Black Mesa Review – Half Life 14 Years On

Back in 1998 when Half Life hit PCs for the first time, it was unlike most games released at the time, where most other games were telling their stories through cut scenes or had very little story at all, Valve aimed to break this mold and reinvent first person action games by ensuring that the player was always in control of the main protagonist Gordon Freeman and that the story was told through scripted scenes, in addition there were no bosses to speak of, as story and interaction were the main drivers for this game.

I remember the first time I played Half Life, the year was probably around 2000, up until that point I hadn’t really been able to afford a gaming PC and had to wait until my brother donated one of his cast off PCs to me.

I played a lot of first person games, Quake, Quake 2, Doom, Doom 2, Quake 3 Arena and Unreal Tournament, as you may have noticed I liked  first person shooters.

Then a friend of mine gave me Half Life to play, little did I know of what was in store, I loaded up the game, and from the moment I was traveling along that Mono Rail into the Black Mesa facility, I was hooked and have been ever since.

The way that the story of this everyman scientist, who was thrown into the extreme situation of a secret experiment gone wrong, was unlike anything I had seen or experienced before, where other games at the time had soldiers or space rangers for you to take control of, Half Life had a mute scientist who knew more about physics then he did about shooting a gun, which helped enormously for you to relate to him.

So remembering so fondly how much I loved the original Half Life, it was with a mixture of anticipation and trepidation, that I was feeling on Friday night, as I waited for Black Mesa to slowly download, there were many questions rolling around in my head, would it be as good as I remembered? would the developers of the fan made mod, really have made something that met the lofty expectations of a fan base that has been waiting 8 years for it to arrive?

Now when this game is described as a fan made mod, this is true, but not quite, as project lead Carlos Montero is a professional game developer who has worked on Neverwinter, Star Trek online and Champions online to name but a few and I would hazard a guess that most of the team are in the industry, in addition this is pretty much a full game, barring the Xen section, which to be honest, I am not too bothered about, as it was my least favorite part of the game.

Anyway I digress, what I’m sure you are all interested in, is how good is it then? well the short answer is very good, as I began my mono rail journey again at 8.47 am, (which is incidentally the time the mod was uploaded) into Black Mesa after 12 years, it was like putting on your favorite sweater, it just felt right, that robotic voice guiding you in, sets a tone that makes you feel that you are about to enter somewhere secret and just cool.

The graphical overhaul is fantastic, don’t get me wrong textures on walls or surfaces are a little flat in places, but that aside, particles, lighting, shadowing and water all look great and even character models don’t look too bad, lip syncing is good and animation, if a little wooden is fine.

But the best thing is the little changes that have been made, in the original Half Life if you happened to decide to kill the guard with the crowbar near the beginning of the game you got a hand gun, in this version you get the trusty crowbar only after you meet the guard, so you can’t kill him and have to rely on him to take the infected out for you, this also adds to the tension,  they have also included Eli at the beginning of the game, who was only introduced in Half Life 2, again it’s a small detail, but it helps to add to continuity for the series.

That all being said I am about 3-4 hours into the game and the story is pretty much identical; is that a bad thing? no because this is a game which does stand the test of time, even with the rose tinted glasses off, had they made any fundamental changes they would have run the risk of damaging both the narrative and our memory of the game, what they have done is payed a lot of care and attention to create something which is both familiar to people who played it before and also a game that should be played by newcomers to the series, as it lays out where that humble scientist Gordon Freeman came from.

There are a few minor criticisms which are; the voice acting which on the whole is good, but is unfortunately wooden in places, there are some hefty loading times and first person platforming still sucks, but do you know what, it’s free to play.

So you may ask what do you need to play it?

Well a Steam account as that is where it launches from and the following specs, also you have to download the source SDK 2007 in the tool section of the library in Steam, it’s free, but it does take up around 4-5 GB of memory:

Black Mesa Official Site.

Minimum System Requirements

• Software : Windows XP, Vista, or 7
• Processor : Pentium 4 3.0 GHz, or AMD processor.
• RAM : 1GB (1024 MB)
• Graphics Card : Shader Model 2.0 capable, ATI 9600, NVidia 6600 or better.
• Sound : DirectX 8.1 compatible.
• HDD : 8 GB (Not including the Free Source SDK, installed separately)

Ideal System Requirements

• Software : Windows XP, Vista, or 7
• Processor : Intel Core 2 Duo 2.4GHz or AMD equivalent.
• RAM : 1 GB (1024 MB)
• Graphics Card : Shader Model 3.0 capable, ATI X1600, NVidia 7600 or better.
• Sound : DirectX 9.0c compatible.
• HDD : 8 GB (Not including the Free Source SDK, installed separately)

So it isn’t terribly resource heavy, so do yourselves a favour, download and play this piece of gaming history and make sure you buy the soundtrack to support them, as it is better than a lot of current games you will play this year.