Black Mesa - legendary vaporware Half-Life remake finally out

[Dayyālu]

Where did this presumption come from they can do better than what was there?

The discussion is more than a decade old but the gist of it, from an outsider perspective, was that they felt that On A Rail was 1) Repetitive 2) Confusing 3) Dull 4) God Forbid, difficult. I never got the criticism and I suspect it was a form of truism that got hold of the development process and self-reinforced itself. I've never met serious criticism of Rail until Black Mesa (contra Xen) but they were hellbent on it.

The irony that they bitched and cut a somewhat grey level because it's boring and now everyone considers their magnificent-looking Xen boring because it's too long doesn't escape me.

Also, it's Typical Modder stuff.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Meh, i guess for 3 eurobucks i can just let it slide. But man, why do modders gotta always mod.

 

[schru]

It's not bad, but it's *typical modder stuff*, a shitton of work for details no-one will care about and lack of concern for boring, but necessary routine.

Ok but i never heard of modders taking things out of the original game.

I know Xen was expanded because you guys were just talking about it in this thread, but i had no idea they shortened the whole rail sequence because people bitched about it. Who the fuck told them to mess with the original game anyway? Where did this presumption come from they can do better than what was there?

I just read the description of the mod that was supposed to restore the rail sequence and apparently the guy was hired by the Black Mesa team so the mod is only 60% finished. Lmao the fuck is this.

Originally, Black Mesa even left out most of ‘Surface Tension’, which is one of the best chapters in the game, I think.

The remake might have seemed like an interesting prospect back when the Source Engine and its features were new, and also because Valve's own demonstrative remake of Half-Life was rather underwhelming, but without genuinely good ideas about how the game could be improved with the new engine, I don't think the modification ever really had a reason to exist.

Certainly it took a lot of work to finish it, but the team behind it isn't Valve and it was rather bold to assume that they could do better just because of new technology. If anything, a more advanced engine requires more skill to implement things, especially on the visual side. I think the gameplay also feels considerably worse than in the original game or the sequel.

Still, I'd keep the game and play it as a curiosity. Don't you want to play every commercially-released Source Engine game?

 

[pOcHa]

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/changelog/608116737

On A Rail seems to be regularly updated, and works with the latest Black Mesa version (definitive edition) - so maybe the 60% were from way back in 2013? anyway, better that than however little is there without it (7 maps vs 3, first one is the same)

and the reason why Surface Tension was not initially included was the developer who worked on it leaving the project, it was always planned

 

[Lyric Suite]

So i booted the thing and of course it crashed four times while changing settings lmao.

Already the game says "mod" due to the overtly detailed textures that have that typical "grainy" look when modders keep adding detail to the single texture without having no clue how that affects the overall. Why do they keep doing that i don't get it.

BTW, i installed the On A Rail mod but you have to play it seperatly? It doesn't replace the version in the game?

Another thing it seems they took out is the Hazard Course, but apparently there's a mod for that too.

Maybe modders can mod this mod to be like the original lmao. I already see there's an improved Xen mod in the workshop of a game that is essentially already a mod. Just lol.

[EDIT] There's another On A Rail mod, called the "definitive" On A Rail. Ok this is pissing me off now.

 

[Jack Of Owls]

Played this a couple of years ago (maybe v1.00?) and thought it was great. There was some annoying slowdown when certain hovering monsters attacked you that I felt was more the fault of the developers than my hardware but the rest of it could be stunning at good framerates. There were also some extremely repetitious puzzles requiring you to hook hose A into machine B but not bad. The new lines for the whiny, nerdy scientists fit right in. Is there any reason to re-play the most recent builds of it, other than playing in 4K since I have that kind of display power now?

 

[udm]

Just finished it tonight. Holy fuckballs, you guys were right about Xen, that shit was overdrawn to the point of absolute banality, and this is coming from someone who enjoyed Xen from original HL1. I also felt like they ruined Gonarch with its weird ass pacing. Some parts were really cool, like Gonarch chasing you down a straight path, but overall its behaviour just wasn't consistent and the whole thing felt weird and overly scripted. It greatly reduced the coolness of the original fight sequence. And don't get me started on the invisible walls.

Overall, despite Xen, I still feel like I got my money's worth, especially the first half of the game. The marine fights feel so much better in Black Mesa.

 

[Icewater]

Played this a couple of years ago (maybe v1.00?) and thought it was great. There was some annoying slowdown when certain hovering monsters attacked you that I felt was more the fault of the developers than my hardware but the rest of it could be stunning at good framerates. There were also some extremely repetitious puzzles requiring you to hook hose A into machine B but not bad. The new lines for the whiny, nerdy scientists fit right in. Is there any reason to re-play the most recent builds of it, other than playing in 4K since I have that kind of display power now?

They released their own version of Xen, which is overly long but very beautiful. Would recommend playing until you get bored for the visuals and music alone.

Apart from that, probably not really. There are some mods that add updated versions of various cut areas back into the game, and other mods that improve visuals, but nothing major.

 

[SlamDunk]

Black Mesa? This total conversion should have been named Dark Mesa.

This is the first game ever where I had to turn up the gamma (+25% via NVIDIA control panel). Even then it's too dark (and too brown, for that matter). This game feels like Doom 3 in that regard because the indoors default setting for flash light is ON for 95% of the time for me.

Other than the off-putting and annoying art directional choices made with color palette and lighting, this game has been fun so far. Many things have been done better than in the original, obviously due to the massive computational resource differences.

I've also tried Black Mesa: Blue Shift for a bit, which seems to be OK.

EDIT: Apparently the overly dark visuals is a known bug that's still not squashed. Anyway... I finally finished Black Mesa. Xen was much better than in the original, albeit far too long.

 

[Wirdschowerdn]

 

[geno]

My bet is a multiplayer title in the Half-life universe.

 

[Yosharian]

Xen was much better than in the original

I mean not really

 

[Freedos]

Xen was much better than in the original

I mean not really

I agree. It's beautiful to look at and I appreciate the effort, but it's too long, far less frontier alien world and the game takes a weird change of tone among other things.

I confess I don't hate the original Xen though (yeah, I know, I'm into a minority).

 

[Icewater]

My bet is a multiplayer title in the Half-life universe.

Ricochet 2, finally!?

 

[-M-]

Finally bit the bullet and played through this (long after doing the freeware version ages ago).

Since Xen has been discussed to death (8 years for that?), I have three big things that bothered me about this mod.

1. Vortigaunt charge attacks are now dodgeable. Completely ruins the point of the enemy when you realize this. They were designed so you have to either hide when you hear them charge up, or take them out quickly in a specific order if hiding wasn't feasible. Now you can just strafe and be safe. Huge miss from the mod team. Also they gave them the Houndeye AoE attack too for some reason.
2. They attempted to bring Half-Life 2 combat over to Half-Life (for the worse). The MP-5 is the big loser here as each clip now holds roughly half the ammo (30 vs. 50 rounds) and you're limited to three grenades. In the original, the MP-5 was a relatively weak yet very versatile weapon that traded the preciseness and a little damage from the glock for a big improvement in firing rate. Now it's almost not even worth using with how often it needs to be reloaded. It may make more sense in reality (MP-5 uses 30 round clips, although 50 round drums do exist), but it makes combat far less interesting as you'll often have to reload multiple times to take out a HECU grunt.
3. The land mines in Surface Tension are now visible. Kinda removes the entire latter half of the chapter title.

There's plenty to like and the general aesthetic is pretty faithful (if you don't mind the darkness), but a lot of the design decisions are clearly for the worse. Ended up replaying the original afterwards and it's easily the superior product.