Black Mesa looks good, but it won’t necessarily ‘wow’ you unless you’re comparing it to Half Life (in which case, admittedly, it will blow your mind). Valve has implemented several new technologies into the engine over the years to keep it looking somewhat fresh and up-to-date, including advanced lighting techniques, water shaders and the like, but these tricks only do so much to improve a game engine that is roughly eight years old. In regards to the graphics, while the game undeniably looks better than its inspiration, I must admit that the Source engine’s graphics are beginning to look dated.
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Admittedly the original game lacked stellar voice acting, but it would have been nice for this recreation to update the voice acting as well as the graphics. While the voices are crisp, and clearly professionally recorded, the actual acting ranges from serviceable to cartoonish to outright bad. Unfortunately, the voice acting for these characters is one of the few flaws in this game, and where otherwise polished production show some amateur scuffs. In particular, characters who play major parts in Half Life 2 but appeared as generic models in the first game are recreated with visually distinct models - a nice touch that helps this version seamlessly connect the original and the sequel. Where the models in the original somewhat resembled paper cut outs, the characters of Black Mesa appear, move and emote realistically.
The Source engine has always lent itself well to creating visually pleasing, if not necessarily photo-realistic, people. The graphical improvements are most obvious when looking at the human characters. The creators take the opportunity to flex some muscle in recreating this scene from the original game, showing off the highlights of the technical improvements of the Source engine, including impressive outdoor desert environments, dynamic indoor lighting and realistically moving construction machines. The game begins with you taking in the sights of the Black Mesa Research Facility as you travel in a monorail car. Who would be surprised that an amateur reconstruction of an entire game would be scrapped? Yet Black Mesa was released last Friday, and though incomplete, it is a surprisingly polished piece that more than does the original justice. At several points, the project was presumed canceled. When it was announced, the massive undertaking was met with skepticism. The fruitful culmination of eight years of labor from talented and dedicated fans, Black Mesa is a complete recreation of the original Half Life, rebuilt in the Source game engine that powers modern Valve games like Half Life 2, Portal and Left 4 Dead. It also ushered in a massive game community that would modify Half Life to create entirely new games, many of which would go on to be massively popular in their own right (the original Counter Strike, for example). The entire story is told through your eyes, with no cut scenes and minimal screen clutter. It may not sound like much, but at its time the game was revolutionary for introducing a lot of game design elements now taken for granted in first person shooters, including an emphasis on immersion. You then fight your way out with a variety of scavenged weapons.
Here’s the short version: you play as Gordon Freeman, a physicist in a high tech protective suit, who survives a freak accident in the Black Mesa research facility that results in extra-dimensional creatures infesting the complex. If you haven’t, it’s a sci-fi first person shooter released in 1998 by Valve, and one of the most important video games in history.
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If you’re a fan of video games, specifically PC games, you most likely have played Half Life.
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