Don't get me wrong, from a technical and artistic standpoint, this is amazing for a fan game, running on source even more, but when it comes to gameplay, it barely resembles Half Life. While the original had a focus on taking advantage of enemy patterns to make a move, Black mesa makes it so the enemies constantly attack you, giving you very little window to plan your own strategies, this being specially evident with the HECU soldiers, which were only able to attack while standing still in the original, making their moves when needed, thus, giving the player time to kill them more securly, making thinking and shooting the most important part of the game. Black Mesa in comparison, resembles too much the combine from Half Life 2, just being hitscanners, making their combat arenas more of a glorified cover shooter than a fast paced one.

Xen is certainly and improvement over the original, but it just drags on for way too long, by the time you encounter Gonark you already begin fighting Nihilanth in the original, and sadly most of it just feels like filler, considering Xen was the climax in the original, it made sense for it to be short, the player had already gone thru a lot, so most of Half Life's cards were already shown, there really isn't that many new things to encounter aside from the bosses and the alien controllers, so for it to be so long just makes it more tedius than interesting specially considering this is a remake, so most players already played the original and just wanted to revisit it.

I love Half Life, but Black Mesa as a remake sadly doesn't quite reach the highs of the original, If you are a player who has not played it before, and plans to experience Half Life, In my honest opinion it's just not a very good option, I's suggest playing the original with MMOD which is listed in the community mods page on steam, in my eyes original will always be the superior alternative, still better than Half Life Source tho.

(Edit, like it even less now, also optimization is pretty ass in xen, runs at like 40 fps in some sections, makes sense due to the held together by duck tape nature of the game, I add this because I have better pc parts now, even with a good cpu, performance is just pisspoor, considering, if u ask me, that the interloper chapter of Xen looks terrible, please make yourself a favor and pick up the original, that's it, updated score)

5.2/10

Even if I think this game warrants more than one play trough, what I've already played and finished, it's more than enough that in spite of all it's flaws, whether technical or engine wise, this is one of the first games I think really takes advantage that it is an open world, guided at times, but the freedom it offers its like no other I've seen, this also extends to the perks system and the many ramifications that it opens, having played a bit of Fallout 3 already, this game just puts Bethesda to shame, even more impressive for its short development time.

Don't really wanna spoil much in terms of your choices since I think its better to go blind, but this game allows for a character build that you really have to commit over time, which I personally like, give's the whole "role playing" of the Fallout series some actual weight instead of just being a generic shooter that just so happens to be set in an apocalypse, the moral choices in regards to the factions really make you think at times, which I'm surprised ended up being so effective, one thing I rarely feel in games is immersion, and New Vegas knocks it out of the park with it's world building, the endings are also really satisfying, actually reflecting the choices you made on the journey.

By my wording it would seem the game is perfect, but I do have some red flags that I'm really guessing might turn away some people, the technical issues of this game are just ridiculous at times, constant crashing, corrupted save files, broken missions, broken AI, constant freezing at loading screens, unstable frame rate, overall jittery movement, and many many bugs. I had to deal with so many issues in my play trough and almost lost all my progress to a corrupted save file because of the crashing, but I personally think it is kinda worth it to endure it just to platy this game, it is that good, just a little warning flag to people who might not know the state of this game, aside from that, just fantastic, def my fav open world game I've played.

9.2/10