Black Mesa mod released: Download the Half-Life remake after 8 years of development
Lewis Denby September 14, 2012 - 2:47 pmNews: The Black Mesa mod, which recreates the original Half-Life in the Source Engine, has finally been released – and you can now download it after eight years of development by its huge team.
Update: Predictably, the site appears to have immediately crumbled under server strain. We’ll keep you updated as and when it’s back up. Update 2: You might have to try a few times, but the site appears to be back up!
Let’s take this really slowly as we all utter these words together. Black Mesa – the Source mod which recreates the original Half-Life in the Source Engine – has… been… released. Like, actually released.
The huge singleplayer mod – around eight hours long in this incarnation – takes everything before Xen in the original Half-Life and entirely recrafts it in the Source Engine. It’s a mod, rather than a standalone game, but it’s soon to be available via Steam if you require that for your PC gaming, and it only requires that you have the Source SDK installed. Half-Life 2 is not required. Plus it’s absolutely free!
Awesomely, its release time has been set to 08:48 New Mexico time – the time Gordon Freeman finally turned up for work on that fateful day.
What an epic undertaking this has been: announced, hyped up, delayed, delayed again, leaked, then silent for years, before recently emerging into the media again in an almost-finished state. Our delightful Joannes Truyens is currently playing through the thing, and he’ll be able to tell you what he thinks of it very soon. Watch this space.
But will you download it now, or wait until you’ve read Joannes’ thoughts? It’s time to choose, Gordon. It’s time to choose.
Comments (3)
I am delightful! I am also downloading as we speak, not yet playing! Oh God, pins, needles and edge of seat!
So far, I like it. I haven’t had a chance to play much because of stuff here at work that needs done, but it seems alright (and a lot better than Half-Life: Source), although swinging the crowbar looks really odd to me.
The voice acting isn’t quite as good as I’d expected; it’s kind of campy and the “dialog” sounds stiff. It may not be a 100% faithful recreation, but from what I’ve seen so far, it is still fully in the spirit of the original game and does the source material justice.
The only problem I’ve had in what little I’ve gotten through is that I’m expecting certain things, only to find that the layout is different enough to force me to not play by memory and consider that things may be in a different sequence.
Overall, I am impressed with what everyone managed to put together, even it it’s not all grade-A material. Worth the wait? Hard to say until I finish (and force myself to play through BM’s versions of the plaforming sections), but I’m glad that it’s finally done – or at least ready to play.
Personally I’m loving it. It is very faithful to the original and there are plenty of new additions that make it feel fresh, like new signs, a huge amount of detail to each area, some gorgeous areas, a good follower system and it just generally feels like Half Life.
The voices, like you mentioned, aren’t great and some of them are pretty repetitive, but the fact that they aren’t absolutely terrible is good for a mod team who made the game for free. The music is a bit mixed and throws me off sometimes, but there are some surprisingly enjoyable tracks in there as well. I haven’t finished it quite yet, but for a mod this is the highest of qualities.