Black Mesa - legendary vaporware Half-Life remake finally out

Joking aside, accusing Black Mesa of lacking colour is a peculiar criticism because a) it's not true and b) it sticks fairly close to Half-Life's colour scheme for the most part.

Lambda Core is brightly coloured, Questionable Ethics has the blue-tinted weapons research lab, Office Complex has the same characteristic red doors and black and white tiled floors, most of Surface Tension and Forget About Freeman actually have more colour than Half-Life in some areas thanks to the bright sunny lighting of the former and the orange-tinted sunset of the latter. Blast Pit has the same rusted machinery and bright neon green radioactive shit, and so on. Xen is bursting with colour - it ends up looking worse than the original Xen most of the time, but it's still got a cohesive colour scheme of blues and purples.

As for Half-Life 2, we'll have to agree to disagree - I couldn't have picked a better selection of screenshots myself if you asked me to explain what I don't like about Half-Life 2. The first screenshot looks decent but the rest are various shades of shit. Ravenholm really is one of the scariest experiences in all of gaming - not for the zombies, but for the godawful blockiness of the whole place. That screenshot of the chopper battle with the boat is emblematic of what I don't like about HL2's outdoor areas and the bunkers near Nova Prospekt aren't much better either.

 

So, is 1.0 any better than the EA release (which I played a couple of months ago)? What's different about the two versions? A few areas had framerates that ran like dripping feces from the walls of an institutionalized autistic child but otherwise was playable. The Xen levels needed editing to reduce the amount of those power cable puzzles, imo. Anything changed there? I have to admit, it was a fantastic effort on the part of the non-professional gaming community.

 

This isn't about sheer graphical fidelity though, it's about visual direction. Black Mesa can have all the modern shaders and lighting effects thrown at it but at the end of the day it's a game cobbled together by autistic modders with no restraint or taste, let alone the ability to maintain consistency on either a stylistic or technical level (especially bothersome is how they have these photorealistic npc models, because models are relatively easy to make/download from somewhere, but the accompanying animations are still archaic because animations are hard, and they can't afford mocap, so the end result is laughable). The game is filled with other examples of disparity between technology level and the brain level of the visual designers using the technology. And that's without even getting into just how plain ugly a lot of the visual choices they made were.

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Stuff like the new Nihilanth portal is especially egregious since not only is it more ugly and messy but it completely misses the tone set by the original.



The ending sequence with the G-man is similarly terrible, looks like something that belongs in a 4/10 mod made by high-schoolers.

Half-Life 2 had talented artists like Viktor Antonov working on it, and the fact that the game didn't have access to all those modern shaders and overblown effects is why it still looks crisp and clean (although even with that modern tech they would have had people who know how to use it, in moderation, since Half-Life Alyx looks surprisingly clean for a modern game).

 

I FOUND THE COOMER:

 

The new Nihilanth Portal looks great. I'm gonna try this game out.

I never thought Half-Life 1+2 were good looking games. So it's interesting for me how the modder/developers changed everything.

 

ok retard

 

It's amazing how butthurt idiots like you get when people like something you don't.

 

It's really amazing how good Half-Life 2 still looks today. I replayed the first half not long ago at 144fps rendered at 5k and it was stunning whenever you weren't right up close to an iffy texture.

 

I agree. For how old it is, HL2 has held up really well. I remember it was one of the very first DirectX 9 games along with Doom 3 and FarCry. By comparison, I think it's aged a lot better than either of those (as well as most DX9 games in general) from a visual standpoint.

I think it's mostly because Valve continued to patch and tweak HL2 and the Source engine for years after release.

 

Like what?

 

the visual fidelity in black mesa is really, really bad, but the sound design (all of the environmental, npc, player, and weapon sound assets) is superb. if the visual fidelity was closer to half life 1's art style, i wouldn't have a problem with it. too bad its so fucking uneven; it still looks like someone's college final project. the disparity between the great sound design and awful art and visual design is almost night and day

 

There is a mod for the original soundtrack https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=834748921

 

youre right. the music should have just been remastered versions of kelly bailey's work; the new stuff kinda fits but its mastered like shit so it just overtakes everything

 

Finished Black Mesa. Man, what a ride.

I did not remember 95% of the game and I had a real blast playing it. I liked puzzles as they seemed logical. It's hard to get frustrated or stuck because you always get subtle hints, mostly via clever lighting.

Music was top notch.

Xen level is one of the best levels I've seen in an FPS. It's also quite beautiful.
On the other hand, Interloper overstayed its welcome. I wished it was finished already since it was pretty tedious, except the last 25% or so.

Final bossfight was pretty cool and quite fantastic graphic-wise[*]. I really could mistake this game as something that was released in the last 2-3 years.

Solid 9/10 from me. If you never played HL, do yourself a favour and play Black Mesa.

[*]

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Naraya It does look beautiful. You say " If you never played HL, do yourself a favour and play Black Mesa.". Do you still recommend it for someone that liked HL ?

 

I watched a few youtube videos of original game and it looks nothing like Black Mesa so I'd say yes , I think you'll have a great time with BM. It's Half Life properly remastered.

 

Playing Black Mesa for a couple of hours only made me reinstall original HL1 and delete BM.

 

???

 

What I meant by saying that is that original HL's graphics don't hold the handle to Black Mesa's. What's the confusion about?

 

Apart from Interloper.

With exception of some scripted sequences and Garg chase Interloper is a horrible hackjob.
The rest is mostly very good and faithful remake, although not ideal one.

 

I thought by ‘looked’ you meant how the game was overall, in which case the last statement would be pretty funny.

 

Well, they were. Sure Half Life 1 was behind the times technically compared to Unreal but so was Sin or a plethora of Quake based games. Guess nobody expected the massive jump Epic made with Unreal but that doesn't mean Quake based games were ugly to look at, and if there is one thing i can credit Half Life 2 for are the visuals, thanks to the top notch art direction among other things.

 

No shit BM is going to look better than Half Life the question of whether it is a good remaster though is based on whether it maintains the look and style of the original while improving the graphics.

Improving the graphics is the easy part everybody can do it:

 

Kinda

At the end Black Mesa looks more like NuDoom than Half Life 1:


But it maintains some style from the original:

I love the art direction of the enemies and citadel, but everything else... I guess City 17 reminds me too much of the ugly parts in Berlin or Poznan (I hate those cities).