Black Mesa Releasing Sept. 14th

I'm definitely interested in checking it out...the long wait doesn't matter anymore now that it's release is imminent
 
its not even the whole game being released. it could be another year or two before they actually finish the whole game.


On September 14th you will see the first release of Black Mesa! This will include our re-envisioning of Half-Life all the way up to Lambda Core. We believe this is a great way to provide a complete-feeling 8-10 hour experience with a solid ending, make our fans happy and help us make the best overall game possible.

We are still working hard on Xen and BMDM, but instead of making you wait we are giving you Black Mesa as soon as it's ready! We're doing our best to help bring the immense vision of this project into reality, and we are very excited for what the future brings!
 
It's the part of the game that people like most. I doubt it will be good enough for anyone to care about their take on xen. If it is good I'd rather they just move on to redoing OpFor or Blueshift before xen
 
yeah I never finished Xen in the original game. still I would like to play the whole remake from beginning to end this time.
 
yeah I never finished Xen in the original game. still I would like to play the whole remake from beginning to end this time.
It's worth a playthrough but hard to say whether it's worth playing all of HL1 just for a look at xen. I replay HL1 every few years but usually stop around xen. If you got nothing better to do just replay the original I guess. Could be interesting to see the differences whenever they finish remaking the whole game.
 
Fuck yes! I saw this on facebook just now and nearly pissed myself with excitement. This should be badass... and a fantastic way to kill the weekend before BL2.
 
I recently replayed HL1 and it wasn't as exciting of a game I once thought it was. Played it when it was released back in 1998 and it blew my mind. It's still a good game but doesn't seem to have aged as well as others. For me games like Thief 1&2, System Shock 2 and Deus Ex hold up much better.
 
So they decided to remake HL on a new engine so it didn't look like ass anymore.

Then took 300 years so the new one looks like ass anyway.
 
So they decided to remake HL on a new engine so it didn't look like ass anymore.

Then took 300 years so the new one looks like ass anyway.

Cept it doesn't look at all like ass. http://imgur.com/a/ItaUQ#0

Anyway, they are releasing the game up to Xen because it needs quite a bit of work to make it a fun level... Xen was such a bitch in the original game.
Development on xen is already underway and we hope to have it finished up in a reasonable timeframe. Xen is going to basically be a complete game in its own right, it's not going to be just an epilogue to the game; more of a whole new chapter. It'll be pretty well expanded.
http://forums.blackmesasource.com/showpost.php?p=480698&postcount=12
 
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I must be the only person who didn't mind Xen that much. I mean, what pissed me off most was that damned teleporter labyrinth in Lamda Core...
 
Finally i never thought it would be out not this year for sure.. shall be interesting to play again for sure.
 
i don't know what exactly you were expecting, the mod is written in the source engine which is incredibly outdated to begin with.

If theyd released it in 2007 it would have maybe looked decent. They let that slip and played around, and now they have a badly aged "graphical update" which makes the whole thing kind of pointless.

To be honest, it looks worse than the HL2 episodes...and those are dated looking.

Although the source engine is pretty old, it has had some updating. Payday, Portal 2 and E.Y.E look better than this, and two of them were done by a small studios, in much much less time. :D
 
Although the source engine is pretty old, it has had some updating. Payday, Portal 2 and E.Y.E look better than this, and two of them were done by a small studios, in much much less time. :D

Payday isn't source engine, it's diesel engine.
 
If theyd released it in 2007 it would have maybe looked decent. They let that slip and played around, and now they have a badly aged "graphical update" which makes the whole thing kind of pointless.

To be honest, it looks worse than the HL2 episodes...and those are dated looking.

Although the source engine is pretty old, it has had some updating. Payday, Portal 2 and E.Y.E look better than this, and two of them were done by a small studios, in much much less time. :D

Heck, HL2 Cinematic Mod still looks pretty darn good even by contemporary standards...why the Black Mesa people couldn't keep up with that after all these years is beyond me.
 
If theyd released it in 2007 it would have maybe looked decent. They let that slip and played around, and now they have a badly aged "graphical update" which makes the whole thing kind of pointless.

To be honest, it looks worse than the HL2 episodes...and those are dated looking.

It does look worse than EP2. I hope the overall graphic quality is up to EP2 standards. Regardless I will play the game as I never played HL1.
 
It does look worse than EP2. I hope the overall graphic quality is up to EP2 standards. Regardless I will play the game as I never played HL1.
Considering the change in tone they are going for (cheesy action movie), I wouldn't consider it a replacement for the original game. HL is still worth a playthrough, especially given the price.
 
Who cares, the game isn't even done yet. They are releasing it incomplete.

A lot of people probably care. If they put out a poll that asked if people wanted the game minus Xen now, or wait another 6 months for the full game... I'd gladly chose to have it now. I've re-played HL1 several times now, and I usually quite at Xen anyways, that part of the game just isn't nearly as great. I can see why it would be a bother to anyone who hasn't played HL1, but for those of us just looking to revisit the game, this should still be a lot of fun.

Not to mention... they have probably lost a lot of interest over the years. This is a good chance to put out what they have and see what people think. If it's good, it will renew peoples interest in the mod, and they keep working on it. If it flops, well, at least they can put it to bed.
 
A lot of people probably care. If they put out a poll that asked if people wanted the game minus Xen now, or wait another 6 months for the full game... I'd gladly chose to have it now. I've re-played HL1 several times now, and I usually quite at Xen anyways, that part of the game just isn't nearly as great. I can see why it would be a bother to anyone who hasn't played HL1, but for those of us just looking to revisit the game, this should still be a lot of fun.

Not to mention... they have probably lost a lot of interest over the years. This is a good chance to put out what they have and see what people think. If it's good, it will renew peoples interest in the mod, and they keep working on it. If it flops, well, at least they can put it to bed.

I put it to bed in 2007, not to mention 2009.
 
All I remember about Xen was that last main boss that floats around and you had to shoot his head. That thing was a bitch.
 
I actually kind of liked Xen. It provided a change of pace to the game and required some actual thinking before you made a move.

Black Mesa actually being released at all, even incomplete, is a huge milestone in my eyes. I figured this thing had basically been canned a few years ago and to see it officially launching, even incomplete, will be awesome. Although I probably will not play through Black Mesa until at least the entire game is done, possibly through Blue Shift. I just replayed through the original anthology in early August and am not really interested in revisiting it this soon.
 
sweeeet. in need of another nostalgia trip, and replaying the original gets a little more painful every year.
 
i picked it up on xbox to make it less painful but it didnt help much.. using a controller playing HL was weird..
 
Isn't it a free mod? Couldn't they have just thrown it on the workshop section, for free? :confused:

Steam workshop doesn't work that way. As far as I know, it's only for a handful of games, of which Half-Life is not one. Greenlight would allow them to actually get the game in the Steam store. It would still be free, but it would get a ton more traffic.
 
when they release it i finally will play this and all of half-life 2. i think i never finish the mini episodes of half-life 2.
 
I'm not sure why graphics are an issue. If you can't or won't play HL because of the graphics, you are probably a child murderer. It's not really a 100% remake anyway, more of a reboot. People will be in for a big surprise if they think it is a 1:1 update when they stumble across something new and go "WTF, this wasn't in the original!".
 
Are those final shots?! :confused:

That would have looked like ass in 2005... Now it looks like aged ass.

Remember that this is running on the Source engine, not CryEngine 3. From the looks of it, I'd guess that it's the Episode 2 version of the engine so it should be about average for a game in the 2007-2008 time fraome.

Also remember that this is being made by modders, not Valve. You don't have Valve's tremendous artistic talents or map designers on board with the project. All things considered I expect this to be more or less a frame-by-frame remake of Half Life with maybe a few creative freedoms tossed in.

Were Valve working on this project, I'd assume that they'd expand on some of the level design and reimagine certain aspects of the game to bring the Half Life story into a game with a modern look and feel... not unlike what Eidos/Square Enix did with Tomb Raider Anniversary Edition.
 
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