Yes ladies and gentlemen, I am here to bring you my first impressions on arguably the most famous (or infamous) mod in gaming, Black Mesa, which has been in development for nearly 10 years. Now many peopledidn’t think this would come out, well now the first 10 hours or so are available for download free of charge.
I have never ever been a fan of Half-Life games, I could never really care about the universe, thegameplay. I always found it boring and the whole FREEMAN IS A BADASS! Thing didn’t help matters, but now I went into this with an open mind and I gotta say…… I still dont like Half-Life…..
I by no means hate the series, I just find it nearly impossible to enjoy these games because I just dont like this FPS/Platformer/Adventure/Puzzle genre combo they have going on, all the elements are there but none of them are anything above average.
What I must applaud is the fact that this is NOT Half-Life 1 HD, this is Half-Life 1 completely redesigned in the Source engine and while its not cutting edge, it looks great. The environments are detailed, the character models vary from person to person and the zombies are disgusting and scary looking.
Im not a fan of the story telling, you are constantly in the shoes of Gordon Freeman the series protagonist. While this may sound cool, I always feel detached from everything that’s going on, instead of feeling like I am this character. I feel completely detached and when you miss key story points by walking away from a talking NPC, that doesn’t help matters much.
The game is kind of like an old school shooter with its health/armor system and the ability to carry like 10 guns at once, the shooting itself is fine but the weapons lack impact. You never feel like you’re doing damage but rather like you’re just shooting in the air and praying to god that you’re doing some damage.
The game also has environmental puzzles that require you to sometimes turn a valve (no pun intended), get a NPC to open a door for you then go to three different areas to get access to the fourth one that’s gonna advance the game. However this at least in my opinion, took more dumb luck than any skill.
You have to mess around with EVERYTHING in a room and then sort out where to go. This could take you anywhere from 2 to 30 minutes, there is never any clear indication as where you have to go, sometimes you can waste 15 minutes going the wrong way, then going back and trying to find another way to advance.
But the biggest issue with this game is that it feels like a complete and utter chore to play, it lacks that umpf, that drive that makes you wanna keep playing it. My friends tell me it gets better later on because you meet up with some soldiers and it becomes more action focused.
However from what Ive played, the game is boring, it’s a chore and I honestly got a headache and felt sick like an hour in and needed to take a break, that has never happened to me with any game.
Now I might be the wrong person to do an article on Black Mesa. But since I haven’t played Half-Life in a few years, I thought maybe now that I’m older I could enjoy this type of game more, sadly I didn’t.
I will say this, if you’re a fan of Half-Life you probably already have this on your PC and you’re on your 50thplay through it. If you’re one of the 5 people in the multiverse that doesn’t like Half-Life, this game wont change that for you, in fact you might dislike it even more.
So those are my thoughts on Black Mesa, what did you guys think of this mod? Give me your thoughts down in the comments and for you fanboys that wanna hang me off a bridge for not liking Half-Life, I have only one thing to say…. Come at bro!
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