Black Mesa - legendary vaporware Half-Life remake finally out

[Morgoth]

A shame they didn't get the original source soundfiles from Valve. That's really my only complaint so far, the subpar voices.

 

[MetalCraze]

Can't have gibs in shitty Source I'm afraid

 

[dnf]

Can't have gibs in shitty Source I'm afraid

I think i have seen some modded Hl2 with gibs

 

[ScottishMartialArts]

Can't have gibs in shitty Source I'm afraid

Never threw a pipe bomb in L4D2?

 

[Darklife]

There's a shitton of gibs. You're insane.

One thing that did get carried over from Source are the horrible loading times that occur every 15 minutes and are still long enough to notice them even after 8 years.

 

[dnf]

There's a shitton of gibs. You're insane.

One thing that did get carried over from Source are the horrible loading times that occur every 15 minutes and are still long enough to notice them even after 8 years.

Are you talking of Black Mesa mod? In the video i saw, Freeman blowed up two soldiers with a satchel charge and there was only ragdools bouncing. Not nice! Still, can you kill friendly non essential NPCs? As for the loading times, E.Y.E did this better and the levels are huge!

 

[poocolator]

poocolator: My game froze up as well during a loading transition in Blast Pit. Were you, by any chance, returning to the missile silo after having turned on the two pumps?

Exactly the place. Also, just had a crash when entering Residue Processing from the trash compacter.

 

[MetalCraze]

Never threw a pipe bomb in L4D2?

Well OK you get gibs only due to extreme damage. It appears that Black Mesa does have them but you need a lot of damage for them to happen (like smashing someone with an elevator).

HL1 was admittedly more liberal with this.

The "reimagining" is kinda cool thus far but it also shows how tremendously Source sucks when it comes to lighting.

 

[Konjad]

Never threw a pipe bomb in L4D2?

Well OK you get gibs only due to extreme damage. It appears that Black Mesa does have them but you need a lot of damage for them to happen (like smashing someone with an elevator).

HL1 was admittedly more liberal with this.

The "reimagining" is kinda cool thus far but it also shows how tremendously Source sucks when it comes to lighting.

I'm sure it would be better on ArmA engine

Are you talking of Black Mesa mod? In the video i saw, Freeman blowed up two soldiers with a satchel charge and there was only ragdools bouncing. Not nice! Still, can you kill friendly non essential NPCs? As for the loading times, E.Y.E did this better and the levels are huge!

You can kill friendly NPCs.
Yeah, EYE did loading times a lot better.

 

[DraQ]

I feel extremely embarrassed by this unexpected release, as the Dreamcast version of HL1 is actually next on my todo list.

ಠ_ಠ

some of those with shotguns stand next to a door with you being unable to do anything against soaking a ton of damage without foreknowledge

Well, you should expect enemy to be placed like that.

Residue Processing (which for me is THE worst part of HL1, game turns into a retarded platformer)

This. Fucking this. Not Xen, because Xen at least was cool and had actual purpose in game.

I hope they strode as far as possible from faithful remake for this section.

Enemies overall are much quicker on the draw. Vortigaunts are a real threat, marines are more deadly but also dumber, and the assassins require twitch-finger reflexes from hell to take down.

Wasn't it already like this in the original? Apart from Vortigaunts, that is, but they were still deadly when coupled with other threats.

I remember marines firing immediately on contact unless they were doing something else (like signalling) and assassins were THE pain in the ass.

 

[Gord]

Played a bit this morning.
Pretty cool stuff. It's great that, for a change, you get levels that aren't completely linear and require some (little, but still) exploration and effort to find the secrets.
Did anyone find an access to the shotgun right before the 1st contact with the marines?

Also some of the acchievements at the start are funny, too. Toilet paper.

I'm allready threating the jump'n'run sections though.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Residue Processing (which for me is THE worst part of HL1, game turns into a retarded platformer)

This. Fucking this. Not Xen, because Xen at least was cool and had actual purpose in game.

I hope they strode as far as possible from faithful remake for this section.

I'm not that big of a Half-Life nut, but it *felt* like they didn't change anything at all.

Enemies overall are much quicker on the draw. Vortigaunts are a real threat, marines are more deadly but also dumber, and the assassins require twitch-finger reflexes from hell to take down.

Wasn't it already like this in the original? Apart from Vortigaunts, that is, but they were still deadly when coupled with other threats.

I remember marines firing immediately on contact unless they were doing something else (like signalling) and assassins were THE pain in the ass.

Vortigaunts gave you a full second or two to charge up their shot in the original HL before firing, plenty of time to take cover or kill them. Black Mesa Vortigaunts give you maybe one moment. Marines were always quick on the draw, but at least they weren't omniscient about your location (which ALL enemies are now) and you could sometimes get the drop on them. Assassins are always fast, but moreso in Black Mesa. They are literally "blink and you'll miss them" when they come round an obstacle, fire off a round and then duck back. I ended up killing all of them by shooting them in the back as they were somersaulting away. At least the alien grunts I've run into didn't seem to be that smart.

Speaking of enemies... that fuckin' chopper. Like all enemies in Black Mesa, it ALWAYS knows where you are, and will spamfire at you through walls just to make a point. The first one (by the dam) you HAVE to take down with the Gluon Gun (at least I think it's the Gluon Gun, the one where you can overcharge it with the alt-fire) and if I'm guessing by the fact that I just got the rocket launcher (with laser-guided sights) there will be more of them.

 

[poocolator]

You don't have to take it down. Get max health and POWAH-ARMORZ energy from the warehouse and just hop immediately into the water, heading for the control house and up its ladder. Once you've passed through the dam, it gives up chasing you and flies off to Afghanistan to kill sandpeople. The only time you're required to take down a choppah (IIRC from HL1) is during the level that takes place hanging off the side of the butte in Surface Tension. There, they conveniently place an inexhaustible crate of rockets near the rocket launcher intself. Also, IIRC, there was supposed to be an Ichthyosaur during the dam level which they didn't include in Black Mesa.

Also, just like in the original, the 9mm pistol makes a more effective sniper weapon than the crossbow or the revolver

 

[Morgoth]

The assassin chicks in BM were a cakewalk. I just stood there and they came one after another in and I double-barrel shotgunned them against the wall. In the original HL, they'd shoot some shit at you and disappear asap again, causing this old man's brain an adrenalin push.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Well, I completed Black Mesa. While it's overall a fantastic effort, they REALLY need to start hunting down the bugs in this thing.

# While swimming through the Lambda core, I hugged the left wall when the "LOADING" message appears... only to find that I'm stuck trapped INSIDE the wall when it finishes loading.

# I also got some kind of VECTOR OVERLOAD error twice that dropped me to desktop.

# The assassins the second time round were much easier to deal with. They had to make straight runs towards me to get a decent shot, and I was waiting for them with the Magnum.

Speaking of the second Assassins area, there's an achievement that involves sending a hidden hat to Xen. The hat in question (a purple top hat) is in the open container at the top in this area, but I don't recommend trying to drag it all the way over to the endgame, for one simple reason: The teleporter puzzle.

Remember that one? Where you had circling platforms that took you further and further up, but you had to time your teleports so that you'd end on the platforms and not fall gruesomly to your death. It's still there, it still sucks (it's about as sucky as the whole of Residue Processing chapter) and I can't see how you're supposed to bring the hat through that. You can either send the hat through, or yourself. Not both. That makes it doubly painful to do the puzzle, but to add insult to injury, the game DOES NOT ALLOW YOU to pick up the hat if it's on a moving platform. Like the circular platforms used in the puzzle. Spot the problem.

EDIT: Typo. Better late than never!

 

[DraQ]

Started playing, the rocket mushroom joke on one of the whiteboards (the one with hydrazine and gyromitrine) got me laughing. The team seems to have quite a few nerdy fellows on it - the whiteboards themselves were far above your usual technobabble (and I had to pry myself away from them when I realized the bastards got me to try to determine what the scientists were calculating there instead of, you know, playing the game - screenshot to the rescue). One thing I can't understand is why the fuck they didn't reuse some of the sounds from HL1 that also appeared in exact or altered form in HL2 - teleport noise, medkit and charger sounds, etc.

The teleporter puzzle.

Remember that one? Where you had circling platforms that took you further and further up, but you had to time your teleports so that you'd end on the platforms and not fall gruesomly to your death. It's still there, it still sucks (it's about as sucky as the while of Residue Processing chapter)

Quite a hyperbole, it's rather short and easy segment, while Residue Processing, albeit not hard, was long gruelling stretch of boredom with no in-game function whatsoever.

Also, I don't know if I recall correctly, but I think you could stand on the brink of each teleport in the original allowing you to take your time and not forcing you to do the whole thing in sequence.

 

[Oriebam]

teleporter puzzle is only short and easy if you're an asspie who memorizes the teleporters

it's a bullshit trial-and-error-and-time puzzle, plain and simple


I don't remember Residue Processing being that bad, must be because I remember the game as being overall full of that bullshit anyway

 

[DraQ]

Jelly NT is jelly.

 

[poocolator]

teleporter puzzle is only short and easy if you're an asspie who memorizes the teleporters

it's a bullshit trial-and-error-and-time puzzle, plain and simple


I don't remember Residue Processing being that bad, must be because I remember the game as being overall full of that bullshit anyway

The teleporter sequence is scrawled on the floor in blood by one of the dead scientists. I Don't recall if it was in the original.

 

[ScottishMartialArts]

So I've played for a bit now. Got through We've Got Hostiles. Honestly, this just makes me want to play HL1 again more than a buggy, floaty reimagining of it. Don't get me wrong, they've done a nice job for an amateur team working part time for 8 years, but I'd rather play the REAL HL1.

 

[DraQ]

The teleporter sequence is scrawled on the floor in blood by one of the dead scientists. I Don't recall if it was in the original.

It wasn't, but in the original going wrong way was initially beneficial (supply stash) or not terribly harmful (some hazards like stroll among headcrabs and nukage puddles and scares like long "shit, I'm going to die" fall through giving in grates into another teleport) apart from one teleport that was visibly different (red and arcing) that killed you, so there was no downside to trial and error.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

It wasn't, but in the original going wrong way was initially beneficial (supply stash) or not terribly harmful (some hazards like stroll among headcrabs and nukage puddles and scares like long "shit, I'm going to die" fall through giving in grates into another teleport) apart from one teleport that was visibly different (red and arcing) that killed you, so there was no downside to trial and error.

It's identical in Black Mesa. The sequence is 2-4-7. The number 9 teleport kills you, number 3 sends you to a nice ammo cache, the others just send you to rooms with Vortigaunts.

 

[poocolator]

But with the magic of quicksave, it doesn't matter anyway, barring the atrocious load-times at least.

 

[Darklife]

The game is bloody awesome. It's absorbing me the same way that the original did. I'm nearing the end of Surface Tension, which is undoubtedly the best chapter of the entire game.

The game is really unforgiving on hardcore, yet it still remains loads of fun. The same cannot be said for other recent shooters I've played on the highest difficulty setting. Perhaps it has to do with save scumming, as it makes the gameplay more fluent. So far the hardest thing for me was the ambush at the end of Questionable Ethics. In the end I managed to fend off the second wave of troops with like 18 health.

Speaking of save scumming, it's the same way I played the original, so I guess the magic is still there.

I'm really impressed by what these guys have put together and I'm really looking forward to seeing if they can actually make Xen fun.

I also don't understand the bitching about Residue Processing. All of that crap was there before and it's really not that hard to be honest. Actually, all of the puzzles seemed way easier this time around even though I don't remember any of them apart from Power Up.

The only draw are the loading times, which seem to be the only thing that carried over from HL2.

 

[MetalCraze]

So I've played for a bit now. Got through We've Got Hostiles. Honestly, this just makes me want to play HL1 again more than a buggy, floaty reimagining of it. Don't get me wrong, they've done a nice job for an amateur team working part time for 8 years, but I'd rather play the REAL HL1.

Except that real HL1 is barely any different and not in a good way

People give way too much credit to the original. Like praising that marine AI. In HL1 they are dumb as fuck. When you are firing at them instead of firing back they start running away turning back on you and dying like flies.

In Black Mesa they do run back too, except facing you and firing at you. And still die like flies.

But it's an improvement at least in something

 

[Oriebam]

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