BACK TO BLACK
BLACK MESA is an incredible fan remake of Half-Life, and is now the best way to experience Gordon Freeman’s first adventure.
One morning, a 27-year-old theoretical physicist turns up late for work, and the next thing he knows monsters are spilling out of portals from another world. The Half-Life series is really just one long bad day at work, and Black Mesa is a Valve-approved, albeit entirely fan-made, chance to relive Gordon Freeman’s disastrous morning—but with prettier visuals, combat and physics lifted from Half-Life 2, bigger levels, and other upgrades.
Black Mesa sticks closely to Half-Life in terms of structure. You take the tram into work, watch in horror as the resonance cascade floods the facility with aliens, dodge headcrabs in the office complex, clash with the HECU Marines, deal with giant tentacles in the blast pit, fight through a warzone on the surface, navigate the radioactive Lambda Core, and finally visit Xen. But everything is bigger, more detailed, and more dramatic, with production values in line with Half-Life 2 (if not quite as high), which breathes new life into the Black Mesa Incident.
Some levels have been remixed too, with redesigned, or in some cases completely new, puzzles and set-pieces. So even if you know Half-Life inside out, there’ll still be some surprises here. However, purists may question some of developer Crowbar Collective’s design and aesthetic choices—and some things are so detached from the source material that it occasionally feels like an entirely new game. Black Mesa is not a 1:1 remake, so it’ll never feel as authentic as revisiting the original. But it’s a fresh, modern, and lovingly made take on a landmark moment in PC gaming.
Half-Life is still great, but feels increasingly stiff and dated as the years roll relentlessly on. But Black Mesa being built on the foundations of Half-Life 2, borrowing its weapon handling and chaotic physics simulation, makes for a much more dynamic and engaging first-person shooter. And thanks to an abundance of movable and breakable objects, and devilish traps that can cause explosive chain reactions, the stricken research facility has never felt more reactive or dangerous.
But let’s talk about Xen, because this is where Black Mesa makes its biggest statement. In the original Half-Life, Freeman’s arrival on Xen was, for most players, something of an anticlimax. It’s not as bad as people remember, but this otherworldly expanse of floating platforms, bizarre alien flora, and grubby textures is a low point for the game. But after years in development and several delays, Black Mesa achieves the impossible and makes Xen one of the best parts of the game.
FEELING XEN
The new Xen is stunning to look at, and feels genuinely strange and otherworldly—as this cosmic place-between-places should. Comparing both versions of Xen side by side, it’s almost comical how much of an improvement this is. What was once a rather lifeless, dreary place now sizzles with color and detail.
The new Xen levels loosely follow the original game in terms of theme and structure, but they’re also a radical departure. The platforming is more fun and dramatic, and there’s a lot more to discover in terms of world-building and environmental storytelling. Some locations have even been transformed entirely. In the Interloper chapter, Freeman encounters enslaved Vortigaunts in a factory-like cloning facility; however, in Black Mesa this section has been replaced by a bigger, much more evocative new location that really highlights the true misery of the Vorts’ enslavement.
It’s amazing that something as elaborate and well made as Black Mesa is, essentially, a fan project. And doubly so that Valve allowed them not just to make it, but sell it on
Steam too. This is a professionally made game, and arguably the best way to experience Half-Life on a modern gaming PC. For some the original will always be the best, but this is a superb re-imagining that uses the underlying systems of Half-Life 2 to great effect. Fighting through the Black Mesa facility as it falls to pieces is every bit as thrilling as it was back in 1998, and now the story ends with a bang instead of a whimper.
It’s almost comical how much of an improvement this is