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    A celebrated series of award-winning FPS games which has consistently pushed the limits and expectations of the first-person shooter genre since its inception.

    Impressions: The first three hours of Black Mesa: Source

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    BlazeHedgehog

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    Edited By BlazeHedgehog

     
     "Just one of those days, I guess."
     
    So, after five or six years, Black Mesa: Source is finally released. It's not the entire game, mind you, but it's everything up to the part nobody actually likes to play (the alien world, Xen). So while it's not everything, it might as well be everything, and even if you're playing the numbers game, we're looking at probably close to 95% of the game. So, how is it?
     
    Different. The easiest way to describe it is to relate to something else I've been playing for my first time: the original Resident Evil. The original Playstation game is goofy and kind of dated looking, but was sort of a landmark game for its time. When Capcom opted to remake Resident Evil for the Nintendo Gamecube, it was not a straight conversion - though the same basic structure of the game remained intact, puzzles were retooled, the storyline was made a little bit deeper, and the visual fidelity became much, much more rich. That's what we're looking at with Black Mesa Source: This is the game you remember, but enough about it is different that even if you've memorized the original Half-Life, this version still feels new, fresh, and exciting. 
     
     This thing looks TOTALLY safe!
     This thing looks TOTALLY safe!
    In a lot of ways, its sort of impressive that this is a fanmade mod. The quality of the textures is phenomenal, and the amount of detail packed in to every single map is impressive. It almost feels like a retail game - if not for a couple of awkward animations and some hit-or-miss voice acting, anyway. Polish is generally very high, but it makes the few moments where the game lacks polish stick out even more - in particular there's a whole lengthy segment now before you get your crowbar where you have to use flares to set zombies on fire, and it just seems kind of awkward to me for several reasons - namely that zombies can be set on fire easier than basically everything else in the game world (including wood and paper), and the fact that fire interrupts anything a zombie is doing. While that's to be expected, in practice it looks kind of funky when a zombie is crouched over a dead scientist and then robotically snaps to his "oh no I am on fire" animation. Similarly, female scientists seem to have problems with regards to the way their hands animate - there's lots of ugly clipping problems, especially when they cross their arms. Relatively small things in the grand scheme of things, but all the more obvious when you consider how high quality literally every other part of this mod is.

    I'm still undecided about the quality of the voice acting in BM:S. They have a very small pool of actors to pull from, and one of the biggest problems seems to be their adherence to specific "iconic" lines - their actors seem to be caught between reciting the line with same cadence of the original game and trying to put their own spin on it. The end result are lines that sound close to the original Half-Life dialog, but are just a little bit off - and never in a way that sounds appreciably better, just kind of... wrong. When the actors are given new dialog to play around with, however, everything is fine - and some of the new dialog is pretty good. My current favorite is something from earlier in the game:

    Security Guard: "Oh, would you look at that! Freeman DID show up for work today! Looks like somebody owes me lunch." 
    Scientist: "Ugh. Hello, Gordon."  
    Security Guard: "Yep, yepyepyepyep... looks like there is a peperoni pizza in my near future." 
    Scientist: "I hope you choke on it!"

     
     "Do you think you can come in on Mondaarrghhhhhh."

    With a sense of humor still intact, BM:S also redoubles its efforts to make Half-Life feel like a horror game. It's easy to forget with how dated the original game feels, and how Half-Life 2 moved more towards orwellian overtones, but the original Half-Life started out playing kind of like a horror game. Ammo is scarce, and your friends are dying all around you - or worse, they're being turned in to unspeakable monsters. All hell has broken loose, and you're at the center of it. BM:S makes the Resonance Cascade feel dangerous again, though part of that is also due to rebalanced difficulty. 

    If you played the original Half-Life on normal difficulty, you were in for a game that required stealth and a tactical advantage in order to win. After having played and re-played the original Half-Life on easy difficulty for years, sometime last year I decided to play through the game on normal and was angry with myself for missing out on it for so long. It was like a completely different game - one that required a great deal of thought in order to clear. The jury is still out on whether or not this has been accurately translated to Black Mesa Source - but my first encounter with the soldiers was one of frustration.
     

     Bullets! My one weakness! How did they know?!
     Bullets! My one weakness! How did they know?!

    These guys will chew you up and spit you out. They don't seem quite as mobile as the original soldiers, they don't communicate as much as to what they're doing, and once one of them gets a bead on you, you've only got a couple of seconds to get to cover before your entire supply of health and armor is gone. It feels a little overly difficult compared to the original game, which lead me to bump the difficulty of Black Mesa Source back down to easy mode again. Resources just feel too scarce for normal difficulty, and there are a couple of areas that put you a little too up close and personal with soldiers for me to feel comfortable. It doesn't need a ton of rebalancing, but it feels like it is just barely on the edge of being a little unfair. I've played quite a few shooters, and a metric TON of Half-Life in particular, and it just feels like I shouldn't be having this much trouble.

    In general, though, BM:S is making a very strong first impression. I almost kind of wish Valve had picked these guys up - with some extra resources and the guiding hand of a multi-million dollar game developer, the few rough edges in BM:S would have been buffed out and I'd have nothing to complain about. Then again, my complaints are generally small things that are easily forgotten for how absolutely great everything else about this mod has been so far. It doesn't even really feel like a mod; this could very well be a retail game, and while it's not all of Half-Life, we're looking at something that will easily last you 7-10 hours.

    It's not often you get to play something like this. Check it out, folks. 

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    BlazeHedgehog

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    #1  Edited By BlazeHedgehog

     
     "Just one of those days, I guess."
     
    So, after five or six years, Black Mesa: Source is finally released. It's not the entire game, mind you, but it's everything up to the part nobody actually likes to play (the alien world, Xen). So while it's not everything, it might as well be everything, and even if you're playing the numbers game, we're looking at probably close to 95% of the game. So, how is it?
     
    Different. The easiest way to describe it is to relate to something else I've been playing for my first time: the original Resident Evil. The original Playstation game is goofy and kind of dated looking, but was sort of a landmark game for its time. When Capcom opted to remake Resident Evil for the Nintendo Gamecube, it was not a straight conversion - though the same basic structure of the game remained intact, puzzles were retooled, the storyline was made a little bit deeper, and the visual fidelity became much, much more rich. That's what we're looking at with Black Mesa Source: This is the game you remember, but enough about it is different that even if you've memorized the original Half-Life, this version still feels new, fresh, and exciting. 
     
     This thing looks TOTALLY safe!
     This thing looks TOTALLY safe!
    In a lot of ways, its sort of impressive that this is a fanmade mod. The quality of the textures is phenomenal, and the amount of detail packed in to every single map is impressive. It almost feels like a retail game - if not for a couple of awkward animations and some hit-or-miss voice acting, anyway. Polish is generally very high, but it makes the few moments where the game lacks polish stick out even more - in particular there's a whole lengthy segment now before you get your crowbar where you have to use flares to set zombies on fire, and it just seems kind of awkward to me for several reasons - namely that zombies can be set on fire easier than basically everything else in the game world (including wood and paper), and the fact that fire interrupts anything a zombie is doing. While that's to be expected, in practice it looks kind of funky when a zombie is crouched over a dead scientist and then robotically snaps to his "oh no I am on fire" animation. Similarly, female scientists seem to have problems with regards to the way their hands animate - there's lots of ugly clipping problems, especially when they cross their arms. Relatively small things in the grand scheme of things, but all the more obvious when you consider how high quality literally every other part of this mod is.

    I'm still undecided about the quality of the voice acting in BM:S. They have a very small pool of actors to pull from, and one of the biggest problems seems to be their adherence to specific "iconic" lines - their actors seem to be caught between reciting the line with same cadence of the original game and trying to put their own spin on it. The end result are lines that sound close to the original Half-Life dialog, but are just a little bit off - and never in a way that sounds appreciably better, just kind of... wrong. When the actors are given new dialog to play around with, however, everything is fine - and some of the new dialog is pretty good. My current favorite is something from earlier in the game:

    Security Guard: "Oh, would you look at that! Freeman DID show up for work today! Looks like somebody owes me lunch." 
    Scientist: "Ugh. Hello, Gordon."  
    Security Guard: "Yep, yepyepyepyep... looks like there is a peperoni pizza in my near future." 
    Scientist: "I hope you choke on it!"

     
     "Do you think you can come in on Mondaarrghhhhhh."

    With a sense of humor still intact, BM:S also redoubles its efforts to make Half-Life feel like a horror game. It's easy to forget with how dated the original game feels, and how Half-Life 2 moved more towards orwellian overtones, but the original Half-Life started out playing kind of like a horror game. Ammo is scarce, and your friends are dying all around you - or worse, they're being turned in to unspeakable monsters. All hell has broken loose, and you're at the center of it. BM:S makes the Resonance Cascade feel dangerous again, though part of that is also due to rebalanced difficulty. 

    If you played the original Half-Life on normal difficulty, you were in for a game that required stealth and a tactical advantage in order to win. After having played and re-played the original Half-Life on easy difficulty for years, sometime last year I decided to play through the game on normal and was angry with myself for missing out on it for so long. It was like a completely different game - one that required a great deal of thought in order to clear. The jury is still out on whether or not this has been accurately translated to Black Mesa Source - but my first encounter with the soldiers was one of frustration.
     

     Bullets! My one weakness! How did they know?!
     Bullets! My one weakness! How did they know?!

    These guys will chew you up and spit you out. They don't seem quite as mobile as the original soldiers, they don't communicate as much as to what they're doing, and once one of them gets a bead on you, you've only got a couple of seconds to get to cover before your entire supply of health and armor is gone. It feels a little overly difficult compared to the original game, which lead me to bump the difficulty of Black Mesa Source back down to easy mode again. Resources just feel too scarce for normal difficulty, and there are a couple of areas that put you a little too up close and personal with soldiers for me to feel comfortable. It doesn't need a ton of rebalancing, but it feels like it is just barely on the edge of being a little unfair. I've played quite a few shooters, and a metric TON of Half-Life in particular, and it just feels like I shouldn't be having this much trouble.

    In general, though, BM:S is making a very strong first impression. I almost kind of wish Valve had picked these guys up - with some extra resources and the guiding hand of a multi-million dollar game developer, the few rough edges in BM:S would have been buffed out and I'd have nothing to complain about. Then again, my complaints are generally small things that are easily forgotten for how absolutely great everything else about this mod has been so far. It doesn't even really feel like a mod; this could very well be a retail game, and while it's not all of Half-Life, we're looking at something that will easily last you 7-10 hours.

    It's not often you get to play something like this. Check it out, folks. 

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    FilipHolm

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    #2  Edited By FilipHolm

    Don't I need Source something something to play it?

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    TruthTellah

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    #3  Edited By TruthTellah
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    deactivated-5f9398c1300c7

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    Great first impressions, Blaze. I'm personally enjoying the game myself, as the beginning tram scenario and the obtainment of your suit were both astounding moments for me. I am really considering this mod worth the wait.

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    SaFt

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    #5  Edited By SaFt

    @FilipHolm said:

    Don't I need Source something something to play it?

    I think the only thing you'll actually need is the Source SDK Base 2007 which you can find in Steam under Tools.

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    falserelic

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    #6  Edited By falserelic

    Anyone know how long this game is?

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    bibamatt

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    #7  Edited By bibamatt

    I'm assuming I need Half-Life to play this, right?

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    AndrewB

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    #8  Edited By AndrewB

    @falserelic said:

    Anyone know how long this game is?

    As long as Half-Life up until the last quarter of the game. Which is to say... maybe 9-ish hours? It's long enough for a shooter, that's for sure. I've played through Half-Life too many times to give you an accurate hour count for someone new to the game, and while there's enough new to this to make it... different... it's still familiar enough to anyone who's played it to give them and edge.

    @bibamatt said:

    I'm assuming I need Half-Life to play this, right?

    Already been answered in this thread. All you need is the Source SDK. The game is free.

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    falserelic

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    #9  Edited By falserelic

    @AndrewB said:

    @falserelic said:

    Anyone know how long this game is?

    As long as Half-Life up until the last quarter of the game. Which is to say... maybe 9-ish hours? It's long enough for a shooter, that's for sure.

    Thanks for letting me know. I'm downloading this game and the source engine at this moment. I can't wait to play this game.

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    Jackel2072

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    #10  Edited By Jackel2072

    My favorite line so far. "YOU CUT THE PONY TAIL?... Sell out"

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    BlazeHedgehog

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    #11  Edited By BlazeHedgehog
    @Jackel2072 said:
    My favorite line so far. "YOU CUT THE PONY TAIL?... Sell out"
    That one is also really, really good.
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    ShaggE

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    #12  Edited By ShaggE

    I wonder if there are any homages to Uplink in it. (the oft-forgotten and brilliant demo)

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    jeanluc

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    #13  Edited By jeanluc  Staff

    I love that they try to bridge the gap between Half Life and Half Life 2 by including Isaac Kleiner and Eli Vance in the game.

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    EuanDewar

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    #14  Edited By EuanDewar

    Wait, why is there no last bit of the game

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    BlazeHedgehog

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    #15  Edited By BlazeHedgehog
    @EuanDewar said:
    Wait, why is there no last bit of the game
    There's a lot of reasons. For starters, nobody likes the original version of Xen - from the very beginning, they said they had wanted to change Xen significantly for Black Mesa Source, they just weren't sure how to change it or what to even change it to. Second of all, it's been six years. A lot of people had written BM:S off as dead, so rather than sit on 95% of the game and never release it, they put this out with the promise that they will go back and patch their new Xen in at a later date.
     
    It's coming, just not right now. I'm kind of glad they did it this way, really.
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    ApolloBob

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    #16  Edited By ApolloBob

    Installing this bad boy right now. When I first played it (the original) I regarded Xen as a chore that I forced myself through because I knew I was near the end. I'd be satisfied if this mod ended with pressing a big red Staples "Easy" button that says YOU WIN and going straight to the G-man saying "Time to chooooose"

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    Fearsome121

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    #17  Edited By Fearsome121

    Mod of the decade folks. I'm calling it.

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    Justin258

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    #18  Edited By Justin258

    At this point most of the original Half-Life on Normal is fairly easy for me so I'm glad they bumped it up a bit.

    Otherwise, I haven't played this yet but I want to and will pretty soon.

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    BlazeHedgehog

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    #19  Edited By BlazeHedgehog
    @believer258 said:

    At this point most of the original Half-Life on Normal is fairly easy for me so I'm glad they bumped it up a bit.

    Otherwise, I haven't played this yet but I want to and will pretty soon.

    But if Half-Life on normal is fairly easy for you, just play on hard. There's no reason for this creep in difficulty; easy mode in Black Mesa is at least as hard as normal mode was in HL1.
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    Hitchenson

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    #20  Edited By Hitchenson
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