This is arguably the best thing about Black Mesa. The world, in many ways, is now fully realized, and it feels just as organic and cohesive as the realms of Half-Life 2. Gone are the days of identical-looking scientists perpetually coming back to life in different parts of the facility, breaking the immersion time and time again. The team’s custom-made Face Creation System makes each new scientist or security guard look like a unique individual, even across different playthroughs, while remaining subtle and discreet. Later in the game, individual characters even respond to specific events if you bring them along with you. Some of the writing is surprisingly clever and humorous, and there are a number of delightful referential inside jokes knowledgeable fans will pick up on. Security guards and scientists can be seen interacting with each other at every turn sharing concerns, venting frustrations, even bickering with one another. Nowhere is this more noticeable than throughout Anomalous Materials. On the positive side, while Half-Life was only loosely populated with characters, Black Mesa is teeming with life. Additional dialogue and more elaborate character interaction dramatically alters the flavor of the experience. The moment-to-moment development of the narrative has received a lot of attention. In doing so, I can ignore some of the questionable changes the development team has made and accept some of the more rewarding ones. I don’t blame Half-Life for that, of course, but I feel I can defer to Black Mesa because it’s fun and it’s faithful enough to the original even in its reinterpretation of things. It’s difficult for me to play through because so many sections are poorly designed by today’s standards and are a chore to complete ( On a Rail and Residue Processing quickly spring to mind). I love and appreciate it immensely, but I don’t think it has aged well, and I don’t just mean graphically. Not so much because I think Black Mesa is better but because I enjoyed it, and I can’t say I’ve properly enjoyed Half-Life in years. I admit, I can’t even see myself ever returning to the original Half-Life. Vic, too, felt that the game had vastly surpassed his expectations, which were even more significant than mine. I had few expectations and each of them were exceeded. I finished Black Mesa about a week ago, and I was thoroughly impressed. That deprivation has arguably skewed the way people are responding to it.Īgain, though, I don’t want to sell it short. Black Mesa, therefore, is the first fresh and significant Half-Life experience fans have had in half a decade. In five years, there hasn’t been any word on when Valve will release another Half-Life title or what it will entail. This has become especially obvious recently. I haven’t ever bought into the hype, and I feel that the praise Black Mesa received with regards to re-inventing or augmenting the Half-Life story has been just a little too generous and inflated. The core Half-Life experience is mostly unchanged and the fundamentals mostly intact. While the team does demonstrate a little creative license throughout the experience, it is still only within the constraints of an established framework. While I have always admired the team’s ambition to transform one of the greatest shooters ever made – which I’m sure we would all agree is no small feat – I haven’t ever been able to look past the simple fact that it is a remake of someone else’s creative property. How should one honestly critique something that’s free and taken so long to make without undermining that investment? All I can do, I think, is be honest. Likewise, a large number of Half-Life fans have awaited its arrival with great anticipation. But alas, it is free, and the people who have worked on it have done so with amazing dedication and passion over nearly eight full years. I haven’t been a Black Mesa apologist (but I’m not so sure about Vic), and so I’ve occasionally been on the receiving end of nasty comments from those who believe that it is exempt from criticism. I’m very conscious of what it means to be a critic of Black Mesa, which has been a touchy subject over the years. Even as I write this, I am unsure of what angle I should approach it from.
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