Black Mesa from Crowbar Collective is a testament to the incredible work fan modders can accomplish. This is a complete remake of Valve’s classic 1998 first person shooter Half-Life. The first half of the game inside Black Mesa is a real treat with classic levels largely remastered more than entirely remade as compared to later sections. I found this portion of the game fun, and visually great, though the game does include all the jank of a 90s shooter for better or worse. I was surprised how familiar everything felt after having not played Half-Life in about a year.
The Xen portion of the game though is where this remake really shines in my mind. While there was a relief to those later sci-fi portions of the game in the original given their brevity Black Mesa reworks this entire section with new level designs and stunning visuals. There are a few too many puzzles and repetitive platforming sections but I found it largely enjoyable, it reminded me an awful lot of the first two Halo games.
I enjoyed the new guns included here, though the combat against human enemies was the most frustrating part of the game, it lacked that classic boomer shooter tactical style and instead felt akin to being a fish in a barrel scrambling to avoid being shot to pieces. Most of the time when I faced an onslaught I found it best to just speed run past the enemy since getting caught in a firefight was both unenjoyable and hardly useful.
I picked this one up for two and a half Canadian dollars and I feel it is well worth that. For fans of Half-Life this is definitely worth picking up and playing. It is not perfect, and it does lack the charm of the original in the sense of witnessing a classic game as it is. Still, there is a certain quality to playing through a passion project trying to breath life back into this game and I had a lot of fun with it aside from some tedious level design and poor human combat.
