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

Super super super good! The density of puzzles is really high. On each screen there will usually be multiple puzzles to unlock different things using the same objects, which is really fun. I'd never played a Sokoban game before but the puzzles all felt really satisfying and not too hard.

Until the final main world... (the ice one) and everything after that. My brain couldn't handle the endgame puzzles. Part of it is probably because I'm too dumb for them. But also a lot of the later puzzles can be cheesed, so it felt like I wasn't doing some of them the intended way.

Overall the game is amazing, this is a very strong 4/5. Style is great, lovely music, really fun puzzles, and a ton of secrets!

What made me really excited for this game (besides the dope ass visual style), was this awesome trailer with the song Holly by Sleigh Bells. Bro this trailer made me so hype. But... in the game there isn't really any music at all :(

It just kinda has a lot of ambient loud noise which can get a bit annoying. This game would be so cool paired with a killer soundtrack and it makes me sad that there isn't one. Because the style is there already, Children of the Sun's art is super enrapturing.

And then in terms of gameplay, it's solid. The levels amps up in difficulty and scale throughout the game and by the end, the puzzle of killing everyone in the level is super fun. The last like five or so levels were great and I would've liked it if the game had some more like that. Children of the Sun doesn't overstay its welcome, clocking in at just over three hours. But I would've liked a bit more.

Definitely worth checking out.