it's cool, yeah; this represents an absurd amount of work and love and it's great something like this exists, it's miraculous, even, and i have extreme respect for all the work put into this, but...did we really need a half life remake? black mesa "improves" upon the things people don't like about half life (on a rail is shorter, xen is different entirely, and--most importantly!!--it's way harder to kill yourself by launching off a ladder at top speed) but of all black mesa's changes, the parts i liked the most were...the parts that were just "from half life." which i'm not sure speaks very well to the urgency of its remake. still: half life is great, and black mesa merely in imitating it becomes great, too, even as i don't like all of the changes, or maybe even most of them. (this also felt easier than half life, but that might entirely be because, well, i just replayed half life, and the aforementioned ladder thing, which was responsible for like 20% of my deaths in half life.) i wish this was something even more liberated from half life, instead of these big expansive "new parts" jutting out of the old game's skeleton. that would've made it a worse game, almost definitely, but at least then it might have been interesting. as it stands now: i think i prefer half life, and it takes up 2% of black mesa's hard drive space.

maybe i should finally play half life 2 now, ha ha