Review - Black Mesa (Definitive Edition)
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- Опубликовано: 11 сен 2024
- In this review, I take a look at the officially licensed, fan-made remake of the original Half-Life.
Black Mesa is not rated by the ESRB, however it would be Mature (17+) if it were. The original Half-Life is rated Mature (17+) - Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Language
This game is available on Steam here: store.steampow...
Thanks to Garuu for the score card!
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Honestly weird for me to hear people criticise a game that I absolutely love. Really didn't have any problems with it, except Kevin Sisk's attempt at imitating Mike Shapiro. Gladly paid 12$ for it, even if I could play it for free.
I think all in all he did a pretty good job though. In my opinion they struck a good balance of making the NPCs familiar yet different. At the very least I like how he's a bit more expressive with his lines. Makes the characters feel a bit more real
Glad to see that you are still making honest, straightforward, and great quality. Keep up the good work DW. 👍
I agree with your review. Although I enjoyed playing both games, I'd rather play the original Half Life again rather than Black Mesa. My joy of the improvements, especially what has been done with the Zen level, faded away rather quickly when I noticed that the combat hasn't been improved and that all of the game was stretched out like an old chewing gum. It seemed to me as if the developers were so proud of what they had done that they wanted to share it without seeing, as you mentioned, what flaws the original game had and that they actually made it worse. I still had my fun with it though compared to modern AAA trash, even though it outgrew its welcome by a long shot.
THANK YOU! I am so glad that somebody is finally bloody saying it! Not to mention how shady the developers have become. I must say that I disagree with you on one thing: Valve has neglected to add subtitles and high-refresh monitor support. That being said, they did fix the throwables.
While I agree that none of the half life games have particularly good stories ( hell, to this day I still don't fully understand what happened between the events of half life 1 and 2 ) the appeal of the story comes from all the mystery surrounding it. You get the feeling that there's some much bigger happening in the background with the g man and his employers pulling the strings and making stuff happen.
And unfortunately we will never know who the g man is or what his problem is simply because Valve doesn't know it either. There's a reason valve hasn't learned to count to 3 yet.
And without spoiling anything, let's just say the ending of Half Life Alyx single handedly ruined the entire storyline of the series and turned it into a convoluted mess.
The mystery is that we'll never know what it means. If it would have been resolved, it would probably all seem rather simple now.
what HL1 really needs today is a sound overhaul. The mixing is so bad and the sounds are in such a low bitrate it's an absolute pain with headphones. The thing that happens when you turn away from a sound and it's just in one ear while the other channel stays complete silent is so painful I couldn't replay it while at work. And when I play it at home I'm always so turned off by the tanky, not responding to being shot at marines that aged like milk... But that's another story.
The original Half-Life is around 12 hours long while Black Mesa is supposed to be 15 hours, what's ideal campaign length for you?
5-8 hours for an FPS.
Mmh, my recent replay on Hard was about 9-10. Black Mesa was 19 on the middling difficulty. So yes, double the length.
Not really. Half-Life 1 can be finished in less than half of that time. I beat every Half-Life but I couldn't bother to finish Black Mesa because it's extremely tedious and drags on way too long. I checked the Bolloxed walkthrough's and saw that Black Mesa is even much longer than Half-Life 2 and that is just ridiculous. I'm around half way through and I can't force myself to finish it cause it's just that boring to me.
I personally don't believe that you should strive to beat a shooter game in one sitting
@@512TheWolf512 I started it two years ago.
DW it's a small indie team with relatively few resources, of course it looks like it could have come out a decade ago.
I love the Quake Goldsource engine, it's old but has an eery atmosphere completely lacking from the Source engine.
It's true halflife never had particularly good combat, but Black Mesa managed to take all the fun out of that as well. Just play the original, unlike DW I still think it's a great game.
Been playing through this one recently, oh sure the original half life has sup par shooting and other janky things, and “where do I go syndrome” but it’s from 1998 whereas black Mesa was finished in 2020 and it feels very dated, it feels like a garry’s mod level set, even compared to other later source engine games it feels dated. Also I swear the platforming is worse because the jump sucks and it’s jankier, and I’d say the ladders are worse than they are in the original, another thing is some of the enemies that were tough or intimidating or a threat in the original are a joke in black Mesa such as the ichthyosaur, and the alien grunts.
Yeah it's a mess. The changes they made just give off the impression they didn't understand what made the original so influential and what actually needed improvement... only that they wanted it to look prettier and be far longer.
15:18 DSP moment
If you mean the "crouch jumping is crap" thing... I can use the mechanic just fine. Just because I can do it doesn't mean it's not a trash mechanic.
@@DWTerminator It barely matters. The only issue is that it can cause problems with some keyboard setups. Similar to the low crouch option in Shadow of Chernobyl with no toggle option.
Hl1 the 98 release its pretty Hard for the eyes for a new player so black mesa is a good alternative hope they remake opposing force and blue shift
I heard there are Black Mesa: Blue Shift and Black Mesa: Gaurd Duty. Both of which are in separate development efforts for Half-Life Blue Shift.
I also heard about one for Opposing Force called Operation: Black Mesa, but I haven't had time to follow it.
I agree with a lot of the takes, but I think 2/5 is slightly too harsh. It's a good remake that's a little too faithful and the original HL2 assets clash with Black Mesa's a little more than they really should, but less than they did before several updates on the lighting engine.
HL1 is still a great game, especially in its historical context, but for those that just cannot get past those dated designs BM is an essential purchase. Plus, with Black Mesa you can install the (mostly) finished Blue Shift remake, which I will stand by as being endlessly better than the original.
14:19 cough cough Naughty Dog cough cough one of the biggest culprits of this lol
Most AAA studios these days do it all the time.
@@DWTerminator Yeah pretty much, but I noticed that TLOUS did start a trend of more games focusing more on story & cinematics & making the gameplay more of a after thought.
I gave this a try a few years back, and while I was okay with it, I think the combat encounters are a bit too fast-paced for my liking. I think the gunplay could've fared better being projectile-based than hitscan.
Only thing I remember about this game is that DSP didn't know how to crouch jump lol
Unrelated to the video but what is the software you used to show FPS counter at 4:13?
Steam overlay has it built in
You can enable it in the Steam overlay.
@@DWTerminator ah thanks.
DW gonna get eaten alive in the comments
I've never been much of a fan of remakes honestly. Like, why would i bother with Black Mesa or Re4 remake when i could easily play the original. They go on sale for pretty cheap and can pretty much run on anything at this point. Hell, the original re 4 has aged like fine wine and is a lot of fun to this day.
Well, it's still interesting to see what they did with it, but sure, I wasn't interested in Black Mesa for the longest time and when I eventually played it I was somewhat confused by how much it was being praised by most people.
Most of the time it's better to just remaster the originals rather than try to completely remake them. Even then, a lot of so-called "remakes" are little more than extensive remasters.
The only remake I can think of off the top of my head that's a significant improvement over the original is System Shock.
@@DWTerminator Metroid Zero Mission is also much better than the original
The first Resident Evil remake as well, but it doesn't completely replace the original game for me.
Age of Empires 2 remaster + new expansions were all excellent. Enormous amount of new SP content as well.
@@gogolplex74 Resident Evil (GameCube) Remake absolutely destroys the OG game from 96.
I recently dusted off my old PlayStation console and my copy of the Director's Cut (non dualshock ver.) after not played it since like 2006.
Man... this game didn't age well. It still has charm, but my God... the Remake obliterates it. If it wasn't for the nostalgia, and the funny memes throughout the years, that game wouldn't get as much praise as it does.
@DWTerminator, I know this isn’t about Video Games, but I think your opinion will make me feel better. What do you think about Chris Brown? Because I’m just baffle about the amount of praise he been having. Because people want him to be in VGs now like CoD!!!
I don't even know who that is.
You mean the guy who used to beat Rihanna?
How did they get to sell this since Valve owns Half life?
Valve worked out a licensing deal with them.
That gunplay was painful to watch, the MP5 in particular is so shite that it hurts. The new Xen looks neat, but I'm not slogging through the rest of the game for it. Remake Opposing Force instead.
You have a garbage gaming taste
Black Mesa is decent enough and can definitely be fun and definitely impressive at times. But it's such a random remix of HL1, HL2 and their own contributions that it just doesn't work sometimes. DW did mention the soundtrack, which is a real problem at times, and the same is true for the game just being too long, but it's also weird stuff like the Vortigaunts being weird hybrids that wouldn't fit in any of the Valve games, some really unfun AI movement and most of all the annoying wanna-be action movie attitude.
This review is bad feels almost like it's made by a game journalist, it only focuses at the length of the game rather than what it fixed or added or made by whom.
For example he forgot the added atmospheric scenes that tells that the military is losing and black mesa is becoming a burning mess.
The presence of the Lambda team in xen.
The NPCs feel more alive and like actual people.
Mag size was minimized to force the player to use other guns.
Gonarch's feels like an actual fight with a dangerous monster and not just pew pew it away till it dies.
I'm sorry but you really missed why people like blackmesa and more like you focused on why you hate black mesa despite almost no one notices the problems you're presenting.
Great review. I never played HL or its sequels so this game was a new experience to me)
Have you tried Supreme Commander and SC: Forged Alliance? Some consider SC:FA one of the best RTS games of all time.
I want your thoughts)
Supreme Commander's on my "to-do" list.
@@DWTerminator That's great)
Yeah way too long. Especially xen got too hard and annoying. God mode on and run through that shit. Never wanna play it again, rather play orig.
I hope Mack from Worth A Buy won't see this video, otherwise you 2 will have a field day.
Yea, this remake wasn’t very good to me. Hopefully the Opposing Force remake is better.
But I’d like to recommend Cultic, if you ever got the time to play it.
What a suprise... ANOTHER game you dont like... Imagine my shock...
What a surprise. Completely ignoring that I gave a game a 4.5/5 only 12 days before this review. Imagine my shock.
@@DWTerminator 1 game out of many is not a pattern mister negative
Also 4 videos between the Starfield and CoD2023 reviews, but of course you don't care about those either because it doesn't fit your preconceived narrative.
@@DWTerminator Your like to dislike ratio proves me right
Amusing that you seem to think I care about the like/dislike ratio.
Gotta make a count to how many times you say the word tedious....sure shooting in HL1 is kinda generic but it does its job the AI for human grunts was pretty advanced at the time them reacting very differently to the same situation u could save then load 5-10 times the grunt may throw a grenade at you may attack you or just taunt you idk how u missed that grunts function differently in HL1 , lol the game isn't all that long really the xen chapters are all quite short how the heck are enemies a bunch of bullet sponges ? What kill time you want exactly call of duty one??? You are going through an SP campaign of a FPS that has aliens and all sorts of weird tech and u want some mf to die by a bullet or 2? +I think you just categorize anything that isn't as straightforward as tedious I mean the tentacle boss fight is iconic part of HL1 so much so gearbox made its own version in OPFOR you seem to prefer much faster paced shooters.
You can tell it was a mod just by looking at the gameplay footage, and it looks like one of those mods that tried to do too much.
No, half life certainly wasn't long enough and Black Mesa isn't long enough either.. we need more
Heretic burn him at the stake , how dare you criticise this love (purple glasses) letter to OG masterpiece....................Hhhh LMFAO , nah bro i just joking razor sharp + on the point as always , maybe i am gonna play it one day i am so burn out on half life in general , i play them to much kid days etc i am good now.but thx anyway .peace.