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.

Glad to see that you are still making honest, straightforward, and great quality. Keep up the good work DW. 👍

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?

Unrelated to the video but what is the software you used to show FPS counter at 4:13?

DW it's a small indie team with relatively few resources, of course it looks like it could have come out a decade ago.

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)

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

15:18 DSP moment

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.

Only thing I remember about this game is that DSP didn't know how to crouch jump lol

@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!!!

14:19 cough cough Naughty Dog cough cough one of the biggest culprits of this lol

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

How did they get to sell this since Valve owns Half life?

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.

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.

DW gonna get eaten alive in the comments

I hope Mack from Worth A Buy won't see this video, otherwise you 2 will have a field day.

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.

What a suprise... ANOTHER game you dont like... Imagine my shock...

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.

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.

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.

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.