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jp's Black Mesa (PC)

[September 16, 2023 08:10:10 PM]

I played this believing it to be a (originally) fan recreation of Half-Life using Half Life 2's engine. I played it as such - marveling at the things I remembered from Half-Life and for others, wondering if I simply did not recall certain moments from the game or if this was something new/added/modified in the process of recreation.

So, I'll mostly be writing about Black Mesa as if it was Half-Life...and having played Half-Life, this will be a bit weird. After all, I played HL shortly after it came out...and that's easily 20 years at this point. Huh.

(1) There were moments in the original that I remember as genuinely surprising and shocking. Realizing that the tram ride was NOT a cut-scene was one of them. This was in the days of 3D acceleration as novelty... so, my recollection is that the tram ride looked amazing, and thus it had to be a cut-scene. And, after bumping the mouse, and seeing the screen move - OMG! There were other similar moments in the game: I remember the shock when you get to the surface and the soldiers attack you, there was a helicopter fight that was notable, and I remember being creeped out by the Man in Black - whom you started to notice. I think I noticed him MORE this time - cued in as I was to his importance and appearance. That being said, these moments were no longer surprising.

(2) I remembered some of the game's weapons, but I did not recall how many weapons the game has - nor that there was a secondary mode of fire (new addition perhaps?). So, it was fun to play around here and experiment with more ways of shooting and such. Similarly, I didn't remember being able to pick up objects and mess around with them - e.g. picking up cans so that the ceiling critters would "eat" those allowing me to walk past them without concern.

(3) I didn't remember having to spend so much time in vents wandering around. Nor did I remember the cold-areas? I vaguely remembered riding on the trams - but it seems there was more tram riding here? Wow - it's all such a blur!

I did play about 1/2 of the game - maybe more? And I remember that the Xen part of the game was kind of boring - though the weapons (which I did not get to) were rather fun - especially the weird alien thing you put on your arm and fire "bugs" that homed in your enemies. I guess those are still in the game? For 5 and a half hours, getting to the midway point seems pretty good. Which makes me wonder if I played it much slower and more carefully back then? I'm assuming that I played the game for longer sessions - so I would have finished it much faster? But, I did noticed this time around that I knew how to make progress, wasn't too concerned with picking up stuff, finding secrets, or even killing every monster. There is a fair amount of back tracking, and I can see how people might get lost (there was one puzzle I bumbled around abit - it's the one where there's an electrified pit of water and you have to turn off the electricity, then plug something in the water into the wall socket... that last part took me too long to realize).

I think the only real disappointment, and this might be a HL2 engine issue? was a dexterity moment where you have to jump on to a rotating blade to them jump on to a ledge. It simply did not work for me - I'd fall off, you could not stay on the blade... I was starting to get really frustrated with this section until I decided to try something new... I made a stack of barrels and was (barely) able to make it up on to the ledge. So, were the barrels the real solution? I doubt it - all the level design indicated that you had to jump on to the rotating blades...

Why did I stop? Well, I got to a section with conveyor belts and ceiling presses - time your movement so as to avoid getting squished - I just kept getting squished, especially in the section where the conveyor belts turned 90 degrees and I got stuck on the geometry, jumped and died. Ugh.