➤ Black Mesa, the review 🎮

Finally, after years of waiting, Black Mesa's review is an opportunity to talk about the version 1.0 of the game. How long have we been talking about the development of this commercial remake of Half-Life, made with the engine of the sequel and authorized by Valve? Our first trial of the game, then just arrived in Early Access, dates back to 2015, but the project itself is many more years old, since it has been talked about since 2005, that is a few months after the launch of Half-Life 2. A 'eternity. Was it worth the wait so long?

A few centuries ago one of the most popular ways to get to know the most famous paintings was to look at them Reproductions made by other painters. Traveling was not as easy as it is today and accessing certain places was not so obvious. Reproducing was therefore not considered a plagiarism, but a way to spread the pictorial culture by bringing it all over Europe, as well as a tribute to those who were universally recognized as a master. Being imitated was a privilege reserved only for a few. Obviously a copy of Lippina was not Lippina and, for the sake of truth, it must be said that many copied and then passed off the works as theirs. The fact remains that the principle from which the need to redo art arose was very noble and ultimately useful: for a budding painter, copying was a real school, which allowed him to learn from the best.

Story

Black Mesa is first of all a tributo ad Half-Life, because without a deep admiration for Valve's title such a large group of people would never have worked on it for so long.

However, it is also a way to allow new generations to get to know the original without having to force themselves to accept all those limits that a game of the last millennium carries with it. Finally, it represented an exceptional school for the development team, who during the long process were able to understand what it means to go from making an amateur project to a professional one.

Black Mesa exactly tells the story of the first Half-Life: during his first day of work in the secret Black Mesa facility, the scientist Gordon Freeman is involved in an accident that causes aliens from another dimension to break into our world. The funny guys, instead of trying to get to know humans, start eating them.

Freeman runs away in search of help, only to discover to his horror that those he believed to be friends in reality are not: the military wants to stop the alien threat, but also to erase all traces of the accident, including survivors. The only way left for Freeman to save himself is to keep running away and trying to figure out how to stop the aliens himself.

Gameplay

Like Half-Life, Black Mesa is one first person shooter classic in which the player, in the role of Freeman, must overcome a series of linear levels by killing all enemies, aliens or humans, and solving simple puzzles, mainly composed of levers to pull and steps to unlock. Despite being the remake of Half-Life, the Crowbar Collective title tries to improve the original in every way, while using more modern 3D models for the enemies, many of them taken from Half-Life 2, as well as for the scenarios. , completely redone from scratch. It also uses the Havok physics engine included in the latest versions of the Source Engine, which allows you to make the presence of crates, barrels and other game objects more realistic.

The end result is very similar to its source of inspiration, but at the same time it lets itself be played as if it were a title completely autonomous: we are faced more with a rereading than a carbon copy.

The key moments of the first Half-Life are still there, from the fight with the alien tentacles, to the escape on the rails of Black Mesa, to the final confrontation with the Nihilanth in the Xen levels. There are also all the side characters that fans love so much, like the mysterious G-Man.

As already mentioned, the setting is the classic FPS one. Freeman can then take with him all the weapons he finds around the levels: from the iconic crowbar up to the powerful RPG, passing through the Tau Cannon, the crossbow and the Glock 17, just to name a few. To change compared to Half-Life are the reload times, the rate of fire and other technical characteristics of the weapons, as well as the tactics of the enemies, which make the shootings different from those of the original, bringing them closer to those of Half-Life 2, that is, enriching them with a tactical nuance that can be appreciated. Note that the artificial intelligence of CPU-driven creatures has also been improved with the latest update. No miracles, but cases of pleasant behavior are now rarer.

In total, Black Mesa consists of twenty chapters, the last of which are the most retouched part compared to Half-Life. We are talking about the Xen levels, excellent in construction, mediocre in puzzles. Crowbar decided to remake them because the originals were really insignificant. Overall now they perform much better, but some naivety could have been avoided.

Was Black Mesa worth the long wait? The answer is undoubtedly yes, because it is a quality remake, very capable of standing on its legs. Of our own we also hope that it is the beginning of something bigger, that is, that the developers can now start working on a project completely of their own, which detaches them from the breast of Valve. Who knows, maybe it will be the latter to entrust him with a new project linked to Half-Life, given that with Half-Life: Alyx seems to want to revive the saga.

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Now that we have had the opportunity to try the 1.0 version of Black Mesa, we can only reiterate what was said in the other articles that we have dedicated to it: it is currently the best way to play Half-Life. Of course, it is not Half-Life, that is, it does not have the same innovative power or its historical value. It is also always a remake, but it remains a job done with all the trappings that does not betray the original, while modifying the weaker parts, such as the Xen levels. We can therefore only recommend it to all fans of classic shooters, as well as to those who want to take their first steps in this splendid saga.