The countdown begins to a Black Mesa release

Andrew Brush 2 Sep, 2012 at 6:09pm ET Article published in Gaming

Nostalgic gamers of the world rejoiced today as the fan produced Half Life remake Black Mesa was revealed to be heading for a release in a matter of days.

It’s been a long road for the team behind the Black Mesa modification—in keeping with Valve established tradition, just about everything has taken longer than expected, resulting in both the Xen and multiplayer portions of the game remaining unfinished—but after seven years fans will finally get a chance to experience Half Life rebuilt for a modern audience. With a completely new soundtrack, massive graphical upgrades and many much more subtle design tweaks, Black Mesa could well become the definitive way to experience the first instalment of Valve’s much loved Half Life series.

The initial release is slated for September 14th (at 8:47am!) and will take gamers on an 8-10 hour journey right up through to the painstakingly reconstructed Lambda Core but until then eager gamers will just have Joel Nielsen’s soundtrack to keep them occupied.

Comments

2 Sep 2012 ~ 8:38pm midga I'm actually more excited about this than I would have been about a HL3 or HL2e3 release date.
2 Sep 2012 ~ 10:00pm AlexDeGruven
3 Sep 2012 ~ 7:38pm Cliff_Forster
6 Sep 2012 ~ 12:35pm GHoosdum I have quite literally been waiting for this release the whole time.
6 Sep 2012 ~ 7:51pm Enverex I never thought I'd see a Resonance Cascade, never mind create one...
6 Sep 2012 ~ 8:15pm primesuspect Oh hi, @Enverex! Long time no see
7 Sep 2012 ~ 9:43am midga JUST ONE MORE WEEK!
17 Sep 2012 ~ 9:58am Signal This game awesome. Played for an hour last night before bed, brings back so many memories. This was my first "real" PC game back in the day so it brings me great joy that it was revisited. I haven't even got the crowbar yet and I can already tell they did the game right. The important dialog remains, but they have updated the side conversations you hear such as a couple of scientists complaining about TPS reports, Barney's bar tab, and a conversation consisting of nothing but buzzwords and science words. I highly suggest giving this a go. It's making me fall in love with Half-Life all over again. As their website says, it isn't a port, they have recreated the game from ground up. You can tell because there are subtle changes in the layout, guard shacks and security checkpoints make a bit more sense area and flow-wise. The game is just beautiful.
17 Sep 2012 ~ 1:05pm midga My only complaint is that the first person platforming is still un-fun and annoying as hell (to the point where I'm doubtful I'll play this a second time =/). Otherwise, this game is magic. I never finished the original (got stuck, got new computer, never bothered trying again cause I knew Black Mesa was in the works), but I have played HL2. It feels so natural that I'm probably going to go back and play HL2 again when I'm done.

Oh, and the load times. They're expected, but they still jar you out of the moment so horribly...
17 Sep 2012 ~ 1:09pm Tushon
Oh, and the load times. They're expected, but they still jar you out of the moment so horribly...
This was unexpected and really weirded me out. Full stop of all graphics until loading completed.
17 Sep 2012 ~ 1:35pm UPSLynx Feels good to NOT have regenerating health. I had almost forgotten how much tension low-life adds to a game when it doesn't regenerate.
17 Sep 2012 ~ 2:01pm MAGIC
Feels good to NOT have regenerating health. I had almost forgotten how much tension low-life adds to a game when it doesn't regenerate.
But my health regenerates IRL... Nice realism, NOT.
17 Sep 2012 ~ 2:44pm Ilriyas
Feels good to NOT have regenerating health. I had almost forgotten how much tension low-life adds to a game when it doesn't regenerate.
Most of my FPS/TPS collection is comprised of non-regenerating health games for that exact reason.

Anyways as someone who's never played HL before (Though I did play like 3 hours worth of HL2 before my PC crashed and I lost all my progress) I'm really REALLY enjoying Black Mesa, the fights are exciting and unlike games with regenerating health I'm actually hiding and constantly worried that something is going to kill me (Being on the hardest difficulty has basically ensured that my hp will never be over 60 for more than a few minutes)

The platforming however I could do without, so far I've counted around 30 deaths (I only just got above ground) and more than half of those are due to platforming.

Aside from that I've noticed a few optimization issues and the load times definitely kill the immersion but it's fun.
17 Sep 2012 ~ 7:46pm UPSLynx The platforming sucks, and it always has - but don't forget, quicksaving makes it way easier.
17 Sep 2012 ~ 9:05pm midga I actually forgot about quicksaves for the first few hours I played...
21 Jul 2013 ~ 10:13am CB So, is this thing done yet? I've been waiting for them to finish Xen before I play it.
21 Jul 2013 ~ 3:44pm _k Uh yeah.
21 Jul 2013 ~ 3:56pm CB That still says that feature plans include "Future additions of Xen". So has that just not been updated?