This is a great video! Im glad to see that you're still posting, and the production quality of your older videos is still apparent. Keep making awesome content and take it easy!
Good job im happy u upload still even tho 60% of viewers bcs u are not playing that unnamed game i love your content and its really good i hope u can get 100k back and get the money and viewiers back. GL
And if you've never played it, go for both as well. HL1 looks very shitty and outdated, by nowadays standards. But i've played it just a year ago for the very first time. It's an outstanding game. Gameplay still holds up very well, just the "physics" aren't great - but that game was released, when I was 4.... Love that game. One of the best ever made. Incredible, what a game that damn old can deliver gameplay wise. Black Mesa is cool to play as the next game. Most of the time it succeeds in representing Half life. And a lot has been enhanced. Zen alone - it is actually good looking and fun to play, altough it's completely differrent. It just sometimes doesn't do quite as in Half life. It is after all a completely different Game. Yeah just Source.... Makes a handfull of things better, but causes 1000 new problems. Yeah, just don't.
In general, Black Mesa works better as a prequel to Half-Life 2 than Half-Life 1 does. Vortigaunts look and sound more like they do in HL2, and them becoming your allies is depicted more clearly. Kleiner and Eli appear properly, and Barney is mentioned. Zombies and barnacles also look closer to the HL2 versions, but more importantly act the same way gameplay-wise (as in, zombies throw things at you and barnacles can suck up objects and headcrabs). G-man's style of cutscene is more consistent. Even Magnusson's Magnificent Microwave Casserole is played out more clearly in Black Mesa. Overall, Black Mesa just provides a more consistent feel when playing through the entire Half-Life series.
That is a very valid point (especially like Connor said, its better to pick up black mesa in case you played like half life 2 and it's successors) but also it is a point to pick up the og half life for that empty design feel of 90's games (which of course not everyone may like nowadays but hey it runs way better)
Comparing Black Mesa and Half-Life is like comparing Metro 2033 OG and 2033 Redux. They're different and equally enjoyable ways to tell the same story, and one is more tight-knit with the sequels.
HL: Amazing! HL Source: “Ya, do you want more bugs with that?” Black Mesa: You know that amazing game from the 1990s? We completely remade it and it isn’t super buggy.
Here's a tip for those who want to play Half-Life: Source turn off Multicore rendering it fixes a lot of the visual bugs not all but the more noticeable ones (ex. Residue Processing when the skybox leaks through, the Windows Solitaire effect in Surface Tension, most of the barnacle tongues are fixed as well some aren't but most are)
Or HL AI:VR, but that is still making it's way through the fan base, and isn't as deeply rooted as Freeman's Mind. I still love him singing while on a rampage.
I don't recommend it. Everybody should have their own take of Gordon Freeman's personality, and not Ross's. The series were meant to be watched after at least one playthrough of the game.
Black Mesa. I grew up on Half Life. It is a fundamental part of my youth. But you’ll never get someone today to play it. I just recently played Black Mesa and it was phenomenal. They did such a good job, and Xen was amazing. Sure some of the original Half Life charm isn’t there, but if you’ve never played the original you’d never notice it missing. Black Mesa is how you should play Half Life today.
What I've been doing lately is playing Black Mesa while watching a Half-Life walkthrough. It helps me appreciate all the differences. Playing it, I notice myself thinking "this is its own game." Highly recommend after playing OG!
the thing is black mesa did change somethings in the game, specially the "on rails chapter" and the ending chen, but it improved the chapters, in my opnion theres nothing that was made worse in the game, its different from resident evil 3 remake that missing the clock tower for me made the game worse tho. the removed stuff on black mesa, as that on the on rails parts, u would do a similar puzzle over 3 times in a row they simple made u do it just one time instead and expanded after that part.
@@gabrielandy9272 Black Mesa straight up removed most of the On a Rail and big parts of Interloper, they didn't even tried to improved, just choose the easy way of "If a vocal group in the community doesn't like we will not try to do anything", with is just sad considering that these are probably the chapters that had more potential to be improved to something interesting, but thats not what we get. And the entire game is filled it out with bigger and more overly detailed areas just for the sake of "We have to do diferent". If you can understand the strengths of Half-Life 1 and even 2 you can see that Black Mesa does not improve on anything in terms of level design, most of the time is the same but with more detail and a lot of times is just making it longer for no reason. Black Mesa was made by a team of people that were more passionate for the sequel of the game they are remaking, making it a lot of nuance of the original being lost in this journey to make Half-Life 1 fit more with 2, instead of really remaking it thru its own strengths and weakness. Black Mesa is not a bad game, is a very good one own its own, but is not the perfect remake that people tend to say it is.
@@CoracaoAcidental98 On A Rail and Xen were insufferable in Half-Life and couldnt be rehabilitated in their then-current forms. They went full radical and it absolutely paid off. OG Half-Life is also desperately crude and empty when viewed through modern lenses, and its not as charming as you think it is. Black Mesa is the better game, and the better Half-Life.
@@CaptainFordo21 Is very simple to see what could have been improved in those two chapters, for On A Rail just make the journey more memorable, improving the athmosphere it already had, the overly detailed style of Black Mesa would fit like a glove. As for Xen is just making the plataforming better, make some obstacles not as dumb as it was on the original and springle more eviromental storytelling. As for the "desperately crude and empty when viewed through modern lenses", I don't see your argument in here, my problem is Black Mesa making too much in visuals to the detriment of itself, they in theory should spend more time making some areas more interesting, maybe add a little more arenas, but most of the time they don't, the only chapter that I can think that really does that is Surface Tension, but that is because was for the most part made by other guy that after he showed his work was put on the team. Most of Black Mesa as I said is trying to fight Half-Life 1 more with Half-Life 2, by limitations of working with the same engine as that game and by design of its developers, see the interview of the composer of the soundtrack, he says that the idea was to make a game that would not feel like a huge shift if you played before 2, the "improvements" was just make like Half-Life 2 because the team prefer this one. I can talk about the bad aspects of Half-Life 1 for hours, the list is not short, and I can find most of these problems in Black Mesa. Black Mesa is not the better game, and by far is not the better Half-Life, is an incredible feat by a team of fans that was put in a pedestal too high that doesn't deserve.
@@CoracaoAcidental98That same vocal group of the community complained about On a Rail and interloper complained about how long it is. Now, do some math. How would you shorten something that is too long in length??
8:05 So you *can* actually sneak through that? I always thought it was such a perfect rocket launcher opportunity to blow them all away in one blow and he said something like. "Yeah, okay, _that works too._ "
I didn't know you could use the rocket launcher there. I'd assumed that the soldiers were too spaced out. I should work on mastering the rocket launcher.
My sister started playing Half Life 2 a few years ago (which surprised the hell out of me as she was very anti-gaming and never showed any interest in sci fi ... anything growing up) and she kept asking me who these people were, what the heck they were talking about, what was a "black mesa", etc. It was right about that time when Black Mesa was released in Beta, and I told her to give that a play and try to ignore the bugs as it would explain pretty much everything. I asked if she'd played the original Half Life and said she couldn't stand the old, blocky graphics and chunky level design, which is fair as she didn't grow up playing games like I did and couldn't appreciate how cutting edge they were for the mid-90s.
Black Mesa was my first introduction to Half Life. After I played it I went Half Life crazy and now have every game in that takes place in the Half Life universe.
As someone who came to this party late, I played the original first and then went through it a second time a few months later then played Black Mesa. I can safely say that what I heard about Half-life from other people who did play it when it came out, was more fully realized in Black Mesa (though that might just be because of Xen).
@@goolecauc4193 I know, and I know it’s not much importance to the story. Even so it’s a little more official half life gameplay by Valve so I think it makes it worth it.
Friendly reminder that Crowbar Collective was given an official license to the Half Life name and franchise by Valve themselves. It was also included by Valve in their Steam sale for Half Life games. As far as Valve is concerned, Black Mesa has earned its right to be a true Half Life game.
I wouldn't really call Black Mesa a highlight reel of Half-Life. From my experience, it's actually pretty loyal to Half-Life's level design throughout. Every individual room from Half-Life has a counterpart in Black Mesa. It definitely has some changes (not including Xen and On a Rail) but everything from the corridors between rooms to the pipes and vents that you crawl through seem to be represented very closely, if not with a few twists/improvements. Great video though. I completely agree about playing the original and ignoring source.
Yes I agree. Extremely faithful but takes creative liberties where it only adds to the experience. A good example is the lobby ambush at the end of questionable ethics. Other details such as the weapon inspection upon getting a new weapon are just awesome. With all these new (mostly great) changes it still feels authentically Half Life.
Black Mesa was actually my introduction to the half life universe, however I didn't really experience most of the issues you rightly pointed out, mostly because I had been playing gmod for years before hand so I was already pretty familiar with some of the source engine quirks and such
I personally had my first experience on PS2 and honestly... That version on its own is also quite decent. Not to mention that it comes with Decay and Alien Mode with its own ‘Ending’.
i plunged 80+ hours on it when i found out it got itself on steam. for free. i would have more hours but i had a non steam copy of half life for such a long time (pretty much played daily cuz i also wanted to speedrun it) and well as time went on it got a bit boring (especially since people just wouldn't play the game for fun but rather make it a chore for everyone either new or just wanting to play it for fun and also servers were decreasing a lot here where i live and i can't make my own one to play) very fun game for those interested it was
14:25 "Without being too much of a visual downgrade from modern releases." I personally think Black Mesa looks way, way better than any of the sequels, and I've played HL2 and its episodes to death.
I think I consider Black Mesa to be what Half Life was meant to be. I know that claim is gonna drive some people insane, but I played the original HL1 and while it has charm, one of the things I look for in a game aside from story (story is probably my #1) is *presentation* of that story. If a game has a really damn good story but its presentation is lacking (be it for technical limitations, time constraints (the fate of hl1 xen), or poor development (absolutely not hl1's case)), it kind of softens the impact that the story has. I had played Black Mesa a couple years after I had finished Ori, which is an incredibly visually stunning game. I purposely waited until Xen was released before I got Black Mesa. I often hold Ori as one of my most favored titles when it comes to visuals (especially the new game) because everything is just so detailed and they really capture the natural beauty of the world. When I saw Xen in Black Mesa, I was completely speechless. I probably stayed at that intro segment for 10 minutes before I could move onward, and then when I got into that foresty place it was just beyond words. I still don't think I have any words that can capture how much I loved the new Xen. They did it a brilliant justice by remaking it from scratch. Xen is now a true border-world - an amalgamation of many different unique worlds all merged into a harmonious conglomerate, and they captured it beautifully.
I pick black mesa better but there was a time i used to like half life sourse lol the reason why i got really into black .esa becaused xen came out and it makes it more fun to beat the whould game with out a missing chapter
I just finished Black Mesa today... It was absolutely worth the $5 that I paid for it with the current steam sale! I finished within 11hr. It was great!
the way vortigaunts shoot you with their green lighting thing is so cool , black mesa improve it and it is so awesome. For me you should try each one , they might be all the same but replaying half life isnt always the same and it still entertains me even if I play for multiple times
One point, that half life is designed around "tanking damage," isn't exactly true. Apart from a couple sections in xen and maybe one part in surface tension, valve seems to have followed their original design philosophy pretty closely, which was "run, think, shoot, live". It's still super forgiving with supplies even if you ignore most of it, but really, try thinking of the game as a puzzle game and its design will shine so much more.
I played half life 2 and the episodes first and then Black Mesa like you said and yes, it fit perfectly and felt right. A few months after I did try the original half life to see how much of it black mesa improved, and there was quite a bit
I literally never experienced the seizure-inducing texture glitches seen in 10:58 and corrupted sky textures in Half-Life Source until my most recent playthrough of it about a couple weeks ago. All the other bugs and glitches like the NPCs repeatedly shouting in pain after getting hurt and the one security guard being invincible to the monster's claw in the Blast Pit chapter however have always been there
I once used Xash3D to run Half-life on an old android phone. It was made in 2008 and it has 512 MB of ram. I got a solid 30fps the whole time. It even had a nice slide out keyboard (yes, physical buttons! they rule!) to use as a controller.
God I’m so proud to be one of the original Black Mesa Beta testers like I remember when half the beginning like the 2nd chapter didn’t even exist yet damn I gotta tell ya the Crowbar Collective knows their stuff... As for the future... Well I’m not a liberty to say....
I still remember the day they announced the Xen beta like it was yesterday. And it felt like the second coming of christ after all these years of waiting
I wonder why I thought this was a good idea to watch while I’m on xen in Black Mesa and have never played a half life game before. No going back now, oh well.
Two years ago, I wanted to get into older games and I just got a PC so I decided Half-Life would be cool to start with. I hadn't really ever heard of it officially, just sort of saw it in passing. I came to a crossroad with whether to play Half-Life or Half-Life: Source. I looked up the difference and saw that Source was an updated version. So I played that one... I didn't have hardly any problems. there was only one problem throughout the entire game and that was the smear shown at 11:16. Other than that, no problem, and as far as I know, I'm the only person somewhat sticking up for it.
My ranking -Black Mesa -Half Life -Source Black Mesa is my entrance, I am hard of hearing so it was a great entrance for me since its mechanics feel similar to Fallout New Vegas so I was able to grasp it easily. The only thing I was bad at was hit boxes in Lambda core's portals, it took me a few days tbh. I also got the original to play but I needed subtitles so I put it off till after Black Mesa.
I was born 2 months before half-life was released, and I loved playing the original release of half-life. I bought it on a whim in 2015 cause it was on steam sale, I've never played source or black Mesa but I don't really care about playing them cause I enjoy the original so much
I agree with your conclusion. I would say play Half-Life 1, blue shift, opposing force, black mesa in that order. There's two really big changes in black mesa that really bother me. The first is the movement. It's a source game, it feels like a source game, this just isn't Half-Life 1. While yes, HL1's movement is a bit slippery, it's also incredibly fast and feels far better to me. The next one are the marines. They're reskinned combines...that's it. They walk at you and shoot at you perfectly. They don't have any of the interest HL1 AI quirks that made them fun to fight. This is a REALLY big downside to me. I still love black mesa don't get me wrong but I see it as an interesting reimagining rather than a replacement.
I just got black mesa for $5 and I think it is very good. The only downside is you can't literally pick up everything like the OG. Oh and also no controller support sadly even though there is an option for vibration in the menu. Edit: thought of another downside all the other levels are missing not just the tutorial but also blue shift, opposing forces, the multiplayer with the 2 females (forget the name) etc.
Sven Coop Version: -Free to Play -Updated Engine -You can play with friends -Large maps with less loadings -Funny Moments -Third Person -Custom Skins -Custom Sprays -You can play alone if you want
I got the source version with the half life bundle, despite all the bugs i want to try just to see how source physics works on this amazing classic and planning on getting black mesa later
“The resonating advances of its level assembly, enemy AI and overall shooter gameplay can be seen cascading through FPSes to this day.” I see what you did there...
Damn. On A Rail was one of my favorite chapters in the original Half-Life exactly because of its slower pace, as it seemed to emphasize exploration more than the earlier chapters.
Me too. Ironically, "On A Rail" was actually kind of a break from the fairly linear design of most HL levels. Plus I enjoy jumping onto a vehicle now and then. Remember when vehicles were a big deal in Tomb Raider 2 & 3?
I actually had never played Half-Life until recently. I finished it a few days ago after taking a break for a few months. It's an amazing game still to this day, and quite a challenge on the hardest difficulty. Then I started Half-Life 2. I just got past Sandtraps, and I'm exhilerated.
I always heard of half life and seen it around, didnt know how old it was till i bought the bundle on steam. Didnt even know it was an fps. Only that some good mods came from it. Three different versions makes me realize that this could be a good play
@@dougthemoleman Even if the models are a slight improvement, the texture in half life 2 look more like quake than what is effectively valve's quake, the physics were just a gimmick, The story of Half-life 2 can be best described as a generic dystopia story where their only punchline is Gordons silence, guns are worse, enemy ai is worse (they now just charge at you and shoot until they die, comparable to literal zombies), at the beginning of the game, Barney gives you "your" crowbar, what crowbar? Gordon used two! What Barney is even Barney? Even then, what is to say the Barney you will likely point to ever said they will "buy you a beer"? Not to mention that you can't kill every npc meaning that Gordon is not a free man. Where Half-Life was trying to simply be a good game, Half-Life 2 seems only intent to make a bunch of callbacks to the original as if it wasn't confident if it was even a good game (which i'd argue it isn't), Half-Life Seems little more than "look what we can make our engine do!". They should have just used half-life source to showcase their engine (instead of what they did with it) and just made Half-Life 2 a good game.
I reccomend playing the original first and then Black Mesa so you can appreciate the remake for what it fixes plus the original game for how well its aged Also install bunnymod
0:18 That diagonal elevator is a reference to Akira (the manga). 0:31 / 4:19 / 13:35 Favor charged blasts with the tau cannon. Think of its regular bursts as its alt-fire. Otherwise, you're not using it to its full potential. 0:47 Paraphrasing Kleiner in HL2. 0:55 I was in college when it came out. In the words of Andre Meadows, "I am so OLD!" 1:32 I'll never understand why the stock is left folded on the SPAS-12. Or why, with the hi-def pack, they gave it a shorter magazine tube. Or how it's able to fire double-shots despite having one barrel. The tube under the barrel is a magazine tube, not a second barrel. And why it set on pump mode instead of semi-auto if you're using high-brass combat loads? 1:51 "40-mils" is a better term since they're launched from the MP5's launcher rather than from the MP5, itself. An MP5 can accept at least two different types of modular launchers - either an M-203 or an ISL-200. The latter was designed specifically for the MP5. 11:55 / 15:57 Wink, wink. Nudge, nudge. \8-P 14:08 The tau cannon's charged blasts can still shoot through walls in HL2. The dume buggy is fun to drive, but I wish it went faster.
Goldsource still has its appeal and there are some damn good mods available for this version. Like Half Life: Echoes. BM also came a long way since its initial release in 2012. Yeah, BM is 8 year old game at this point. Took them 6+ years to finish Xen chapters :)
One of the most objective and transparent video I saw on hl (if not gaming in general). GG !! might try black mesa as well. Just a bit sad about the puzzles being oversimplified.
You've really undersold black Mesa. It's an excellent introduction to half-life. It is a masterpiece. Playing them back to back is the best, but only for die hard fans. If you have to choose one, def choose black Mesa. Oh and yeah, I made the grim mistake of playing source :'(.
I'd personally say everyone should play Half Life GldSrc first and play Black Mesa. Half Life Source is just so buggy and scattered with issues that make the game unfaithful compared to the original.
I’ve been playing through source, and honestly the only reason I haven’t switched to the original is my current progress, and the fact it supports cloud saves
also the physics cubes parkour is literally impossible in vanilla gmod with halflife source mounted(try it if you need proof) because it uses a different version of source that basicly removes jumping on physics props.
Gonna be honest, I actually really like Half-Life's On A Rail and Xen sections. On A Rail's not nearly as confusing as people make it out to be, and while a couple platforming segments in Xen are a bit tedious to get through, most of it works perfectly fine. Also, the Alien Controllers are a total joke in the original Half-Life, you could easily avoid their projectiles by the slightest movements.
I watched this video a bit late. I just finished black mesa, without any knowledge of the plot or anything beforehand. Black Mesa is still a masterpiece though and I got half life 2 so i could continue the story.
i hope this one is to your liking! my vids don't get as many views as they used to, but i'll keep doing my best!!
Nice vid 😄
This is a great video! Im glad to see that you're still posting, and the production quality of your older videos is still apparent. Keep making awesome content and take it easy!
Good job im happy u upload still even tho 60% of viewers bcs u are not playing that unnamed game i love your content and its really good i hope u can get 100k back and get the money and viewiers back.
GL
Sven Coop (a GoldSource Mod) is free on Steam and has the HL campaign included, but probably has some marked differences from the original.
great video, now you've gotta review the rest of the franchise. expansion and everything else.
Half-Life: Source is only valid if you’ve got VRMod and Garry’s Mod.
preach
hello gordon!
LOOK GORDON ROPES WE CAN USE THEM TO GET ACROSS BI- HELP ME GORDON
nah, get deathmatch source and the extended hl maps, it's works the same lmao. hl:source is completely invalid. get the og version instead lmao
I am the alpha male now!
I played all of them. My opinion: play all of them exept source.
And if you've never played it, go for both as well. HL1 looks very shitty and outdated, by nowadays standards. But i've played it just a year ago for the very first time. It's an outstanding game. Gameplay still holds up very well, just the "physics" aren't great - but that game was released, when I was 4....
Love that game. One of the best ever made. Incredible, what a game that damn old can deliver gameplay wise.
Black Mesa is cool to play as the next game. Most of the time it succeeds in representing Half life. And a lot has been enhanced. Zen alone - it is actually good looking and fun to play, altough it's completely differrent. It just sometimes doesn't do quite as in Half life. It is after all a completely different Game.
Yeah just Source.... Makes a handfull of things better, but causes 1000 new problems. Yeah, just don't.
sagich dirdochnicht Xen*
@@System3200 no it's pretty straight forwards, don't blame the game for your mental shortcomings
@@System3200 then you're just stupid lol i got stuck maybe once in half life
Two out of three of the shown games run on source glasses.
"And half-life source gets you assets for gmod"
and we can't thank it enough for that. Wouldn't have HL:VR without it.
we wouldn't have HL:VR but the AI is self-aware without it.
or freeman's mind
@@pumpedzooman8509 thats what I meant by HL:VR
@@AKAProm oh ok
just use deathmatch source, it has the same assets and the resized hl source maps work with it too
In general, Black Mesa works better as a prequel to Half-Life 2 than Half-Life 1 does. Vortigaunts look and sound more like they do in HL2, and them becoming your allies is depicted more clearly. Kleiner and Eli appear properly, and Barney is mentioned. Zombies and barnacles also look closer to the HL2 versions, but more importantly act the same way gameplay-wise (as in, zombies throw things at you and barnacles can suck up objects and headcrabs). G-man's style of cutscene is more consistent. Even Magnusson's Magnificent Microwave Casserole is played out more clearly in Black Mesa.
Overall, Black Mesa just provides a more consistent feel when playing through the entire Half-Life series.
That is a very valid point (especially like Connor said, its better to pick up black mesa in case you played like half life 2 and it's successors)
but also it is a point to pick up the og half life for that empty design feel of 90's games (which of course not everyone may like nowadays but hey it runs way better)
Comparing Black Mesa and Half-Life is like comparing Metro 2033 OG and 2033 Redux. They're different and equally enjoyable ways to tell the same story, and one is more tight-knit with the sequels.
Wait does this mean the original half life sucks
@@DinnerForkTongue I'd say it's more comparable to the RE games and it's remakes. 2 different creative directions for the same story.
All I'm hearing is "half life 2 kind of screwed the pooch"
HL: Amazing!
HL Source: “Ya, do you want more bugs with that?”
Black Mesa: You know that amazing game from the 1990s? We completely remade it and it isn’t super buggy.
Black mesa: Half Life: Source but its more modern looking and isn't whatever half life source is
@@necrobynerton7384 and less buggy
I like HL: Source because of the visuals, and it still pratically being the same thing.
Here's a tip for those who want to play Half-Life: Source turn off Multicore rendering it fixes a lot of the visual bugs not all but the more noticeable ones (ex. Residue Processing when the skybox leaks through, the Windows Solitaire effect in Surface Tension, most of the barnacle tongues are fixed as well some aren't but most are)
@@thetrashmann8140 BM is basically the same thing, but better and without bugs.
Best way to play HL is to watch freeman's mind
Exactly what I did before playing the game
Or HL AI:VR, but that is still making it's way through the fan base, and isn't as deeply rooted as Freeman's Mind.
I still love him singing while on a rampage.
I don't recommend it. Everybody should have their own take of Gordon Freeman's personality, and not Ross's. The series were meant to be watched after at least one playthrough of the game.
Watch Freeman's mind while playing the game
Lol
12:32 The transition from Black Mesa to the OG Half-Life was awesome!
Only stream bois will know the fear of Connor saying "This is where we get out of the map"
Ok
12:34 Damn that's a nice transition.
I clicked your timestamp 5 times before I realised what it was doing lol, but in my defense i am really tired
Damn I clicked an ad
"REMEMBER, if VALVE tries to get you to play Half Life : Source, DON'T LISTEN" - MarphitimusBlackimus
@Phi source 7 engine?
Sauce?
Get the "Half-Life Source: Fixed" mod on ModDB and you're golden.
Black Mesa. I grew up on Half Life. It is a fundamental part of my youth. But you’ll never get someone today to play it. I just recently played Black Mesa and it was phenomenal. They did such a good job, and Xen was amazing. Sure some of the original Half Life charm isn’t there, but if you’ve never played the original you’d never notice it missing. Black Mesa is how you should play Half Life today.
"Monsters as well as aliens"
Amazing line haha
Right? I caught that too and I fully appreciate it.
I agree. I feel like Black Mesa can't be fully appreciated unless one played the original Half-Life in full.
What I've been doing lately is playing Black Mesa while watching a Half-Life walkthrough. It helps me appreciate all the differences. Playing it, I notice myself thinking "this is its own game." Highly recommend after playing OG!
the thing is black mesa did change somethings in the game, specially the "on rails chapter" and the ending chen, but it improved the chapters, in my opnion theres nothing that was made worse in the game, its different from resident evil 3 remake that missing the clock tower for me made the game worse tho. the removed stuff on black mesa, as that on the on rails parts, u would do a similar puzzle over 3 times in a row they simple made u do it just one time instead and expanded after that part.
@@gabrielandy9272 Black Mesa straight up removed most of the On a Rail and big parts of Interloper, they didn't even tried to improved, just choose the easy way of "If a vocal group in the community doesn't like we will not try to do anything", with is just sad considering that these are probably the chapters that had more potential to be improved to something interesting, but thats not what we get.
And the entire game is filled it out with bigger and more overly detailed areas just for the sake of "We have to do diferent". If you can understand the strengths of Half-Life 1 and even 2 you can see that Black Mesa does not improve on anything in terms of level design, most of the time is the same but with more detail and a lot of times is just making it longer for no reason.
Black Mesa was made by a team of people that were more passionate for the sequel of the game they are remaking, making it a lot of nuance of the original being lost in this journey to make Half-Life 1 fit more with 2, instead of really remaking it thru its own strengths and weakness.
Black Mesa is not a bad game, is a very good one own its own, but is not the perfect remake that people tend to say it is.
@@CoracaoAcidental98 On A Rail and Xen were insufferable in Half-Life and couldnt be rehabilitated in their then-current forms. They went full radical and it absolutely paid off. OG Half-Life is also desperately crude and empty when viewed through modern lenses, and its not as charming as you think it is. Black Mesa is the better game, and the better Half-Life.
@@CaptainFordo21 Is very simple to see what could have been improved in those two chapters, for On A Rail just make the journey more memorable, improving the athmosphere it already had, the overly detailed style of Black Mesa would fit like a glove. As for Xen is just making the plataforming better, make some obstacles not as dumb as it was on the original and springle more eviromental storytelling.
As for the "desperately crude and empty when viewed through modern lenses", I don't see your argument in here, my problem is Black Mesa making too much in visuals to the detriment of itself, they in theory should spend more time making some areas more interesting, maybe add a little more arenas, but most of the time they don't, the only chapter that I can think that really does that is Surface Tension, but that is because was for the most part made by other guy that after he showed his work was put on the team. Most of Black Mesa as I said is trying to fight Half-Life 1 more with Half-Life 2, by limitations of working with the same engine as that game and by design of its developers, see the interview of the composer of the soundtrack, he says that the idea was to make a game that would not feel like a huge shift if you played before 2, the "improvements" was just make like Half-Life 2 because the team prefer this one.
I can talk about the bad aspects of Half-Life 1 for hours, the list is not short, and I can find most of these problems in Black Mesa. Black Mesa is not the better game, and by far is not the better Half-Life, is an incredible feat by a team of fans that was put in a pedestal too high that doesn't deserve.
@@CoracaoAcidental98That same vocal group of the community complained about On a Rail and interloper complained about how long it is.
Now, do some math.
How would you shorten something that is too long in length??
8:05 So you *can* actually sneak through that? I always thought it was such a perfect rocket launcher opportunity to blow them all away in one blow and he said something like. "Yeah, okay, _that works too._ "
Yes, you can. You will get a new achievement if you do so.
I didn't know you could use the rocket launcher there. I'd assumed that the soldiers were too spaced out. I should work on mastering the rocket launcher.
Bruh ya didnt listened to the guard?
9:22 "It just works."
- Todd Howard
You called?
My sister started playing Half Life 2 a few years ago (which surprised the hell out of me as she was very anti-gaming and never showed any interest in sci fi ... anything growing up) and she kept asking me who these people were, what the heck they were talking about, what was a "black mesa", etc. It was right about that time when Black Mesa was released in Beta, and I told her to give that a play and try to ignore the bugs as it would explain pretty much everything. I asked if she'd played the original Half Life and said she couldn't stand the old, blocky graphics and chunky level design, which is fair as she didn't grow up playing games like I did and couldn't appreciate how cutting edge they were for the mid-90s.
My cousin said that too xD then i showed him black mesa
Black Mesa was my first introduction to Half Life. After I played it I went Half Life crazy and now have every game in that takes place in the Half Life universe.
Same here, even half life alyx
I still need to play Decay, Uplink & Alyx. Tried playing source but once I got to Xen, it was just too much...
what about portal?
As someone who came to this party late, I played the original first and then went through it a second time a few months later then played Black Mesa. I can safely say that what I heard about Half-life from other people who did play it when it came out, was more fully realized in Black Mesa (though that might just be because of Xen).
Play Half Life 1 first, then Black Mesa.
That’s a sound order I’d then follow it up with half life 2 and finishing off with lost coast if you care for an hour of gameplay more
@@Spectrik Lost Coast is 10 minutes.
CS Jones I’m not a particularly great gamer and at the time I made that I just beat it for the first time
@@Spectrik remember that lost coast was a showcase for the game engine and how it looks
@@goolecauc4193 I know, and I know it’s not much importance to the story. Even so it’s a little more official half life gameplay by Valve so I think it makes it worth it.
I played Black Mesa as my first version of HL1 and I absolutely loved every part of it.
Man, I think I heard every single "S" in this video
tipsy. The only way to play the original half-life is slightly tipsy.
Friendly reminder that Crowbar Collective was given an official license to the Half Life name and franchise by Valve themselves. It was also included by Valve in their Steam sale for Half Life games. As far as Valve is concerned, Black Mesa has earned its right to be a true Half Life game.
I wouldn't really call Black Mesa a highlight reel of Half-Life. From my experience, it's actually pretty loyal to Half-Life's level design throughout. Every individual room from Half-Life has a counterpart in Black Mesa.
It definitely has some changes (not including Xen and On a Rail) but everything from the corridors between rooms to the pipes and vents that you crawl through seem to be represented very closely, if not with a few twists/improvements.
Great video though. I completely agree about playing the original and ignoring source.
Yes I agree. Extremely faithful but takes creative liberties where it only adds to the experience. A good example is the lobby ambush at the end of questionable ethics. Other details such as the weapon inspection upon getting a new weapon are just awesome. With all these new (mostly great) changes it still feels authentically Half Life.
Thank you for making this as soon as I finished half life source.
Black Mesa was actually my introduction to the half life universe, however I didn't really experience most of the issues you rightly pointed out, mostly because I had been playing gmod for years before hand so I was already pretty familiar with some of the source engine quirks and such
9:20 "It just works"
I personally had my first experience on PS2 and honestly... That version on its own is also quite decent.
Not to mention that it comes with Decay and Alien Mode with its own ‘Ending’.
the amount of subtle references someone won't get if they just stumbled across the franchise is... interesting
“We’ve made major strides”
I see what you did there
0/10 didn't repeat the phrase 'major strides' with emphasis in a Kleiner impression in the intro
*We’ve made major strides since then, major strides.*
@@MauricioJara what cat?
I somehow played most of SVEN Coop on an intel uhd 620 because I couldn't afford anything and wanted to play Half-Life.
i plunged 80+ hours on it when i found out it got itself on steam. for free.
i would have more hours but i had a non steam copy of half life for such a long time (pretty much played daily cuz i also wanted to speedrun it) and well as time went on it got a bit boring (especially since people just wouldn't play the game for fun but rather make it a chore for everyone either new or just wanting to play it for fun and also servers were decreasing a lot here where i live and i can't make my own one to play)
very fun game for those interested it was
a game from 1998 can run on a igpu from some laptop
14:25 "Without being too much of a visual downgrade from modern releases." I personally think Black Mesa looks way, way better than any of the sequels, and I've played HL2 and its episodes to death.
I think I consider Black Mesa to be what Half Life was meant to be. I know that claim is gonna drive some people insane, but I played the original HL1 and while it has charm, one of the things I look for in a game aside from story (story is probably my #1) is *presentation* of that story. If a game has a really damn good story but its presentation is lacking (be it for technical limitations, time constraints (the fate of hl1 xen), or poor development (absolutely not hl1's case)), it kind of softens the impact that the story has.
I had played Black Mesa a couple years after I had finished Ori, which is an incredibly visually stunning game. I purposely waited until Xen was released before I got Black Mesa. I often hold Ori as one of my most favored titles when it comes to visuals (especially the new game) because everything is just so detailed and they really capture the natural beauty of the world.
When I saw Xen in Black Mesa, I was completely speechless. I probably stayed at that intro segment for 10 minutes before I could move onward, and then when I got into that foresty place it was just beyond words. I still don't think I have any words that can capture how much I loved the new Xen. They did it a brilliant justice by remaking it from scratch. Xen is now a true border-world - an amalgamation of many different unique worlds all merged into a harmonious conglomerate, and they captured it beautifully.
omg spirit
I pick black mesa better but there was a time i used to like half life sourse lol the reason why i got really into black .esa becaused xen came out and it makes it more fun to beat the whould game with out a missing chapter
12:31 That is a cool transition.
I just finished Black Mesa today... It was absolutely worth the $5 that I paid for it with the current steam sale!
I finished within 11hr.
It was great!
played Black Mesa as my first play-through of Half-life and I enjoyed it even though I played half life 2 first
the way vortigaunts shoot you with their green lighting thing is so cool , black mesa improve it and it is so awesome. For me you should try each one , they might be all the same but replaying half life isnt always the same and it still entertains me even if I play for multiple times
"he has to fight horrible monsters, as well as aliens" I see what you did there :)
"Source movements are so quick!"
Speedrunners: *oh y e a h*
Half Life source didn't used to be THAT broken. Unfortunately, updates over the years have not been kind to the game.
One point, that half life is designed around "tanking damage," isn't exactly true.
Apart from a couple sections in xen and maybe one part in surface tension, valve seems to have followed their original design philosophy pretty closely, which was "run, think, shoot, live". It's still super forgiving with supplies even if you ignore most of it, but really, try thinking of the game as a puzzle game and its design will shine so much more.
I played half life 2 and the episodes first and then Black Mesa like you said and yes, it fit perfectly and felt right. A few months after I did try the original half life to see how much of it black mesa improved, and there was quite a bit
LaST TiMe I wAs ThiS EarLY (insert dumb thing)
haha so original
LAST TIME I WAS THIS EARLY KLEINER ACTUALLY REMEMBERED HIS KEYS
LAST TIME I WAS THIS EARLY HALF-LIFE SOURCE WAS NOT BUGGY
12:34 what a nice transition
I literally never experienced the seizure-inducing texture glitches seen in 10:58 and corrupted sky textures in Half-Life Source until my most recent playthrough of it about a couple weeks ago. All the other bugs and glitches like the NPCs repeatedly shouting in pain after getting hurt and the one security guard being invincible to the monster's claw in the Blast Pit chapter however have always been there
I love it how his birthday is his "release date"
I once used Xash3D to run Half-life on an old android phone. It was made in 2008 and it has 512 MB of ram. I got a solid 30fps the whole time. It even had a nice slide out keyboard (yes, physical buttons! they rule!) to use as a controller.
God I’m so proud to be one of the original Black Mesa Beta testers like I remember when half the beginning like the 2nd chapter didn’t even exist yet damn I gotta tell ya the Crowbar Collective knows their stuff... As for the future... Well I’m not a liberty to say....
Oh and Xen is and was So LAGGY During Beta like you could LITERALLY walk up certain walls skipping half Of the end
I still remember the day they announced the Xen beta like it was yesterday. And it felt like the second coming of christ after all these years of waiting
I wonder why I thought this was a good idea to watch while I’m on xen in Black Mesa and have never played a half life game before. No going back now, oh well.
10:55 thank you for this information. For the longest time I thought I screwed something up while it was downloading and I was never able to fix it.
I like this break down. When I decide to revisit the first Half-Life I think I'm going to play the original then follow that by playing Black Mesa.
That helps me I feel like I already played half life in 06 but forgot so i'll just play black mesa.
Two years ago, I wanted to get into older games and I just got a PC so I decided Half-Life would be cool to start with. I hadn't really ever heard of it officially, just sort of saw it in passing. I came to a crossroad with whether to play Half-Life or Half-Life: Source. I looked up the difference and saw that Source was an updated version. So I played that one... I didn't have hardly any problems. there was only one problem throughout the entire game and that was the smear shown at 11:16. Other than that, no problem, and as far as I know, I'm the only person somewhat sticking up for it.
My ranking
-Black Mesa
-Half Life
-Source
Black Mesa is my entrance, I am hard of hearing so it was a great entrance for me since its mechanics feel similar to Fallout New Vegas so I was able to grasp it easily. The only thing I was bad at was hit boxes in Lambda core's portals, it took me a few days tbh. I also got the original to play but I needed subtitles so I put it off till after Black Mesa.
I feel bad for you mate, Your content is really under rated. Love your vids
I'm surprised you didn't mention the PS2 or unreleased Dreamcast port.
I was born 2 months before half-life was released, and I loved playing the original release of half-life. I bought it on a whim in 2015 cause it was on steam sale, I've never played source or black Mesa but I don't really care about playing them cause I enjoy the original so much
I agree with your conclusion. I would say play Half-Life 1, blue shift, opposing force, black mesa in that order.
There's two really big changes in black mesa that really bother me. The first is the movement. It's a source game, it feels like a source game, this just isn't Half-Life 1. While yes, HL1's movement is a bit slippery, it's also incredibly fast and feels far better to me. The next one are the marines. They're reskinned combines...that's it. They walk at you and shoot at you perfectly. They don't have any of the interest HL1 AI quirks that made them fun to fight. This is a REALLY big downside to me.
I still love black mesa don't get me wrong but I see it as an interesting reimagining rather than a replacement.
(This is where we get out of the map)
I just got black mesa for $5 and I think it is very good. The only downside is you can't literally pick up everything like the OG. Oh and also no controller support sadly even though there is an option for vibration in the menu.
Edit: thought of another downside all the other levels are missing not just the tutorial but also blue shift, opposing forces, the multiplayer with the 2 females (forget the name) etc.
connor: you can play half life in any computer, its a game from 1998 after all
my computer:well yes but actually no
Sven Coop Version:
-Free to Play
-Updated Engine
-You can play with friends
-Large maps with less loadings
-Funny Moments
-Third Person
-Custom Skins
-Custom Sprays
-You can play alone if you want
Black Mesa was my first half life game.
I don’t regret it one bit
I got the source version with the half life bundle, despite all the bugs i want to try just to see how source physics works on this amazing classic and planning on getting black mesa later
Just about done with Black Mesa and it is well worth the $20! I have thoroughly enjoyed it. Xen was absolutely incredible!
Also Black Mesa clearly have best ost of all hl game
“The resonating advances of its level assembly, enemy AI and overall shooter gameplay can be seen cascading through FPSes to this day.”
I see what you did there...
Damn. On A Rail was one of my favorite chapters in the original Half-Life exactly because of its slower pace, as it seemed to emphasize exploration more than the earlier chapters.
yeah it did have a charm to it
Btw there is a mod for Black Mesa which adds the cut parts of on a rail. It's called "on a rail uncut".
Me too. Ironically, "On A Rail" was actually kind of a break from the fairly linear design of most HL levels. Plus I enjoy jumping onto a vehicle now and then. Remember when vehicles were a big deal in Tomb Raider 2 & 3?
I actually had never played Half-Life until recently. I finished it a few days ago after taking a break for a few months. It's an amazing game still to this day, and quite a challenge on the hardest difficulty. Then I started Half-Life 2. I just got past Sandtraps, and I'm exhilerated.
I always heard of half life and seen it around, didnt know how old it was till i bought the bundle on steam. Didnt even know it was an fps. Only that some good mods came from it. Three different versions makes me realize that this could be a good play
half life set the standard for modern first person shooters. i recommend playing the original version and avoiding hl source because it's pretty bad.
11:55 Ayyyyyyy I caught that reference
"We(honestly haven't now that i think about it cuz hl2 is kinda trash) made major strides since then, major strides"
W H A T C A T ?
Half Life Source was the cat
*Striders
Kinda trash in what way? Half-Life games tend to break a lot of new ground when they come out, so I'm curious what you're referring to specifically.
@@dougthemoleman Even if the models are a slight improvement, the texture in half life 2 look more like quake than what is effectively valve's quake, the physics were just a gimmick, The story of Half-life 2 can be best described as a generic dystopia story where their only punchline is Gordons silence, guns are worse, enemy ai is worse (they now just charge at you and shoot until they die, comparable to literal zombies), at the beginning of the game, Barney gives you "your" crowbar, what crowbar? Gordon used two! What Barney is even Barney? Even then, what is to say the Barney you will likely point to ever said they will "buy you a beer"? Not to mention that you can't kill every npc meaning that Gordon is not a free man. Where Half-Life was trying to simply be a good game, Half-Life 2 seems only intent to make a bunch of callbacks to the original as if it wasn't confident if it was even a good game (which i'd argue it isn't), Half-Life Seems little more than "look what we can make our engine do!". They should have just used half-life source to showcase their engine (instead of what they did with it) and just made Half-Life 2 a good game.
half life source necks are why i play half life source (it always makes a happy face, though people are gonna think i'm weird now)
as long as you play both games with high fov and no motion blur, you won’t throw up
What about Sven coop? That is a really good way to play especially for goofing around with your friends and the fact that it's free
I reccomend playing the original first and then Black Mesa so you can appreciate the remake for what it fixes plus the original game for how well its aged
Also install bunnymod
At the Beginning Black Mesa Was A Half-life 2 mod. Now it's a game
0:18 That diagonal elevator is a reference to Akira (the manga).
0:31 / 4:19 / 13:35 Favor charged blasts with the tau cannon. Think of its regular bursts as its alt-fire. Otherwise, you're not using it to its full potential.
0:47 Paraphrasing Kleiner in HL2.
0:55 I was in college when it came out. In the words of Andre Meadows, "I am so OLD!"
1:32 I'll never understand why the stock is left folded on the SPAS-12. Or why, with the hi-def pack, they gave it a shorter magazine tube. Or how it's able to fire double-shots despite having one barrel. The tube under the barrel is a magazine tube, not a second barrel. And why it set on pump mode instead of semi-auto if you're using high-brass combat loads?
1:51 "40-mils" is a better term since they're launched from the MP5's launcher rather than from the MP5, itself. An MP5 can accept at least two different types of modular launchers - either an M-203 or an ISL-200. The latter was designed specifically for the MP5.
11:55 / 15:57 Wink, wink. Nudge, nudge. \8-P
14:08 The tau cannon's charged blasts can still shoot through walls in HL2. The dume buggy is fun to drive, but I wish it went faster.
did he just say "simple story" in a video about half-life
I mean, it is pretty simple, granted there is stuff deeper down, but over all it’s just the story of a lone scientist trying to survive hell.
Goldsource still has its appeal and there are some damn good mods available for this version. Like Half Life: Echoes. BM also came a long way since its initial release in 2012. Yeah, BM is 8 year old game at this point. Took them 6+ years to finish Xen chapters :)
On a rail is one of the best chapters with great combat
I hated On a Rail on the original game. But I loved it on Black Mesa.
One of the most objective and transparent video I saw on hl (if not gaming in general). GG !! might try black mesa as well. Just a bit sad about the puzzles being oversimplified.
14:10 why do i feel so personally attacked
You've really undersold black Mesa. It's an excellent introduction to half-life. It is a masterpiece. Playing them back to back is the best, but only for die hard fans. If you have to choose one, def choose black Mesa. Oh and yeah, I made the grim mistake of playing source :'(.
Original half life is awesome, so no definitely start with that one.
@@CIA871”Original half life is awesome”
Xen, interloper, and On a Rail:
@@eliptical7033All of those chapters are much worse in Black Mesa, yes. Stick to the original.
@@VinVonVoom You have boomer brain rot
Good thing I've worked out Source before playing Black Mesa :)
12:30 this transition is so good I didn't even notice it happened for a good while.
I'd personally say everyone should play Half Life GldSrc first and play Black Mesa. Half Life Source is just so buggy and scattered with issues that make the game unfaithful compared to the original.
@Phi You just said it isn't bad and then proceeded to say it's bad
I’ve been playing through source, and honestly the only reason I haven’t switched to the original is my current progress, and the fact it supports cloud saves
also the physics cubes parkour is literally impossible in vanilla gmod with halflife source mounted(try it if you need proof) because it uses a different version of source that basicly removes jumping on physics props.
Gonna be honest, I actually really like Half-Life's On A Rail and Xen sections.
On A Rail's not nearly as confusing as people make it out to be, and while a couple platforming segments in Xen are a bit tedious to get through, most of it works perfectly fine.
Also, the Alien Controllers are a total joke in the original Half-Life, you could easily avoid their projectiles by the slightest movements.
"Modren era", eh? Don't think I missed that pronunciation, you little McElboy fan
I find Black Mesa more fun for me than og Half-life, and not just because of HL2 ragdolls and physics
Sure. Keep telling yourself that
i kinda find the og one better since i already played it a lot then switched to black mesa and it was somewhat boring.
We already know that HL:S is a nostalgia stuff to see how discontinued and ancient the physic is.
Thanks for the flashing scene warning, I really appreciate it
Thanks for recommending A Short Hike. It is truly a beautiful game and I enjoyed every moment
Screw ladders in all three of these.
Hey, new to Half Life and to your channel. I found your analysis very helpful -- thank you!
I watched this video a bit late. I just finished black mesa, without any knowledge of the plot or anything beforehand. Black Mesa is still a masterpiece though and I got half life 2 so i could continue the story.