"Black Mesa" Review-Master remake based on classic movies • iGamesNews.com

Typical, isn't it? You waited half the time to start playing the new Half-Life game, and then appeared two at a time …

All eyes are likely to rotate in the direction of Half-Life: Later this month, Alyx landed like a gravity-driven toilet. However, although everyone is eagerly preparing their VR headsets, another small piece of game history has only written the last page. Black Mesa, the long-term revision of Half-Life is complete. dusty. Finito.

Black Mesa review

Developer: Crowbar collective / valve
Platform: Audit on PC
Availability: Now on PC

"But wait!" I heard you cry. "Is it Black Mesa? true Half-Life Game? Can a group of online enthusiasts remake Fourteen years Let me tell you, Black Mesa is a "half-life" game. After the remake, it performed as well as you expected. BlackMesa did not only make Half-Life look better, but also make Half-Life better.

Many of you may already know this. At least partly. The Black Mesa portion of Black Mesa has been available since 2012, and the entire game transitioned from an amateur mod project to a paid Steam Early Access title in 2015. For many Half-Life fans, this is enough. Many of these enthusiast projects are never daybreak, so even a partial complete remake of Half-Life feels like a little miracle. Also, who cares about Xen? Always trash. Why bother?

Crowbar Collective has its own answer to this, and I will answer it in due course. But it's worth doing the studio's job of converting the Black Mesa facility itself to a Source engine, especially since they have made some further adjustments since 2012.

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Black Mesa was first a kick-off gadget, an introductory tram ride, longer than the original Half-Life. Oddly, thinking that such an iconic moment in FPS history is one of the most popular aspects of Half-Life at the time of its release. Extending it is an intentional move by Crowbar Collective. It gives you more time to notice the extra details they have added to the introduction.

Black Mesa Valve originally envisioned a large population. Scientists wandered around the newly constructed railway station and guarded security checkpoints that did not exist. It's not just visual things that change. Now, the carriage's welcome message sounds like it's coming from the speakers, and when the 27-year-old MIT graduate starts his worst job, a brand new soundtrack is playing the opening remarks.

This is a statement from Crowbar Collective. We are not messing around, nor are we slaves to every pixel in the Valve game. Ultimately, this is the definition of Black Mesa. Not only willing to copy, but also to improve the core experience of Half-Life. To improve effective methods, the most important thing is to delete invalid methods.

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Surprisingly, how bold Black Mesa is in the latter. Some chapters (such as "On the Track") have been edited to remove tedious parts, while other chapters have removed elements, such as "surface tension" rogue tentacle monsters. Black Mesa has also added new elements, such as a wider range of scientists (including female scientists). At the same time, new dialogue and voiceovers are designed to add context to the plot and better connect the story of Half-Life with its sequel.

Black Mesa has never forgotten the spirit of the game it created. The opening chapter, "Unforeseen Consequences and Office Buildings," is purely a horror of survival, limiting the player's roster of weapons while avoiding jumping heads and dodging zombies. As the Marines arrived we have become a hostile force, Black Mesa has advanced by leaps and bounds, providing tense and exciting battles, and the Crowbar Collective has been making adjustments to release and adjust the Marine Corps AI to They attack and dodge you in the right way. One big difference between Black Mesa now and 2012 is that it's less difficult to punish by default. The Marines still felt dangerous, but the robots were no longer accurate during the firing process.

All of these are great for games that are now eight years old. But Black Mesa's foundation here is rock solid, and it's often difficult to know whether the brilliance you are experiencing is the brilliance of Crowbar Collective or Valve. Black Mesa responded firmly with Xen, using Half-Life's relatively poor closing price. (Ie Xen, Gonarch's Lair, Interloper and Nihilanth) and turn it into arguably the best part of the game.

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These four levels have been completely redesigned to extend their limited scope into huge environments, including new puzzles, encounters and even story elements. This change is unparalleled at the nominal Xen level. In Half-Life, Xen has only a few minutes, including a small list of incredible floating islands. In contrast, Black Mesa's Xen pushed the value of more than an hour of extraterrestrial exploration to the limit through the landscape, pushing the Source engine to the limit.

The open sequence is breathtaking. Gordon stumbled out of the Lambda portal, into the vast panorama of the aliens, the rock swinging in the purple void in front of him, outlined by the ice-blue sunlight portion of Xen. As you approached the cliff of the island where you were standing, Joel Nielson's disgusting soundtrack swelled in his ears, and a flock of alien birds flew over Gordon's field of vision.

multiplayer game

It is worth noting that Crowbar Collective not only re-made Half-Life's single-player game components, but also re-made Half-Life's Deathmatch mode. Classic "Half-Life" maps (such as Bounce, Chopper, and Crossfire) have undergone Black Mesa makeovers, and campaign maps can also be loaded on multiplayer servers.

Unfortunately, it is difficult to test the performance of multiplayer games, as no one seems to be playing it. It's a shame, because the redesigned weapons and core movement make you feel like you are adding bricks to the deathmatch game.

This is just an experience of the features provided by Xen. The crowbar collective terrain Xen has changed from a brown floating island chain into a rich and diverse alien ecosystem. It shows us the dog's and bull's eyes in their natural habitat, providing Xen with a sense of functionality. My favorite clip is to see Gordon walking through a border laboratory established by a previous Lambda exploration team. Not only is it a wonderful piece of extra world building, but it also contains a clever design for the classic Half-Life enemy.

Xen is mainly an exploration-focused level, which provides you with ample breathing space, allowing you to swim in the landscape and find out where you need to cross. Crowbar Collective saves fireworks for Gonarch's Lair. Here, the killing of Half-Life's infamous testicular monster has expanded into a thrilling cat and mouse chase full of twists and turns. I won't reveal any details, but the quality of the animation and set design is comparable to any modern FPS.

Chapter Three Interloper is as promising as Gonarch's Lair. Unfortunately, Crowbar Collective's ambitions do the most harm here. The level is too long, lacks the same environmental changes as the extended Xen chapter, and repeats several puzzle sequences until it becomes tedious. Although not terrible, this is a clear step backward compared to the previous two chapters.

Guards and scientists are no longer clones of each other.

The final confrontation with Nihilanth is the most direct remake of these four chapters, although Crowbar Collective has made some changes to add scenes and make it more direct without the frustrating teleport-based intermission. It is not as exhilarating as its encounter with the monarch, but still makes the ending satisfactory.

Black Mesa is a fascinating work. Starting with the direct engine upgrade of Half-Life, it has become a game with its own advantages. It is no longer "Remake Half-Life", but "John Carpenter's Thing." This is a development process, similar to the development of the person who created it. A team of half-hearted enthusiasts Half-Life 2 Modifiers brings together a very talented and undeniable dedicated studio. I'm curious what they are going to do now. It's tempting to say "when to resist?" I want to see what they can create based on their own conditions, without being constrained by nostalgia. Again, if Valve is unwilling to make Half-Life 3, I know a group of people can do the job.