Probably one of the best games to come out in the past decade and it's a total remake of an already fantastic game, go figure. I played this years ago when it was a free-to-play mod and I remember being blown away by it then, and I still am now.
The number one thing I love about the Half-Life series as a whole is that, despite being set in a fictional, futuristic world, the events that take place feel completely within the realm of possibility. The original Half-Life had superb world building and atmosphere already, but Black Mesa massively improves on it. It just feels so real and grounded in reality, as if it's based on real events, as if out there in the desert there really is a huge secret underground facility with scientists researching god knows what, who are just one mistake away from screwing over the rest of us. This remake, or "reimagining", does an amazing job at making Black Mesa feel like a real place that has real people working there, and it manages to do this without effecting the gameplay at all or making the level design feel too "video gamey", which is something that a lot of games still struggle with today. To be fair though, this is mostly because Half-Life already had great level design to begin with and for the most part, Black Mesa doesn't deviate much from that blueprint and when it does it's for the better. For example, Blast Pit is almost identical while On a Rail has been cut down and flows a lot better now.
I feel like a kid in a candy store playing this because there's just so much attention to detail and environmental storytelling and I love it, like how they added several EAS broadcasts and more HECU radio chatter. Speaking of HECU, the marines have been humanized along with all the other NPCs. While they did sound badass and their dialogue was technically impressive for the time in the original, it felt more like you were fighting robots than actual humans. That's no longer the case and I think it's for the better, because it helps drive home the fact that you're forced to kill other humans during an alien invasion, the ones trying to keep it under control at that, and in my case, once I got to Surface Tension I started to actually feel bad for them. The same guy who did the voice lines for Insurgency did the marine voices in this and he did a great job as usual. Scientists and guards react to your presence in a much more natural way now and even guards who didn't say anything new in the original game are given new, interesting dialogue. They even added Vance and Kleiner to better connect the story to Half-Life 2. All these things really help you connect with the place and feel bad about the events going on.
The music in Black Mesa is really good, even if it's personally not your thing I think it's hard to call it "bad". The valid complaint I can understand about the soundtrack however is whether or not it actually fits the game. Personally I like it a lot and I think it fits pretty well with the exception of two songs; the one that plays when you first get the HEV suit, and the one that plays during the lobby fight in Questionable Ethics. It's obvious they were going for a more grim and somber feeling with the soundtrack but it also picks up the pace during the more action packed sequences, and those end up being some of the best tracks. Xen's soundtrack is on a whole different level though and sounds completely different from the songs in the rest of the game, which may have been intended. It has this sort of Hans Zimmer feeling to it and is more ethereal sounding to better fit an alien world. I feel like there's a noticeable quality difference between the new songs added with Xen and the old songs, but considering there's like 10 years worth of time between them this shouldn't be a surprise.
There's some things I've seen people complain about, the biggest one being about Interloper and how long it is. Some people think Xen is too long in general and they may be right, I feel like the devs might have tried a little too hard to make Xen more interesting than it was originally, but this doesn't really bother me since it's still fun. Another thing, the Gonarch fight has been drastically altered from the original which may be a pro or a con depending on the person. I find it to be a bit more interesting than just having a straight "shoot it until it dies" fight and it's very reminiscent of the antlion guard fight in Episode 2, perhaps even better. I have also seen people complain about the HECU marines and how they're annoying to fight now which I don't really understand? Besides the slight aim punch they added I didn't have any problems fighting them and I'm pretty sure the marines use the same if not a modified version of the Combine soldier ai, you can tell in their movement and tactics.
I don't like throwing the word "masterpiece" around so I'll just say this: I'm having a really, really hard time finding things I would critique or complain about. Any critique I could possibly come up with just wouldn't be big enough for me to give it a lower score, so it gets a perfect score from me. If you haven't played this, I thoroughly recommend it, it's such a great time and you can really tell there's a lot of passion put into it. Of course, I suggest playing the original Half-Life first if you haven't so you can really appreciate the changes and improvements they made.
The number one thing I love about the Half-Life series as a whole is that, despite being set in a fictional, futuristic world, the events that take place feel completely within the realm of possibility. The original Half-Life had superb world building and atmosphere already, but Black Mesa massively improves on it. It just feels so real and grounded in reality, as if it's based on real events, as if out there in the desert there really is a huge secret underground facility with scientists researching god knows what, who are just one mistake away from screwing over the rest of us. This remake, or "reimagining", does an amazing job at making Black Mesa feel like a real place that has real people working there, and it manages to do this without effecting the gameplay at all or making the level design feel too "video gamey", which is something that a lot of games still struggle with today. To be fair though, this is mostly because Half-Life already had great level design to begin with and for the most part, Black Mesa doesn't deviate much from that blueprint and when it does it's for the better. For example, Blast Pit is almost identical while On a Rail has been cut down and flows a lot better now.
I feel like a kid in a candy store playing this because there's just so much attention to detail and environmental storytelling and I love it, like how they added several EAS broadcasts and more HECU radio chatter. Speaking of HECU, the marines have been humanized along with all the other NPCs. While they did sound badass and their dialogue was technically impressive for the time in the original, it felt more like you were fighting robots than actual humans. That's no longer the case and I think it's for the better, because it helps drive home the fact that you're forced to kill other humans during an alien invasion, the ones trying to keep it under control at that, and in my case, once I got to Surface Tension I started to actually feel bad for them. The same guy who did the voice lines for Insurgency did the marine voices in this and he did a great job as usual. Scientists and guards react to your presence in a much more natural way now and even guards who didn't say anything new in the original game are given new, interesting dialogue. They even added Vance and Kleiner to better connect the story to Half-Life 2. All these things really help you connect with the place and feel bad about the events going on.
The music in Black Mesa is really good, even if it's personally not your thing I think it's hard to call it "bad". The valid complaint I can understand about the soundtrack however is whether or not it actually fits the game. Personally I like it a lot and I think it fits pretty well with the exception of two songs; the one that plays when you first get the HEV suit, and the one that plays during the lobby fight in Questionable Ethics. It's obvious they were going for a more grim and somber feeling with the soundtrack but it also picks up the pace during the more action packed sequences, and those end up being some of the best tracks. Xen's soundtrack is on a whole different level though and sounds completely different from the songs in the rest of the game, which may have been intended. It has this sort of Hans Zimmer feeling to it and is more ethereal sounding to better fit an alien world. I feel like there's a noticeable quality difference between the new songs added with Xen and the old songs, but considering there's like 10 years worth of time between them this shouldn't be a surprise.
There's some things I've seen people complain about, the biggest one being about Interloper and how long it is. Some people think Xen is too long in general and they may be right, I feel like the devs might have tried a little too hard to make Xen more interesting than it was originally, but this doesn't really bother me since it's still fun. Another thing, the Gonarch fight has been drastically altered from the original which may be a pro or a con depending on the person. I find it to be a bit more interesting than just having a straight "shoot it until it dies" fight and it's very reminiscent of the antlion guard fight in Episode 2, perhaps even better. I have also seen people complain about the HECU marines and how they're annoying to fight now which I don't really understand? Besides the slight aim punch they added I didn't have any problems fighting them and I'm pretty sure the marines use the same if not a modified version of the Combine soldier ai, you can tell in their movement and tactics.
I don't like throwing the word "masterpiece" around so I'll just say this: I'm having a really, really hard time finding things I would critique or complain about. Any critique I could possibly come up with just wouldn't be big enough for me to give it a lower score, so it gets a perfect score from me. If you haven't played this, I thoroughly recommend it, it's such a great time and you can really tell there's a lot of passion put into it. Of course, I suggest playing the original Half-Life first if you haven't so you can really appreciate the changes and improvements they made.