I love and appreciate it immensely, but I don’t think it has aged well, and I don’t just mean graphically. Not so much because I think Black Mesa is better but because I enjoyed it, and I can’t say I’ve properly enjoyed Half-Life in years. I admit, I can’t even see myself ever returning to the original Half-Life. Vic, too, felt that the game had vastly surpassed his expectations, which were even more significant than mine. I had few expectations and each of them were exceeded. I finished Black Mesa about a week ago, and I was thoroughly impressed. That deprivation has arguably skewed the way people are responding to it.Īgain, though, I don’t want to sell it short.
Black Mesa, therefore, is the first fresh and significant Half-Life experience fans have had in half a decade. In five years, there hasn’t been any word on when Valve will release another Half-Life title or what it will entail. This has become especially obvious recently. I haven’t ever bought into the hype, and I feel that the praise Black Mesa received with regards to re-inventing or augmenting the Half-Life story has been just a little too generous and inflated. The core Half-Life experience is mostly unchanged and the fundamentals mostly intact. While the team does demonstrate a little creative license throughout the experience, it is still only within the constraints of an established framework. While I have always admired the team’s ambition to transform one of the greatest shooters ever made – which I’m sure we would all agree is no small feat – I haven’t ever been able to look past the simple fact that it is a remake of someone else’s creative property. How should one honestly critique something that’s free and taken so long to make without undermining that investment? All I can do, I think, is be honest. Likewise, a large number of Half-Life fans have awaited its arrival with great anticipation.
But alas, it is free, and the people who have worked on it have done so with amazing dedication and passion over nearly eight full years. I haven’t been a Black Mesa apologist (but I’m not so sure about Vic), and so I’ve occasionally been on the receiving end of nasty comments from those who believe that it is exempt from criticism. I’m very conscious of what it means to be a critic of Black Mesa, which has been a touchy subject over the years.
Even as I write this, I am unsure of what angle I should approach it from.
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