I desperately want to rate it higher, but I can't do that in good faith after playing it to completion. I clocked in 22 hours to get all the achievements (two of which in particular add a unique and frustrating challenge to your run, neither of which tanked the score BTW!), this is around 6 or 7 more hours than a normal run of Black Mesa will take. The team from the Crowbar Collective did an excellent job of remaking one of the most beloved FPSs available but there are issues, from minor to moderate, but they stack up and by the end, you will feel it.
First of all, the game is buggy, really buggy. Sometimes a mission-critical item will phase through the world, you will clip out the map, you will get crushed by an object barely touching your hitbox and die instantly, an enemy will be eat all your shots from your favorite high-powered weapon and ignore all the damage until you get much closer to him, it's incredibly easy to sequence break one of the bosses (especially if you are doing achievements that require you to carry items though the fight), while not a bug these also feel like ones: hitboxes of some objects are way bigger than the object, thus they will block your shots when firing from behind them and there are lots of magic walls in places that don't necessarily make sense for it (some block you artificially from going back in the level, and some prevent minor skips which would have been a really cool reward for curious players). All of this creates this feeling of jank, that someone inexperienced in the industry made this, like the game lacks polish that a full release of a game like Half-Life or an official remake made by Valve ought to have.
The second big problem is balancing, what the fuck have they done to the enemies? If you play on normal Vorts, head crabs, zombies, assassins, the majority of the roster is laughable, you can even easily put the final boss because compared to the Marines they are all trash. I'm half considering booting up the original HL to see if they do even a quarter of the damage they do in Black Mesa, they spit out insane DPS, never miss a shot, and need milliseconds of direct line of sight to start firing on you, they even keep firing in the direction they saw you last. Hell, they even keep shooting through walls as if nothing was there, I'm pretty sure it's just a visual bug and those "ghost shots" don't hurt you. This leads to a laughable power gap between them and the rest of the enemy force. The alien grunts don't deal much damage but they tank a lot of shots, in large groups this means wasting a whole lot of ammo. The controllers are kinda whatever, but the devs LOVEEE spawning like 10 of them at a time. Sentry turrets will also make short work of you, but they are quite easy to sneak up on without tripping lasers or walking around in most cases.
The final thing that made me lower the score was the level design. Most of the maps are faithful recreations with some addendums, modifications, etc. Except for Xen which was very much expanded and reimagined. This led to the "Xen" chapter being a vast improvement over the original (for the most part), and the last actual, non-boss chapter, "Interloper", being a mix of great new storytelling additions, models, textures, and locations which are brand new and have never been seen before, some really cool scenes, and some of the worst gameplay in the entire game. This leaves a SERIOUSLY sour taste in your mouth because the last 1-3 hours are stacked with uninspired puzzles, elevator fights, THE DAMNED CONVEYOR BELTS, and fight after fight after fight after fight after fight after fight after fight. Why the fuck did they not put some of the fights in-between all the cable management puzzles and jumping over lasers and instead stacked it all on that stupid conveyor belt and elevator ride? I don't fucking know!
I wanted to focus on the negative aspects because other reviews have already covered the good parts: the game looks gorgeous, all the sections in Black Mesa where marines are absent are fucking perfect, Xen in REALLY gorgeous, etc etc.
First of all, the game is buggy, really buggy. Sometimes a mission-critical item will phase through the world, you will clip out the map, you will get crushed by an object barely touching your hitbox and die instantly, an enemy will be eat all your shots from your favorite high-powered weapon and ignore all the damage until you get much closer to him, it's incredibly easy to sequence break one of the bosses (especially if you are doing achievements that require you to carry items though the fight), while not a bug these also feel like ones: hitboxes of some objects are way bigger than the object, thus they will block your shots when firing from behind them and there are lots of magic walls in places that don't necessarily make sense for it (some block you artificially from going back in the level, and some prevent minor skips which would have been a really cool reward for curious players). All of this creates this feeling of jank, that someone inexperienced in the industry made this, like the game lacks polish that a full release of a game like Half-Life or an official remake made by Valve ought to have.
The second big problem is balancing, what the fuck have they done to the enemies? If you play on normal Vorts, head crabs, zombies, assassins, the majority of the roster is laughable, you can even easily put the final boss because compared to the Marines they are all trash. I'm half considering booting up the original HL to see if they do even a quarter of the damage they do in Black Mesa, they spit out insane DPS, never miss a shot, and need milliseconds of direct line of sight to start firing on you, they even keep firing in the direction they saw you last. Hell, they even keep shooting through walls as if nothing was there, I'm pretty sure it's just a visual bug and those "ghost shots" don't hurt you. This leads to a laughable power gap between them and the rest of the enemy force. The alien grunts don't deal much damage but they tank a lot of shots, in large groups this means wasting a whole lot of ammo. The controllers are kinda whatever, but the devs LOVEEE spawning like 10 of them at a time. Sentry turrets will also make short work of you, but they are quite easy to sneak up on without tripping lasers or walking around in most cases.
The final thing that made me lower the score was the level design. Most of the maps are faithful recreations with some addendums, modifications, etc. Except for Xen which was very much expanded and reimagined. This led to the "Xen" chapter being a vast improvement over the original (for the most part), and the last actual, non-boss chapter, "Interloper", being a mix of great new storytelling additions, models, textures, and locations which are brand new and have never been seen before, some really cool scenes, and some of the worst gameplay in the entire game. This leaves a SERIOUSLY sour taste in your mouth because the last 1-3 hours are stacked with uninspired puzzles, elevator fights, THE DAMNED CONVEYOR BELTS, and fight after fight after fight after fight after fight after fight after fight. Why the fuck did they not put some of the fights in-between all the cable management puzzles and jumping over lasers and instead stacked it all on that stupid conveyor belt and elevator ride? I don't fucking know!
I wanted to focus on the negative aspects because other reviews have already covered the good parts: the game looks gorgeous, all the sections in Black Mesa where marines are absent are fucking perfect, Xen in REALLY gorgeous, etc etc.