Black Mesa

Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives. One a day, every day of the year, perhaps for all time. Gearbox's Barney-starring add-on is the black sheep of the Half-Life family, although at the time I never encountered any reason why that should be the case. My teenage tastes were perhaps less discerning then, but more importantly any return to Black Mesa was…

Tagged with feature, Half-Life: Source, Have You Played, Valve, Black Mesa, Half-Life, Half-Life 2, Half-Life: Blue Shift.

Each week Marsh Davies latches onto Early Access like a brain-eating alien parisitoid and slurps up any stories he can find. This week we’re back in Black Mesa [official site] - the classy fan remake of Half-Life 1 in a hybrid version of the Source engine which was used for its sequels. An incomplete release of the project was made available on Steam for free…

Tagged with alpha review, Black Mesa: Source, Crowbar Collective, early access, mod, Premature Evaluation, Black Mesa, Half-Life.

The rumors of Black Mesa's death have been greatly exaggerated. It has, however, been over three years since Gordon Freeman went for an all-too-brief jog in his shiny new hazard suit. No, gaming's favorite man of zero words and 1000 crowbar swings per minute hasn't suddenly affixed a chainsaw to his gun or moved his adventures to an unnamed wartorn Middle Eastern setting, but a…

Tagged with Black Mesa: Source, feature, Black Mesa, Half-Life, Half-Life 2.

The universe has a weird fondness for improbable coincidences. Name your franchise Half-Life, and it takes half a lifetime to come out. Create a robust mod based around a game in that franchise, and its development mirrors that of its crowbar-wielding, hazard-suit chic father series nearly one-to-one. The lofty promises, the incredibly lengthy periods of radio silence, the incessant cries of "vaporware" and "it'll probably…

Tagged with Black Mesa: Source, feature, Black Mesa, Half-Life, Half-Life 2.