Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/03/09/black-mesa-a-reimagining-of-t.html
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Played a version years ago that was nice, but didn’t look anything like this. Got stuck on a platforming level, though, because the controls were a little fuzzy. Now, alas, I don’t think I have a machine capable of it. Being older than Max von Sydow in The Exorcist (OtMvSiTE) sucks.
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Source is pretty friendly to older systems, but if worse comes to worse you can always watch someone else streaming their playthrough
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Huge props and congrats to the mad lads at Crowbar Collective for getting it across the finish line! Remastering a game like this is absolutely no easy task, especially as a fan-run initiative that’s gone on for over a decade. That’s a lot of legacy to keep up-to-date as the effort ages.
Now to wait for Starry Expanse to finish Riven…
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Cruel
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Hell, I remember trying to play F.E.A.R. back in college and I was like “Why the hell do I have to play this on low settings when Half-Life 2 looks and runs awesome on high…”
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If you’re really unable to play it i think that’s a reasonable alternative. My time is limited to play games these days and i’ve watched playthroughs of most of the Assassin’s Creed games, though they were ones without any commentary just pure gameplay. The thing i liked was that i could just skip through the boring fetch quests.
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For the many things wrong with that game, playing it still creeped the hell out of me.
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Alas, I think the impact was muddled a bit by playing it in some ridiculous resolution like 640x480 on a 19 inch monitor… Plus I gave up after like 30 minutes and (probably) got sucked into another playthru of Half-Life 2 in the course of comparing visual quality and performance…
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I’m playing it right now!
Well… in a few seconds anyhow.
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Played it - it’s just…OK
It still uses the old textures and looked like the same blocky models, just plopped into the new engine. Loading times moving from one area to another are horrendous. Ended up uninstalling this.
I can’t speak to the loading times since Source games have been poor there since Half-Life 2 itself, but the rest of your description sounds more like Half-Life: Source (which is literally what you describe) than the version of Black Mesa I played a few years ago…
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We have AI that can take potato cam footage and turn it into 4K HDR, just waiting until it gets applied to those older games. Or HL3… Who am I kidding, between the Corona virus and Skynet all I’m going to hear is my hallucination of the HEV suit saying. “Emergency. User death imminent.”
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Hard to believe this has finally reached v1.0, feels like it’s been in development forever. It’s an incredible accomplishment though, for something that started out as a fan project to not just getting support from valve but being permitted to sell on their own store.
Obviously half life redefined the fps but it came out so long ago now that all the games it inspired have moved so far beyond what half life introduced that playing this is like unearthing something from another era. What new players would make of this, those who maybe not only never played the original but weren’t even born yet, i’d be interested in reading. It’s an entertaining trip down nostalgia lane and they’ve really done a bang-up job with the xen levels and i’m glad it exists but it’s not something i’d be revisiting often.
Also, don’t forget to take your hat to xen.
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As @gamen suggested, that sounds like Half-Life: Source, the official release which was so disappointing it inspired the Black Mesa fan project, IIRC.
I’ve had Black Mesa for a few years (ending at the jump to Xen), but v.1.0.3 looks markedly better than even that version - the textures seem to have improved in the latest patch(es) - and runs better on my ~10-year-old PC.
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OK, going to spoilertown here but:
When you reach Xen, there’s a zombie in an HEV suit, and the first indication you get is garbled HEV warnings. It’s very creepy, and a great addition.
To be non spoilery, they’ve done a fantastic job here (making a note: Huge Success), and there’s some twists on familiar enemies that will make old fans very happy. Also scared.
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HL1 was big when I was back in college and I spent a semster playing way too much team multiplayer (this was well before CS). I swear there were times when walking across campus I would hear the warning sirens in the distance… I’m the reason why my roommate bought a new video card, on my Voodoo 2 you could actually see the incoming rockets.
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