A game where you constantly say to yourself, "OK, I guess this is happening now," as you go to turn off a reactor, or turn on another reactor, or swim through the underground valve system of a hydroelectric dam, or activate a missile silo to kill a giant alien tentacle monster.īut Black Mesa emphasizes the ways in which Half-Life is darker than it may first appear.
#HALF LIFE 1 STORY SERIES#
It's a game about trying to accomplish simple objectives, like escaping the damn lab, amidst a constant series of complications. This is a game about a scientist who is inexplicably good at everything, trapped deep underground in a sprawling research facility when an experiment goes wrong and opens a series of portals to a hostile alien dimension. It's also, fundamentally, still Half-Life, and offers an interesting opportunity to reflect on that title. This is Half-Life sharper, more challenging but also more intuitive, more likely to force you to fight better but less likely to get you hopelessly lost in a series of trash compactors.
The enemy AI is also much sharper, and along with a more detailed rendition of the under-siege Black Mesa research facility, creates a setting that feels much more dire than the original.Īll told, Crowbar Collective has made a game that captures the original Half-Life from the perspective of fans who deeply care for the series but have had the hindsight and thoughtfulness to realize its failures. Some puzzles are now physics-based, and small objects-throwable flares, fling-able turrets-add life to the game's world. Introducing the Source engine's physics system into the game is one of the most significant additions. Running on the newest available version of the Source engine, which Valve has improbably supported for as long as Black Mesa has been in development, this game makes a number of tweaks, some large and some small, to the original Half-Life formula, alongside rebuilding and in many cases fundamentally altering every location you visit.
#HALF LIFE 1 STORY LICENSE#
Instead, it feels like what an official remake of Half-Life might have looked like if Valve hadn't let the license lie fallow for so long after Half-Life 2: Episode Two. A skeptic might assume the worst of a fan project of this longevity-that it's a messy, over-scoped, amateur production. Built with obvious attention to detail, it's polished, engaging, and surprisingly beautiful. For all the time it took to make, Black Mesa is a striking creation. It only took 14 years.įor all the time it took to make, Black Mesa is a striking creation.
#HALF LIFE 1 STORY FULL#
Five years after the game was released, with Valve's permission, as an Early Access title on Steam, and just a few weeks before the release of Half-Life: Alyx, Valve's attempt at bringing some shine back to the franchise's name ( in virtual reality!), the full 1.0 build of Black Mesa is complete. In 2006, the group, which started as a 13-person team that eventually became known as the the Crowbar Collective, got down to work rebuilding one of the most beloved games in the history of the medium. The Black Mesa project began around 2005 as a collaboration between a couple of modding groups with the same idea.
Not a simple port, like Valve had done with its poorly received Half-Life: Source, but a remake, one that leveraged the strengths of the Source engine to make that original game new again. Another of those projects was Black Mesa, an attempt to rebuild the original Half-Life in its entirety for the Source engine.
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The Half-Life 2 fan community rapidly became a hub for a vast, robust scene of modders, folks who produced incredible games like Dear Esther and The Stanley Parable-both of which would eventually get ported to different game engines and released as stand-alone titles, and both of which had a huge impact on the future of gaming. It was that last one-the modabilty of the Source engine-that players truly embraced.
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