! Black Mesa Source: A Release Date !

I have the most terrible guilt about gazumping Jim's sterling Sunday Papers, but I do so with signficant news. SIGNIFICANT. So significant that I'm attempting to post this from my phone while on the train. Will it work? Will you ever see these words? Such a vague, mysterious situation draws certain parallels with the subject of this post - the fabled, long-delayed, oft-accused of non-corporeal status Half-Life 1 fan remake Black Mesa Source. Which, would you Adam & Eve it, now has a release date.

That release date is September 14, the team behind BMS has quietly revealed. So, a mere 12 days from now. Let there be much rejoincing/nervousness.

There is a complication, and I don't mean 'how could a team of modders pull off a remake of one of the greatest games ever made, for free?' I mean that this initial release only goes so far as the Lambda Core level. Which means a) it'll last about 8-10 hours (hey, still better than most CODs) and b) no Xen. Yet. Is that good news or bad news? I honestly don't know. And are they delaying because they just haven't finished, or because they haven't worked out how to make Xen not-awful (apart from the giant testicle spider, of course)? I honestly don't know. But give me a break, I'm writing this on a five-inch touch screen - it took me ten minutes just to insert the bloody URL.

12 days! 12 days until the impossible!