The original Half-Life game has always been one of my favorite FPS games (potentially my favorite single player FPS unless you want to count Portal 2), so of course I was definitely interested in Black Mesa as a remake of the game, and on that note... yeah Black Mesa is really damn good.
I know it's a bit corny to be like "haha the fans did it better" but considering how Half-Life: Source was pretty... middling, to say the least, even just as a Source port, I really feel Black Mesa takes much better advantage of the Source engine by just, well, recreating all the assets and art within the engine, resulting in the game just looking visually gorgeous overall - to the point where it doesn't look out of place with more modern FPS games and is easy to forget that it's based off of a game from 1998. I really liked the atmosphere of the original as it is, but Black Mesa enhances it with improved lighting and models. Xen especially looks absolutely gorgeous with the environment, lighting and just seeing all the creatures of space around you in the sky and whatnot.
Not to mention, in addition to being a massive visual overhaul, the game does make some changes to the original gameplay and stage design. This does make it a bit less faithful as a remake to the original, but at the same time I think the aspects that were remade mostly bring about an even better experience. In addition to just being so much nicer looking, Xen in general is a lot more 'cohesive' in this game - whereas in the original it was basically just a bunch of floating platforms that you could get past in a few minutes, Black Mesa actually has you exploring the planet - still involving platforming but taking you through a few different environments with a greater focus on puzzles throughout the journey. It just makes it feel a lot more 'alive', and more like an actual planet, rather than in the original where it was basically just kind of a video game level thrown together. Plus, while this is a bit more related to the story rather than the core game design, I also really liked how Interloper (the final chapter before the final boss) had you interacting with the Vortagaunts in the context of their own society, which without spoiling too much, actually kind of provides some context why they appear more friendly in Half-Life 2 despite being common enemies in the original.
If I did have a criticism on a game design level though, it's that the Interloper chapter does feel a bit too drawn out in my opinion. I think a lot of it just comes down to there being a ton of 'conveyour' sections which you basically have to stand and wait for periods of time while occasionally fighting enemies and avoiding hazards, with the puzzles and setpieces towards the end of the stage kind of just getting more repetitive to the point where about halfway in I was just constantly wishing the chapter would end already.
Otherwise, the same gameplay of Half-Life 1 is pretty much intact - the gunplay and movement especially feels just as good here as they did in the original and there's a really good use of the game's environments in finding ways to traverse.
My only other major criticism of any sort is that the native Linux version of this game is pretty broken. I started the game via the native Linux version and I pretty much immediately noticed issues with the lighting where reflections and shadows would constantly flicker and appear 'broken up' for lack of a better word on top of just being inconsistent with the environment in general (sometimes the lighting would completely change/cut out just by walking two steps in the same exact area and room), and I also noticed some objects that I assume were from later parts of the game appearing transparently through the walls of the room I was in. Plus, after looking it up, I did see quite a few reports of people experiencing massive frame drops throughout the game but I didn't really play the game's native Linux version long enough to really run into anything like that. The next solution was playing the game's Windows version through Proton and that worked better but at the same time, I did run into somewhat frequent stuttering and frame drops, plus the game crashing pretty frequently even after I turned down the settings. Lo and behold, I didn't run into these issues when I ultimately decided to play through the rest of the game on my actual Windows partition on the exact same hardware and at Max settings (at worst the frame rate dipping to ~30FPS at some intense points towards the end of the game). I say all that to warn you, if you're playing this game on Linux, I would recommend playing the game through Proton, but even then you might have to expect some issues. Also I guess the loading screens did feel a bit long but that's kind of just a weird quirk of the Source engine and I imagine it'd be better on an SSD.
But yeah, good fucking game and would definitely recommend playing it if you liked the original Half-Life.
I know it's a bit corny to be like "haha the fans did it better" but considering how Half-Life: Source was pretty... middling, to say the least, even just as a Source port, I really feel Black Mesa takes much better advantage of the Source engine by just, well, recreating all the assets and art within the engine, resulting in the game just looking visually gorgeous overall - to the point where it doesn't look out of place with more modern FPS games and is easy to forget that it's based off of a game from 1998. I really liked the atmosphere of the original as it is, but Black Mesa enhances it with improved lighting and models. Xen especially looks absolutely gorgeous with the environment, lighting and just seeing all the creatures of space around you in the sky and whatnot.
Not to mention, in addition to being a massive visual overhaul, the game does make some changes to the original gameplay and stage design. This does make it a bit less faithful as a remake to the original, but at the same time I think the aspects that were remade mostly bring about an even better experience. In addition to just being so much nicer looking, Xen in general is a lot more 'cohesive' in this game - whereas in the original it was basically just a bunch of floating platforms that you could get past in a few minutes, Black Mesa actually has you exploring the planet - still involving platforming but taking you through a few different environments with a greater focus on puzzles throughout the journey. It just makes it feel a lot more 'alive', and more like an actual planet, rather than in the original where it was basically just kind of a video game level thrown together. Plus, while this is a bit more related to the story rather than the core game design, I also really liked how Interloper (the final chapter before the final boss) had you interacting with the Vortagaunts in the context of their own society, which without spoiling too much, actually kind of provides some context why they appear more friendly in Half-Life 2 despite being common enemies in the original.
If I did have a criticism on a game design level though, it's that the Interloper chapter does feel a bit too drawn out in my opinion. I think a lot of it just comes down to there being a ton of 'conveyour' sections which you basically have to stand and wait for periods of time while occasionally fighting enemies and avoiding hazards, with the puzzles and setpieces towards the end of the stage kind of just getting more repetitive to the point where about halfway in I was just constantly wishing the chapter would end already.
Otherwise, the same gameplay of Half-Life 1 is pretty much intact - the gunplay and movement especially feels just as good here as they did in the original and there's a really good use of the game's environments in finding ways to traverse.
My only other major criticism of any sort is that the native Linux version of this game is pretty broken. I started the game via the native Linux version and I pretty much immediately noticed issues with the lighting where reflections and shadows would constantly flicker and appear 'broken up' for lack of a better word on top of just being inconsistent with the environment in general (sometimes the lighting would completely change/cut out just by walking two steps in the same exact area and room), and I also noticed some objects that I assume were from later parts of the game appearing transparently through the walls of the room I was in. Plus, after looking it up, I did see quite a few reports of people experiencing massive frame drops throughout the game but I didn't really play the game's native Linux version long enough to really run into anything like that. The next solution was playing the game's Windows version through Proton and that worked better but at the same time, I did run into somewhat frequent stuttering and frame drops, plus the game crashing pretty frequently even after I turned down the settings. Lo and behold, I didn't run into these issues when I ultimately decided to play through the rest of the game on my actual Windows partition on the exact same hardware and at Max settings (at worst the frame rate dipping to ~30FPS at some intense points towards the end of the game). I say all that to warn you, if you're playing this game on Linux, I would recommend playing the game through Proton, but even then you might have to expect some issues. Also I guess the loading screens did feel a bit long but that's kind of just a weird quirk of the Source engine and I imagine it'd be better on an SSD.
But yeah, good fucking game and would definitely recommend playing it if you liked the original Half-Life.