanth to become the ultimate endgame boss Half-Life had deserved in the first place.

About the insanely criticized Interloper chapter, I must say that I got tired in some places of that chapter too. Repetitively jumping from conveyer to conveyor, plugging the sockets, avoiding the lasers, shutting the shields down; all of these mundane tasks almost killed the pace, particularly nearing the end of the chapter. But many people do not know that Interloper was always a chapter like this in the original game. On the contrary to the public opinion, I actually thank Black Mesa dev team for Interloper because the newly introduced mechanics and the final elevator section of the chapter, which is the penultimate encounter before the endgame boss really jolted my brain, which was getting numb because of the repetitive puzzles throughout this long chapter, and sprung me back to action. They also hinted players the mechanics of the crystals they need to take care of in Nihilanth fight with smaller crystals protecting the Controllers throughout the episode here, something which the original game never did and caused some awkward situations in the predecessor Half-Life. So, that elevator literally ascends you to the final boss of the game and game itself throws everything it has at you to make you aware of that fact. Of course, that section may be several leagues out of reach of today’s players who are used to getting everything they need on a silver platter, but this is the real deal here anyway, you are playing an old legend, updated to today’s standards.

For closure, Black Mesa surely helped thousands of people from new generation who were never able to play Half-Life when it came out and never would have played it otherwise due to really outdated graphics compared to our day. It deserves praise only because of that, but the fact that the game itself independently is very solid and well-detailed from the graphics to voice acting, soundtrack, sound engineering, designs, undulant atmosphere, fine details and easter eggs really requires a salute and applause to devs for the immense effort they put into this game and transforming it into a masterpiece.

https://youtu.be/J8jDyrihT5w

Black Mesa is a Half-Life 1 remake which has been around for many years now but its completion nearly turned into a sheetstorm (!) due to never-ending development process of Xen chapters. Although calling this game a remake may not do justice to the game itself but since developers themselves also call it a remake, we can safely proceed doing so, albeit I’d like to call it more like a reimagining. Black Mesa was first released in 2012 as a free mod, then it arrived in Steam in 2015, but last three chapters of the game, which are called “Xen chapters” were missing. Until very recently, the game was ending in the final chapter of Lambda Core, which we depart from Black Mesa Research Facility and get teleported into the alien Xen world for 5 years, but March 2020 saw the completion of Xen chapters and release 1.0 was finally with the gamers. I was only able to complete these new episodes very recently, partly because of the ongoing pandemic since March 2020 around the globe. As to talk some about the already-present parts of the game since 2015, Black Mesa really managed to capture the spirit of original Half-Life and carried it forward. Since Black Mesa is a reimagining of a game from a bygone age, in which the games seldom took the players’ hand and carried them forward, it had difficult chapters compared to today’s standards. However, carefully sculpted chapters from tip to tail, heavy atmosphere brought by the game’s story and Half-Life’s world which started as an extremely ordinary day morphing into complete chaos were brought to life very exquisitely. Meanwhile, I’d like to give a brief summary about the game’s story, since the game is now 22 years old and some of the people here were not even born yet then. Black Mesa Research Facility is a high-tech underground research laboratory (there really is a mesa there in the real world in New Mexico). You are playing as a 27-year-old scientist called Gordon Freeman, who is already late to a very unusual experiment that day. After a train ride and changing outfits, getting into the iconic HEV – Hazardous Environment Suit and greeting your fellow colleagues, you enter the giant experiment room where the Anti-Mass Spectrometer device is located. This is where all the ordinary and normal parts of the game end. As soon as you start the experiment, portals start to open to an unknown world and unidentified creatures storm the facility. After this event, which is called as a “resonance cascade” in the game, you get up and try to find your way out of this giant facility as one of the few survivors. After some time you learn that military has arrived to the facility but your hopes of rescue shatter to pieces when you understand they are not here to help exactly but to silence any and all personnel in the facility, primarily you, so all hell starts to break loose. I’d like to emphasize something about Xen chapters without too much detail. The most boring parts which I have avoided to play in the original game that I have finished numerous times were the Xen chapters in the original Half-Life. But Black Mesa transformed the Xen chapters to another level, also the recently added three chapters nearly equal the length of all the previous chapters which are around since 2015, such is the magnitude of these new maps. Of course some people will be bored to death of the repetitive puzzles after a while but Half-Life was a puzzle game as much as it was action-packed. As someone who remembers and gets frustrated by the puzzles from the original Xen chapters, I can say I find Black Mesa’s puzzle mechanics much more feasible. Graphical capabilities of this game which runs on Source engine is seriously extraordinary. Black Mesa was not looking this good when it first came out but the developer team made many corrections, additions and lighting improvements in the following years and the chapters which take place in the facility itself are already looking great compared to today’s standards, but the environment of Xen chapters is really breathtaking (of course not as much as Keanu Reeves). I stopped in my tracks and gazed around the endless space with colors and void too many times in the first chapter, which is also named “Xen”. From the new enemies developed from scratch by Crowbar Collective to many altered chapter designs, Black Mesa not only gives credit to its predecessor and original, but stands tall in the shoulders of the already solid Half-Life legacy, raising the bar further. Newly composed soundtrack for this game is really successful and captures the spirit of original game, which is available on different platforms like YouTube and Spotify. Caution with mild spoilers here. I want to talk about Gonarch and Nihilanth, who are the bosses of new Xen chapters. Gonarch battle is much longer than the original, some people complained about this, but I really liked it. Some of the pursuit scenes are forced and the fact that Gonarch is invulnerable in many of those moments can easily escape the player, causing them to waste ammo, but playing hide and seek with this gigantic, single balled creature surely created a feeling of struggle which was definitely absent in the original game. Nihilanth is ultimately more majestic than how he was in original Half-Life, like he is supposed to be, since he is the endgame boss after all. Entire battle with Nihilanth really gives the vibes that this is the endgame boss and you have reached the ultimate end of the journey. Also, they removed his frustrating ability of teleporting player out of the room, instead they blessed him with many different abilities which he uses in various phases according to his remaining health, lower the health, higher the abilities. This really helped Nihilanth to become the ultimate endgame boss Half-Life had deserved in the first place. About the insanely criticized Interloper chapter, I must say that I got tired in some places of that chapter too. Repetitively jumping from conveyer to conveyor, plugging the sockets, avoiding the lasers, shutting the shields down; all of these mundane tasks almost killed the pace, particularly nearing the end of the chapter. But many people do not know that Interloper was always a chapter like this in the original game. On the contrary to the public opinion, I actually thank Black Mesa dev team for Interloper because the newly introduced mechanics and the final elevator section of the chapter, which is the penultimate encounter before the endgame boss really jolted my brain, which was getting numb because of the repetitive puzzles throughout this long chapter, and sprung me back to action. They also hinted players the mechanics of the crystals they need to take care of in Nihilanth fight with smaller crystals protecting the Controllers throughout the episode here, something which the original game never did and caused some awkward situations in the predecessor Half-Life. So, that elevator literally ascends you to the final boss of the game and game itself throws everything it has at you to make you aware of that fact. Of course, that section may be several leagues out of reach of today’s players who are used to getting everything they need on a silver platter, but this is the real deal here anyway, you are playing an old legend, updated to today’s standards. For closure, Black Mesa surely helped thousands of people from new generation who were never able to play Half-Life when it came out and never would have played it otherwise due to really outdated graphics compared to our day. It deserves praise only because of that, but the fact that the game itself independently is very solid and well-detailed from the graphics to voice acting, soundtrack, sound engineering, designs, undulant atmosphere, fine details and easter eggs really requires a salute and applause to devs for the immense effort they put into this game and transforming it into a masterpiece. https://youtu.be/J8jDyrihT5w