I played Half-Life some years ago but eventually dropped it. Since then, I've had this preconceived notion that Half-Life is lame and stupid for some reason. And maybe the original game is, but Black Mesa is great!

It's just a really solid shooter. The movement feels smooth and slippery and fast. All the weapons feel so powerful and impactful. Sprinting while shooting with perfect accuracy is really fun. The game doesn't always play music, but when it does, it's super freaking hype. I liked the overall pacing. Similar to RE4, everything takes place in one day back to back to back. Each chapter picks up right where the last one left off and you go on the entire journey that Gordon does with no breaks.

The game has some stupid bits, like cable puzzles that last way too long, areas where it's not too clear where to go, and some combat encounters where you just get pummeled with bullets and don't have a chance to fight back. Also the audio levels are just super fucked up. Can't hear anything anyone says over the music and SFX. Surprised the devs never added a Dialogue volume slider. The pacing got a bit slower in the second half, sometimes there would be not very much shooting, just puzzles.

But this is a fun game, I understand the hype now :D