@@Nombrenooriginal That name was from the early days of TvTropes. Nowadays, they enforce a site-wide policy where they avoid as much as possible to give tropes names related to works. "Xen Syndrome" was renamed because it was incomprehensible to anyone unfamiliar with the Half-Life franchise, so they changed the name to something more neutral.
We need "On a xen hazard" chapter mod. You're hopping from one sewer island to the other in a rail-boat and the Gonarch is now a half-helicopter. And it's, like, 5 hours long
I would play that 100%, though I would rather have the player be chased by a helicopter, and then when they defeat it, it drops slightly smaller Gonarch which you would have to fight.
I've always loved Xen. Everything about it just feels so bizarre and alien, which fits perfectly with it being an extradimensional world. The Interloper chapter in particular REALLY makes you feel like an interloper. No human was even supposed to witness this place, and you could say we're not even really capable of comprehending it. That creepy hidden side room in the factory with the periodic ghostly wailing still gives me chills to this day. That being said, I totally understand the issues people have with this part of Half-Life. As mentioned, waiting to heal in the health pools really ruins the pacing, and the bosses can certainly be confusing to deal with your first time through. But overall I think the inclusion of Xen is a perfect way to conclude your escapades through Black Mesa, as it rips you straight out of the complex facility you've grown so used to and throws you somewhere truly alien.
"Truly alien." I kinda like how most of the Half-Life games try to capture that feeling to some degree at the end. Your imagination and fears run wild as you run through the games, and get glimpses behind the curtain. And even with these hints, where you end up always surprises you.
Like he said in the video, it was really just the lack of polish that turns it into a slog. Black Mesa (the fan remake, not the research facility lol) is proof that the idea of Xen was good and made for a perfect conclusion to the experience, but it just wasn't executed very well in the original.
I wholeheartedly agree! Xen feels just so otherwordly, mystic and enthralling...seriously, if I could spend muh Summer holiday there, I'd do it. Uh, so are the Winter holidays.
@@cuttrogue nah I love Black Mesa's Xen. Maybe it could've been trimmed down a little bit, and the autoscroller sequence isn't the greatest, but it was fun and engaging and a generally well-executed change of pace in a way that the original Xen just wasn't imo, due to both the technical and budget/time restraints. Like I said, I think it does what the original Xen was supposed to do but much better.
My beef with Xen was that the pacing of the levels leading up to it were really building momentum and with the opening of the portal things had reached a fever pitch, and I thought I was jumping into the final battle... then... Xen... just... kept... going. It felt sort of endless and repetitive because I kept expecting the end to be around the next corner. But that was my first playthrough. I have no problems with it now.
I'd say it's a nice change of pace, I mean, that means, the game does offer variety. Also I didn't mind slowin' muh progress down. I could admire the Xen scenery at least 🤣
ikr, and it sure would suck if a remake made xen 5 times longer but with a fuckton of repetitive puzzles and boring walking. im glad black mesa didnt.... oh wait.... they managed to make it worse than the original...
@@Helperbot-2000 yeah i thought black mesa fixed it BUT NO they just make it darker and make it even more repetitive than what it was. It is too long to overstay its welcome. Thankfully the Nihilanth Boss Fight is better.
@@Helperbot-2000 Skill Issue in it's purest form. Zoomers just can't solve basic platforming and puzzles or not have 24/7 flashy stimulation shoved into their retinas I guess. Wonder how much people like you would have hated Quake or Dooms puzzles and backtracking.
I never minded Xen being so difficult. It gets frustrating sometimes but this is what old games do and this is why they are so memorable. The platforming section tho. The platforms are so damn slow, so I usually lose my health just because I'm impatient xD
Half-Life wasn't a great platformer to begin with, but mix in the finicky long jump module, the rotating platforms, and the difficulty of telling if you'll take fall damage and how much makes for a rough experience imo
@@littlechickeyhudak The only serious problem was the long-jump module. Namely, the developers didn't bind a key for it, just told you to "run, stop, crouch, then jump" to make it work. What kind of _ijit_ came up wit' this sht????????
Interloper in Black Mesa is actually pretty solid except for some sections here and there. It's alot more polished and well paced compared to the original.
@@stoodle511 It is waaaay longer, but it is true for the entire Xen part and yet my favorite boss fight currently in any videogame is the Black Mesa Gonarch fight.
I personally loved Xen, it was my favorite part of the game, I didnt know what to expect at first, and when I went there it surprised me how alien and creepy the world was. It was a nice change after running around the hallways of black mesa for 10 hours.
The Xen chapters slowed down the pacing of the game. Even though the Black Mesa Xen chapters tried to change it (even with a chase sequence added in which was cool) was insanely slow. If you want to see the Black Mesa Xen chapters, BigMacDavies has a let's play on these levels.
So? I liked it, since the game offered variety, not just "run&gun". Which I grew unimaginably tired during "Surface Tension". Besides, I loved to admire the otherworldly Xen scenery.
Well, gaben himself say that they (the valve team) didnt like xen because they feeled to be too rushed, mark laidlaw admited that, even tho they thought of freeman traveling a alien world, they didnt plan that far ahead of it.
RadH early squad report! Black Mesa Xen was really the completion of the vision in my opinion. OG Xen wasn't awful, merely... "not up to par". Its only crime was not being as well thought out as the other chapters due to being the most rushed. In another game of the same era it would blend in fine... but the rest of HL isn't anything at all like other games of the same era, now is it?
I dont know if its black mesa being generally very dark, the colours or my screen but something about black mesas Xen gives me headaches after 30 minutes.
My issue with BM Xen is that a lot of it plays itself. The last boss is also worse imo. It went for like a bombastic flashy ending and it just kinda clashes with the rest of the subtle game that HL has always been. Not only that, but Xen in BM is a lot longer than the original, which is what a lot of people complained about the original for, that it was too long. Especially the running from Gargantua part, that was just so out of place lol Either way though, I like both Xen in the original and BM. They're both fine chapters and I think people just like to make out something as bad when it really isn't that bad. I think mostly people just play Xen wrong. The motto is run, think, shoot, live. Not Run, shoot, live. I think a lot of people don't explore or test enough strategies or use a variety of weapons to offset the ammo spacing. They just pick their favorite gun and blast everything without exploring.
@@TwixtheFox as a zoomer who played the game for the first time 20 years later, I disagree. I love half life but goddamit is xen boring, people say that black mesa xen takes too long to finish but at least it doesn't make me sleep in my keyboard. Don't get the "people didn't play it right" part, sounds like a pretty bad excuse
I really dont understand why so many complain about Xen, I remember the moment when I was playing HL for the first time back in 1999 or 2000, I was getting tired of the Labs, but then out of no where im teleported to alien worlds, it was so amazing back then. Xen was also very scary.
@@cillianwatters5619 Oh man, I love Residue Processing. Maybe it’s just the theme, but I get such a kick out of navigating through giant, inexplicable industrial machinery.
It's possible to avoid most of the fights with the alien grunts in the factory. You can climb over the containers and skip them so you don't have to fight them. Now you learned how to save ammo in this chapter.
In my opinion, the main problem of Xen is the length of Interloper. The other levels aren't so bad. Nihilanth is in fact a pretty fun boss fight IMO. I like trying my best each time to avoid his teleportation orbs. It's a good challenge. There probably should have been more Xen levels to forget the repetitiveness of Interloper (like the Xen version of Black Mesa: Source).
I think Xen was design in a Eldritch way. The less you comprehend wtf is going on, the more you enjoy it. It's a place where puddles heal you, stones zap you, trees hit you, a ballsack tries to kill you and a giant baby keeps lecturing you about entering private property. I just love the wackiness of it, and you can feel how Valve decided to throw any crazy idea they couldn't do while the player was in Black Mesa.
Imma be real - I dig the Xen levels. Yes, stuff is annoying, sometimes anyways, but it sorta fits. Valve could have easily said "lol make it like Black Mesa but alien textures" and left it at that, but on a tight time they went for platforming, wacky alien!.wav thingamajigs, additional world-building and scripting that gamers don't really, or ever figure out it existed in the first place. So I respect the levels for that. Plus, I personally like things to get weird and so Xen is endearing in that sort of way. Anyways, great video!
@Radiation Hazard, did you know that the vorts in the first factory map of Interloper are friendly? This is the only place they are. In the VERY NEXT MAP they auto attack you.
Well they're not ACTUALLY friendly, they're kind of neutral. Also, if there are those floating Alien Controllers nearby, Vortigaunts _will_ turn against you.
The hive hand is super underrated but works really well in Xen. It has infinite ammo and the primary fire projectiles loop around walls and deal no damage to the environment, so it cannot destroy the alien grunt barrels. It can also destroy the Nihilanth's teleportation orbs better than any other weapon.
@@Helperbot-2000 yeah I've seen a lot of people saying you can do that but it never worked for me? every single bullet or projectile just flies right through, only the spikes work for me. maybe it's a source thing. Also I feel like the hornet gun doesn't work at all in source. like 0 damage. I spent an hours trying to get it to work but nope
I'm gonna be honest, I never got through Interloper. I was grinding through those Alien grunt things, losing all my damn ammo when it occurred to me that I wasn't enjoying myself and knew how the game ended anyways.
Xen is one of my favourite chapters because I finally get to use the really super fun and my favourite thing in the tutorial, the long jumping suit. It is so fun to jump around to your heart's content like that, even when I was constantly cursing Nihilanth.
I like Xen because it changes the pacing of the game completely, resource management becomes critical if you don't know what you're doing and it's all really alien, the atmosphere quickly and abruptly shifts between fast run and gun to calm and anxiety in form of platforming. My only problem with Xen is the fact that it nears the end of this great game.
I like Xen ver' much! That enthralling alien world, the crazy ambiance, alien thingamajig, the tormented screams of the captured humans...it is absolutely brilliant!!!!
There is a long corridor with multiple Grunt containers, which, when destroyed, spawn a Grunt. At that point I rarely have enough ammo for controllers, let alone the spongy grunts, so it's easier to just run through the corridor and call it a day. but there is an ammo stash in a small corner along that room, right in the middle part. What I always found endearing is that in the room with multiple explosive barrels of death, the ammo pickup you find contains ONLY explosives. Xen is one of the most endearing locations in the game.
That part is ridiculously easy wit' the rite strategy. Just use up ALL your tripmines and satchels cuz u get new ones in those niches. They're powerful enough to mince Vortigaunts, Grunts, everything.
@@humanandhalf4118 Ye I know, but what fun is that? I wanna see alien guts all over the place! Mwhahahaha! :D Also, in one of the versions of the game, there is a glitch seen in the red side chamber (wit' the tormented screams of humans) where Alien Grunts actually active inside their eggs and can shoot thru it (this was fixed later). Not that red side-chamber is an essential location to visit, tho.
I never disliked xen chapter. When i played first time it was magical to me(around 2005). Imagine 6 year year old kid playing shooter game and sees different type of world, civilation, and creatures. Still to this day,sometimes i see in my dreams alien worlds like Xen. Recently find out why people hate this chapter on UA-cam. Xen was the most creative, beautiful art piece 6 year old kid could ever see at that time.
Surprisingly enough, I enjoyed Xen platforming due to me being unable to just damage boost to the end portals, the only problem I had was the Vortigaunts that are in mass in the factory area as that’s where I got pissed due to me being on low health and it being Hard Mode. Though the Gonarch was easy, literally spammed the long jump to kite the thing while smacking it with anything I have
The Gonarch is not hard if y'know all the safe-spots. Also it's possible to stay at the opening of the cave during the final fight & avoid all those newborn headcrabs (u must still look out of that cotton-ball tho). I used up my snarks on the leftover babies, and they munched them up.
I never had any issues with ammo in Half-Life's Xen. Now I play on "Normal" difficulty, but it's easy to get plenty of ammo from the random ammo/weapon containers lying around plus you have the Hivehand (infinite ammo and homing projectiles).
I like most of the xen levels but not the final boss because jumping on those bounce pad things is so annoying and you have no time to do so with the boss shooting at you and then there are all the small enemies that you can see until they shoot at you and they can't miss
I never disliked the Xen chapters. To me, Valve made sure the design was weird, but obviously didn't want it to be frustrating. Xen is a different planet, so if it had the same design as the Earth levels, it'd make even less sense.
I got stuck on the start of Interloper for so long because I played the later sections blind and didn’t know you were supposed to go through a cave that was hidden behind a ridge, and for the parts where you have to jump on the flying manta rays, I had to quick save every time I made a jump because it was only just the slightest bit janky. I watched a playthrough after beating the boss and didn’t even know you could heal in the green brain jelly pools, and only through luck I found stashes in hidden nooks and crannies despite actively searching for them.
Actually that entire cave section is optional. At the top of the hill (where the cave opening is), y'can catch an Alien Aircraft ride usin' the long-jump module, which takes y'straight to the teleport isle. But ye, takin' the cave is better since y'can grab badly needed supplies this way.
I just beat half life fully for the first time yesterday and my xen experience was like everyone telling me a guard dog armed to the teeth was on the other side of the fence but when I hopped over it was a puppy yapping at me the first chapter xen was short and if you knew what you were doing and planed were you were going its possible to take no fall damage gonarchs lair I barely took any damage and interloper felt like it only took 20 minutes not saying that those 20 minutes weren't filled with copious amounts of saving and reloading though
I always liked Xen a lot. Never had a problem. I watched the remake last night in Black Mesa, and it is way better looking than the original Xen by a magnitude, but it was 2.5 hours as well. I can imagine that someone playing it the first time, on Hard, would take far long than that to reach the end. So I guess it depends on what you want. I would ideally like the graphics of Black Mesa but not so long. That was a 2.5 hour walkthrough of someone who never died and knew where to go.
Going through the comments just briefly tells me, that about 90% of all self proclaimed half life connosoires were not able to controll the reduced gravity and jumped into the voide regularly. Xen wasnt the best level in hl1, but it absolutely was not the worst. There are some other levels which are truly dumb.
Xen is amazing with its bright color scheme and haunting healing pools. Irritating as well with Gonarch's lair and Interloper levels. In the remake they went all overboard in these levels.
Call me a contrarian, but I actually like the OG xen design. It gives off the air of a dingy, backwater dimension, like an alley between two buildings. And that's what xen is, exactly. A world-between-worlds.
Xen is a fine level that requires you to adapt to its challenge. Interloper is an excellent level that leads up to HL1’s epic conclusion. I’ll see myself out.
In my opinion, Xen gets better the more times you play Half-Life. Sure it messes with the flow of the game the first time you play it, but on subsequent playthroughs, you come to appreciate how much Xen does for world-building the Half-Life universe. Finding out where Headcrabs come from and that the Vortigaunts were actually being used as slaves were two mysteries the game excelled at building up and answering. I think if a player wants a more refined version of Xen, then Black Mesa has you covered. However, like you said, I think initial players were just ready for the game's conclusion and then it threw a curve ball with a huge chunk of content that players didn't expect. It sets up a new kind of tension with a dire tone change, knowing that no scientists will be able to help you anymore and the realization that the Black Mesa facility has sent who knows how many people like Freeman to their graves stranding them in the border world to die of various ends. Each pack of resources you pick up could be your last, and you never know what you'll find around the next floating platform.
art direction and sound design are flawless in this chapter, but Valve wasted a lot of potential to do something more. Until Xen, Half Life was about real time narrative with cool athmosphere and interesting game mechanics , but in Xen is so rushed that real time narrative is almost intexistent (obviusly gman scene doesnt count) , the only interesting thing is Nihilant voice lines. They could do a chapter like the beggining of the game, no action, just narrative and interaction, but they decided to do a chapter on the most "Doom" way posible, only killing aliens and doing platforming. Valve learned this and for that reason hl2 final chapters are way better
I love the low gravity and the long jump. I never had any issues with parkouring but the stage design just wasn't for me. I love the feel of destroyed/abandoned facilities and closed claustrophobic spaces. This nightmarish feel when something that's supposed to give humanity hope gets destroyed. the first stages of the game has this liminal vibe I absolutely adore. You can't do that with xen, it's just a different setting, the world is "different and off" by default so you can't achieve the eerie feeling of "something went deeply wrong" because you're like, yeah it's alien of course it's weird, nothing wrong there.
i love ambient of Xen and it's nature, and it's addition to lore is just extraordanary, what i hate about it is that its so small, if it had some new flank routienes that players can take by themselves, it could make it abit better
Xen really brought home to me why HL is considered such a masterpiece. From the first moment. I was in awe of the depths of its its daring departure from all that came before.
Yea, my experience with Xen was stellar. I totally get the on a rail complaints and water hazard to a degree. My first play through of the game was made without any awareness of others' complaints.
I loved xen and I thought was strange and beautiful. The playthrough could be a bit awkward with the unusual jumping but no less enjoyable. However, taking on the last bosses was frustrating.
When I played through Xen the first time probably in 1999 I didn't think much of it. I thought it was hard as shit and very fucking weird but it's an alien world in an old game so at the time it felt rather fine. It's only in recent years I realized people hated it and although I can see why, I think the main problem is that it's just too long.
xen was one of my favorite finale chapters. of course it was rushed to being finished cause valve during it's early years had a tight deadline, still though the whole came comes full circle in this chapter.
I appreciate this video, when i was 5 and first made it to xen it blew the hinges off my imagination of just what that place was! I get the criticisms, especially playing today but xen still holds a special place in my heart ❤ ty rad had
I never finished Black Mesa, but I saw what Xen was like from watching other people's walkthroughs. Remembering how frustrating it was in the original HL, damn... They did hell of a job redesigning it. Even if I decided to replay HL tommorow, I don't think I can play the original. It's way too frustrating.
I always liked Xen, it is what it need to be strange, disorienting, "infinite", hard, extremely dangerous, bleak. When I played it the firts times I was felling that and I was more tense all the time that in many other parts of the game since any dark corner can have an enemy, you can fall anytime, you have low ammo (I use a lot the hivehand for controllers so now is not a big problem but a problem as always which helps to build the atmosphere). It can be better since It was a last minute addition but It is already really good when you see what Xen is trying to show you as an different dimension full of life from anothers and infinite dimensions and not only as a level on a videogame.
1) If the players are annoyed by those simple platforms, so what do players say about DOOM ETERNAL ???!!! 2) crabs and baby head crabs annoying? come one. game has to be more difficult.
this should be a perfect coverage for "Why Do Players Hate" series i mean, let's face it the general consensus among *ALL* of the Half Life 1 fans *HATES* HD Models i could felt like i'm one of those rare minorities that don't mind about it
What you're actually meant to do is find a cave at the back of that island that leads you to an elevating platform which you can jump off right onto the teleporter
On my first ever playthrougg of the entirety of the half life series back-to-back, I never went to the internet and watched videos about the games as I was afraid they'll affect my view on the game, my first playthrough of HL1, I still remember how the scientist and the security guard talked about Xen being a point of no return and when they gave me loads of guns and ammo, it set the mood, this is the finale the game had ramped up to, I thought the game had peaked at Surface Tension but Xen felt new. The lack of ammo and batteries and having to loot those from old dead bodies really intensified the feeling that I might not go back to earth, the Gonarch fight was confusing at first but I got the hang of it, I felt really awesome on interloper when I rode thos super high spike things and the flying aliens into the portal whilst being chased by vortigaunts and controllers, and the factory made it look like I was invading them instead of them invading us. Znd the Nihilant fight was epic too, I still remember when I found out the yellow crydtal can be broken and getting excited as I knew he was dead, I used those launching pads, and spammed the living shit out of his head with the MP5 alt fire and bullets, it felt badass. I really liked Xen on my first playthrough and I dont know why people dont like it, yeah it looks rushed and odd and its hard to avoid getting damaged but overall I thought that Xen was the thing that made Gordon into a living legend in gaming, from barely surviving in BM to becoming humanity's last hope on Xen. (All that was before I played hl2 so I had no idea) point is, I liked Xen :)
i just finished Half Life like 10 mins ago and Xen looks cool, but holy crap was it hard, i had to go look at a walkthrough a lot during this part of the game. Xen is not a bad chapter, its just hard and confusing.
I think the biggest problem with Xen is that it requires the player to have A LOT of patience right at the endgame. That’s why I play Half-Life in chunks.
one time when i was fighting Gonarch and i killed him and jumped through the portal. GUESS WHAT, those small fuckers when into the portal with me and i got mobed by baby head crabs before i could do anything.
I did some platforming and then stopped playing when I got to a section where everything was brown in brown. Never finished the game in any playthrough. I don't hate this chapter, I ignore it.
My only complain is the Gonarch being nearly unkillable When I played it on ps2 got stuck in the last phase, literally emptied all my ammo on her and never got into the exploding animation
Who the hell says Xen is bad? That's not true. Xen is totally cool and misterous and trancendant enough to keep things interesting and feel like you're a true expolorer. It also creates a nice cotranst betrween human architecture and completely alien vision and even laws of phisics.
I love Xen and I love it even more in Black Mesa remake. then again, I'm the kind of person who plays Blood on Extra Crispy difficulty and enjoys it so maybe I'm just special like that. Seriously though, Nihilanth is pretty easy once you learn to use the long jump to dodge his attacks or quickly move into cover behind all the spikes.
I absolutely loved Xen first time I got to it. It was such a drastic change, and so LATE into the game, that it completely blew me away. I thought the design, the sound effects, everything was so perfectly alien and surreal. Yeah it gets a bit annoying at parts, personally i found platforming in interloper with all those floating alien guys really infuriating, but I really didn't mind that much, the atmosphere more than made up for it.
The long-jump module is the biggest problem, as y'can't render a button to use it (funnily enough, Duke Nukem could use a JETPACK wit' a single button push 5 years prior). The floating Alien Controllers are easy to pick off, but y'must conserve 9mm ammo on them as much as possible. The alien hand and the molecule exciter are also awesome against them.
For some reason, I didn't find Interloper as bad as other people did. It was difficult, but not really to the point of frustration and I didn't feel much of the difficulty spike compared to the previous levels. I also dare to say, it was reasonably long and pretty well designed while other Xen chapters I found to be too short and lackluster / rushed / unfinished.
When I read "The Problem With Xen" I can't help but imagine a cartoon rantsona of an angry Gordon Freeman crossing his arms.
:(
"So a LOT of people are saying that pedophilia...."
@@vvawarc Gordon would NOT fucking say that
@@mannhouse8014 yeah, he doesn't really say anything
Whenever he speaks, it's just the royalty free sfx that valve uses coming out
in half-life: at least xen is short
in black mesa: *please, my pc can't take anymore of this!*
Protip: The vortigaunts in the interloper factory are passive. Don't attack them and you can save a bunch of ammo. :D
everyone knows that though
@@poggers9654 and yet... They're being shot in this very video. :P
@@monsterurby radiation hazard just enjoys slaughtering vorts foe or not
@@minecraftkid50978 He's a bad man
another good tip is to avoid using explosives so you don't release any alien grunts from their barrels.
Fun fact: on TvTropes, the trope that is now called "Disappointing Last Level" was originally called "Xen Syndrome".
lmao
Should have been called Last Level Syndrome.
Why did they change it?
@@Nombrenooriginal That name was from the early days of TvTropes. Nowadays, they enforce a site-wide policy where they avoid as much as possible to give tropes names related to works. "Xen Syndrome" was renamed because it was incomprehensible to anyone unfamiliar with the Half-Life franchise, so they changed the name to something more neutral.
@@Nombrenooriginal Good question.
I just played on Hard mode and holy s* what an annoying level, especially Interloper.
We need "On a xen hazard" chapter mod. You're hopping from one sewer island to the other in a rail-boat and the Gonarch is now a half-helicopter. And it's, like, 5 hours long
yes
On a Xenard
I would play that 100%, though I would rather have the player be chased by a helicopter, and then when they defeat it, it drops slightly smaller Gonarch which you would have to fight.
imagine the gonarch, spinning in the air with the legs being used as propeller blades, and it dropping baby headcrabs like mines
that sounds funny as hell but i need to say that i actually like on a rail and water hazard
I've always loved Xen. Everything about it just feels so bizarre and alien, which fits perfectly with it being an extradimensional world. The Interloper chapter in particular REALLY makes you feel like an interloper. No human was even supposed to witness this place, and you could say we're not even really capable of comprehending it. That creepy hidden side room in the factory with the periodic ghostly wailing still gives me chills to this day.
That being said, I totally understand the issues people have with this part of Half-Life. As mentioned, waiting to heal in the health pools really ruins the pacing, and the bosses can certainly be confusing to deal with your first time through. But overall I think the inclusion of Xen is a perfect way to conclude your escapades through Black Mesa, as it rips you straight out of the complex facility you've grown so used to and throws you somewhere truly alien.
"Truly alien." I kinda like how most of the Half-Life games try to capture that feeling to some degree at the end. Your imagination and fears run wild as you run through the games, and get glimpses behind the curtain. And even with these hints, where you end up always surprises you.
Like he said in the video, it was really just the lack of polish that turns it into a slog. Black Mesa (the fan remake, not the research facility lol) is proof that the idea of Xen was good and made for a perfect conclusion to the experience, but it just wasn't executed very well in the original.
I wholeheartedly agree! Xen feels just so otherwordly, mystic and enthralling...seriously, if I could spend muh Summer holiday there, I'd do it. Uh, so are the Winter holidays.
@@littlechickeyhudak black mesa made Xen much more of a slog that it was in the original, if that was your issue.
@@cuttrogue nah I love Black Mesa's Xen. Maybe it could've been trimmed down a little bit, and the autoscroller sequence isn't the greatest, but it was fun and engaging and a generally well-executed change of pace in a way that the original Xen just wasn't imo, due to both the technical and budget/time restraints. Like I said, I think it does what the original Xen was supposed to do but much better.
My beef with Xen was that the pacing of the levels leading up to it were really building momentum and with the opening of the portal things had reached a fever pitch, and I thought I was jumping into the final battle... then... Xen... just... kept... going. It felt sort of endless and repetitive because I kept expecting the end to be around the next corner. But that was my first playthrough. I have no problems with it now.
I'd say it's a nice change of pace, I mean, that means, the game does offer variety. Also I didn't mind slowin' muh progress down. I could admire the Xen scenery at least 🤣
The remake did the same thing too despite the improved level design and gameplay
ikr, and it sure would suck if a remake made xen 5 times longer but with a fuckton of repetitive puzzles and boring walking. im glad black mesa didnt.... oh wait.... they managed to make it worse than the original...
@@Helperbot-2000 yeah i thought black mesa fixed it BUT NO they just make it darker and make it even more repetitive than what it was. It is too long to overstay its welcome.
Thankfully the Nihilanth Boss Fight is better.
@@Helperbot-2000 Skill Issue in it's purest form. Zoomers just can't solve basic platforming and puzzles or not have 24/7 flashy stimulation shoved into their retinas I guess. Wonder how much people like you would have hated Quake or Dooms puzzles and backtracking.
I never minded Xen being so difficult. It gets frustrating sometimes but this is what old games do and this is why they are so memorable.
The platforming section tho. The platforms are so damn slow, so I usually lose my health just because I'm impatient xD
Half-Life wasn't a great platformer to begin with, but mix in the finicky long jump module, the rotating platforms, and the difficulty of telling if you'll take fall damage and how much makes for a rough experience imo
@@littlechickeyhudak The only serious problem was the long-jump module. Namely, the developers didn't bind a key for it, just told you to "run, stop, crouch, then jump" to make it work. What kind of _ijit_ came up wit' this sht????????
Interloper is a nightmare, it's even the reason I haven't finished bms, I'm too scared
I guess you can skip to Nihilanth
Interloper in Black Mesa is actually pretty solid except for some sections here and there. It's alot more polished and well paced compared to the original.
@@lazynihilanth1899 if i remember, isn't it even longer than the original?
@@stoodle511 It is waaaay longer, but it is true for the entire Xen part and yet my favorite boss fight currently in any videogame is the Black Mesa Gonarch fight.
@@suspecm6316 i already passed gonarch quite far, nowdays when i play bms it's usually 1,2 or even more weeks apart from each session
I personally loved Xen, it was my favorite part of the game, I didnt know what to expect at first, and when I went there it surprised me how alien and creepy the world was. It was a nice change after running around the hallways of black mesa for 10 hours.
The Xen chapters slowed down the pacing of the game. Even though the Black Mesa Xen chapters tried to change it (even with a chase sequence added in which was cool) was insanely slow. If you want to see the Black Mesa Xen chapters, BigMacDavies has a let's play on these levels.
Can;t you just play them?
@@FurgusFungus only if you have the herculean patience to slog through it
personally once I got to the gonarch I said fuck it and put on his mode
@@Feasco well I said this before but a good alternative would be to skip to the nihilanth, maybe play up to interloper first
was honestly a welcome break for me after the intensity of lambda core
So? I liked it, since the game offered variety, not just "run&gun". Which I grew unimaginably tired during "Surface Tension". Besides, I loved to admire the otherworldly Xen scenery.
Well, gaben himself say that they (the valve team) didnt like xen because they feeled to be too rushed, mark laidlaw admited that, even tho they thought of freeman traveling a alien world, they didnt plan that far ahead of it.
Xen could have been a sensation but the dev team was under pressure. This led to the circumstance that xen felt like moving through a discount lasagna
RadH early squad report!
Black Mesa Xen was really the completion of the vision in my opinion. OG Xen wasn't awful, merely... "not up to par". Its only crime was not being as well thought out as the other chapters due to being the most rushed. In another game of the same era it would blend in fine... but the rest of HL isn't anything at all like other games of the same era, now is it?
Woah, Ulster volunteers.
I dont know if its black mesa being generally very dark, the colours or my screen but something about black mesas Xen gives me headaches after 30 minutes.
Black Mesa's Xen could have done some things better, especially with keeping some things more true to the original (Half-Life).
My issue with BM Xen is that a lot of it plays itself. The last boss is also worse imo.
It went for like a bombastic flashy ending and it just kinda clashes with the rest of the subtle game that HL has always been. Not only that, but Xen in BM is a lot longer than the original, which is what a lot of people complained about the original for, that it was too long.
Especially the running from Gargantua part, that was just so out of place lol
Either way though, I like both Xen in the original and BM. They're both fine chapters and I think people just like to make out something as bad when it really isn't that bad. I think mostly people just play Xen wrong. The motto is run, think, shoot, live. Not Run, shoot, live. I think a lot of people don't explore or test enough strategies or use a variety of weapons to offset the ammo spacing. They just pick their favorite gun and blast everything without exploring.
@@TwixtheFox as a zoomer who played the game for the first time 20 years later, I disagree. I love half life but goddamit is xen boring, people say that black mesa xen takes too long to finish but at least it doesn't make me sleep in my keyboard. Don't get the "people didn't play it right" part, sounds like a pretty bad excuse
I feel the environments in interloper make up for any shortcomings in gameplay, the atmosphere in the xen factory was amazing.
I actually quite enjoyed Xen, it had a trippy, cool, and eery atmosphere.
I really dont understand why so many complain about Xen, I remember the moment when I was playing HL for the first time back in 1999 or 2000, I was getting tired of the Labs, but then out of no where im teleported to alien worlds, it was so amazing back then. Xen was also very scary.
personally i love the xen chapters and it's also worth noting that universally hated chapters in the half life community are my favorites
Xen and On A Rail I can understand liking, but RESIDUE PROCESSING?! REALLY?!
@@cillianwatters5619 Oh man, I love Residue Processing. Maybe it’s just the theme, but I get such a kick out of navigating through giant, inexplicable industrial machinery.
The weird thing about on a rail is the more times you play it the more you like it
I don’t mind most of Xen, I think that it’s mostly Interloper that sucks. The rest can be speed-ran just fine.
imo interloper is not that bad but it isn't that good either
It's possible to avoid most of the fights with the alien grunts in the factory. You can climb over the containers and skip them so you don't have to fight them. Now you learned how to save ammo in this chapter.
great, it's still a tedious slog
Only dotted eggs will hatch Grunts, the other ones are safe.
In my opinion, the main problem of Xen is the length of Interloper. The other levels aren't so bad. Nihilanth is in fact a pretty fun boss fight IMO. I like trying my best each time to avoid his teleportation orbs. It's a good challenge. There probably should have been more Xen levels to forget the repetitiveness of Interloper (like the Xen version of Black Mesa: Source).
I remember trying to hide to those spikes thing so i can avoid damage by those electricity things
BM Interloper is even more repetitive.
@@AndersonMallony-EricCF BM Xen was atrocious for me, I'd take the crappy but short original Xen over that any day
Avoiding Nihilanth's attacks is as easy as sitting behind a rock and occasionally peeking out to press m1.
I think Xen was design in a Eldritch way. The less you comprehend wtf is going on, the more you enjoy it. It's a place where puddles heal you, stones zap you, trees hit you, a ballsack tries to kill you and a giant baby keeps lecturing you about entering private property. I just love the wackiness of it, and you can feel how Valve decided to throw any crazy idea they couldn't do while the player was in Black Mesa.
Theory: the islands are alive and may even try to eat you...
You say "not enough ammo" ? Use the hive hand, Luke!
Imma be real - I dig the Xen levels. Yes, stuff is annoying, sometimes anyways, but it sorta fits. Valve could have easily said "lol make it like Black Mesa but alien textures" and left it at that, but on a tight time they went for platforming, wacky alien!.wav thingamajigs, additional world-building and scripting that gamers don't really, or ever figure out it existed in the first place. So I respect the levels for that. Plus, I personally like things to get weird and so Xen is endearing in that sort of way. Anyways, great video!
this guy just massacred the friendly vorts
kind of a reflex action after dealing with hundreds of them in BM
When Alien Controllers show up, they're not so friendly anymore...!!!
@@Feasco in bm it's way easier to just target the controllers than kill any vorts
It's almost 23 years and I'm still stuck in interloper. Send dudes, i need reinforcements.
@Radiation Hazard, did you know that the vorts in the first factory map of Interloper are friendly? This is the only place they are. In the VERY NEXT MAP they auto attack you.
I wonder if that was intended or a bug
@@ajxx9987 probably was
Well they're not ACTUALLY friendly, they're kind of neutral. Also, if there are those floating Alien Controllers nearby, Vortigaunts _will_ turn against you.
Black mesa is the only game where x3n isn’t boring
The hive hand is super underrated but works really well in Xen. It has infinite ammo and the primary fire projectiles loop around walls and deal no damage to the environment, so it cannot destroy the alien grunt barrels. It can also destroy the Nihilanth's teleportation orbs better than any other weapon.
you... you can destroy the teleportation orbs???
@@Helperbot-2000 yeah I've seen a lot of people saying you can do that but it never worked for me? every single bullet or projectile just flies right through, only the spikes work for me. maybe it's a source thing. Also I feel like the hornet gun doesn't work at all in source. like 0 damage. I spent an hours trying to get it to work but nope
I absolutely love Xen
I'm gonna be honest, I never got through Interloper. I was grinding through those Alien grunt things, losing all my damn ammo when it occurred to me that I wasn't enjoying myself and knew how the game ended anyways.
Xen is one of my favourite chapters because I finally get to use the really super fun and my favourite thing in the tutorial, the long jumping suit. It is so fun to jump around to your heart's content like that, even when I was constantly cursing Nihilanth.
4:26 The vortigaunts are friendly here until you start shooting at them.
When Alien Controllers show up, they also turn against you.
I like Xen because it changes the pacing of the game completely, resource management becomes critical if you don't know what you're doing and it's all really alien, the atmosphere quickly and abruptly shifts between fast run and gun to calm and anxiety in form of platforming.
My only problem with Xen is the fact that it nears the end of this great game.
I like Xen ver' much! That enthralling alien world, the crazy ambiance, alien thingamajig, the tormented screams of the captured humans...it is absolutely brilliant!!!!
There is a long corridor with multiple Grunt containers, which, when destroyed, spawn a Grunt. At that point I rarely have enough ammo for controllers, let alone the spongy grunts, so it's easier to just run through the corridor and call it a day.
but there is an ammo stash in a small corner along that room, right in the middle part. What I always found endearing is that in the room with multiple explosive barrels of death, the ammo pickup you find contains ONLY explosives.
Xen is one of the most endearing locations in the game.
That part is ridiculously easy wit' the rite strategy. Just use up ALL your tripmines and satchels cuz u get new ones in those niches. They're powerful enough to mince Vortigaunts, Grunts, everything.
You can simply walk through the corridor, there's no need to destroy the barrels at all.
@@humanandhalf4118 Ye I know, but what fun is that? I wanna see alien guts all over the place! Mwhahahaha! :D
Also, in one of the versions of the game, there is a glitch seen in the red side chamber (wit' the tormented screams of humans) where Alien Grunts actually active inside their eggs and can shoot thru it (this was fixed later). Not that red side-chamber is an essential location to visit, tho.
Guess I'm one of the few people that likes Xen
tell me you haven't read a single comment here without telling me you haven't read a single comment here
I never disliked xen chapter. When i played first time it was magical to me(around 2005). Imagine 6 year year old kid playing shooter game and sees different type of world, civilation, and creatures. Still to this day,sometimes i see in my dreams alien worlds like Xen. Recently find out why people hate this chapter on UA-cam. Xen was the most creative, beautiful art piece 6 year old kid could ever see at that time.
We must thank this guy for his tutorial on how to speedrun nihilanth in hl
Xen is just super cool for such an anticlimatic fight you can win in four minutes
did you knew that if you dont attack the vortigons on the elevator section they dont attack you?
Your content is as atmospheric as Half-Life itself. Super great job!
Surprisingly enough, I enjoyed Xen platforming due to me being unable to just damage boost to the end portals, the only problem I had was the Vortigaunts that are in mass in the factory area as that’s where I got pissed due to me being on low health and it being Hard Mode. Though the Gonarch was easy, literally spammed the long jump to kite the thing while smacking it with anything I have
The Gonarch is not hard if y'know all the safe-spots. Also it's possible to stay at the opening of the cave during the final fight & avoid all those newborn headcrabs (u must still look out of that cotton-ball tho). I used up my snarks on the leftover babies, and they munched them up.
@@TheLambdaTeam I didn’t even had much but the Gonarch is even easier than imagined
I have this theory that Minecraft's End dimension is inspired by Xen's first island
Theory? Or fact!
I never had any issues with ammo in Half-Life's Xen. Now I play on "Normal" difficulty, but it's easy to get plenty of ammo from the random ammo/weapon containers lying around plus you have the Hivehand (infinite ammo and homing projectiles).
i dislike that i cant jump that far in xen and i am stuck in an island
I wasn't aware so many disliked it lol
I like most of the xen levels but not the final boss because jumping on those bounce pad things is so annoying and you have no time to do so with the boss shooting at you and then there are all the small enemies that you can see until they shoot at you and they can't miss
I hear this a lot but I didn’t mind Xen at all.
we're all very happy for you
Try to use the hivehand. It's very usefull against most of the enemies of Xen, except Gonarch. It can help you save ammunition.
Radiation Hazard: Vortigaunts
Subtitles: Warty Gods
I never disliked the Xen chapters. To me, Valve made sure the design was weird, but obviously didn't want it to be frustrating. Xen is a different planet, so if it had the same design as the Earth levels, it'd make even less sense.
It's true. We can't expect a totally different alien world to be similar to the world we live in.
I got stuck on the start of Interloper for so long because I played the later sections blind and didn’t know you were supposed to go through a cave that was hidden behind a ridge, and for the parts where you have to jump on the flying manta rays, I had to quick save every time I made a jump because it was only just the slightest bit janky. I watched a playthrough after beating the boss and didn’t even know you could heal in the green brain jelly pools, and only through luck I found stashes in hidden nooks and crannies despite actively searching for them.
Actually that entire cave section is optional. At the top of the hill (where the cave opening is), y'can catch an Alien Aircraft ride usin' the long-jump module, which takes y'straight to the teleport isle.
But ye, takin' the cave is better since y'can grab badly needed supplies this way.
I just beat half life fully for the first time yesterday and my xen experience was like everyone telling me a guard dog armed to the teeth was on the other side of the fence but when I hopped over it was a puppy yapping at me the first chapter xen was short and if you knew what you were doing and planed were you were going its possible to take no fall damage gonarchs lair I barely took any damage and interloper felt like it only took 20 minutes not saying that those 20 minutes weren't filled with copious amounts of saving and reloading though
I always liked Xen a lot. Never had a problem. I watched the remake last night in Black Mesa, and it is way better looking than the original Xen by a magnitude, but it was 2.5 hours as well. I can imagine that someone playing it the first time, on Hard, would take far long than that to reach the end. So I guess it depends on what you want. I would ideally like the graphics of Black Mesa but not so long. That was a 2.5 hour walkthrough of someone who never died and knew where to go.
Going through the comments just briefly tells me, that about 90% of all self proclaimed half life connosoires were not able to controll the reduced gravity and jumped into the voide regularly. Xen wasnt the best level in hl1, but it absolutely was not the worst. There are some other levels which are truly dumb.
Xen is amazing with its bright color scheme and haunting healing pools. Irritating as well with Gonarch's lair and Interloper levels. In the remake they went all overboard in these levels.
Call me a contrarian, but I actually like the OG xen design. It gives off the air of a dingy, backwater dimension, like an alley between two buildings. And that's what xen is, exactly. A world-between-worlds.
Xen is a fine level that requires you to adapt to its challenge. Interloper is an excellent level that leads up to HL1’s epic conclusion. I’ll see myself out.
In my opinion, Xen gets better the more times you play Half-Life. Sure it messes with the flow of the game the first time you play it, but on subsequent playthroughs, you come to appreciate how much Xen does for world-building the Half-Life universe. Finding out where Headcrabs come from and that the Vortigaunts were actually being used as slaves were two mysteries the game excelled at building up and answering. I think if a player wants a more refined version of Xen, then Black Mesa has you covered.
However, like you said, I think initial players were just ready for the game's conclusion and then it threw a curve ball with a huge chunk of content that players didn't expect. It sets up a new kind of tension with a dire tone change, knowing that no scientists will be able to help you anymore and the realization that the Black Mesa facility has sent who knows how many people like Freeman to their graves stranding them in the border world to die of various ends. Each pack of resources you pick up could be your last, and you never know what you'll find around the next floating platform.
xen is pretty bad yeah.. but i like the loneliness of it, gives me a weird feel.
art direction and sound design are flawless in this chapter, but Valve wasted a lot of potential to do something more. Until Xen, Half Life was about real time narrative with cool athmosphere and interesting game mechanics , but in Xen is so rushed that real time narrative is almost intexistent (obviusly gman scene doesnt count) , the only interesting thing is Nihilant voice lines. They could do a chapter like the beggining of the game, no action, just narrative and interaction, but they decided to do a chapter on the most "Doom" way posible, only killing aliens and doing platforming. Valve learned this and for that reason hl2 final chapters are way better
I love the low gravity and the long jump. I never had any issues with parkouring but the stage design just wasn't for me. I love the feel of destroyed/abandoned facilities and closed claustrophobic spaces. This nightmarish feel when something that's supposed to give humanity hope gets destroyed. the first stages of the game has this liminal vibe I absolutely adore. You can't do that with xen, it's just a different setting, the world is "different and off" by default so you can't achieve the eerie feeling of "something went deeply wrong" because you're like, yeah it's alien of course it's weird, nothing wrong there.
i love ambient of Xen and it's nature, and it's addition to lore is just extraordanary, what i hate about it is that its so small, if it had some new flank routienes that players can take by themselves, it could make it abit better
4:27 These guys are passive, don't attack them.
Xen really brought home to me why HL is considered such a masterpiece. From the first moment. I was in awe of the depths of its its daring departure from all that came before.
I am currently working on the abysmal black mesa achievements.
I am on the purple hat in the teleportation zone of lambda core.
Good timing! I just found your channel looking into the Half Life 2 beta, love the work man
Yea, my experience with Xen was stellar. I totally get the on a rail complaints and water hazard to a degree. My first play through of the game was made without any awareness of others' complaints.
I loved xen and I thought was strange and beautiful. The playthrough could be a bit awkward with the unusual jumping but no less enjoyable. However, taking on the last bosses was frustrating.
During Nihilanth, the teleporting balls FOLLOWING you is one of the most annoying parts about em.
Why? I liked those extra chambers. They gave me badly needed ammo supply.
No stuka bats floaters mr friendlies nor charges in xen );
You can still spawn floaters as bloater
When I played through Xen the first time probably in 1999 I didn't think much of it. I thought it was hard as shit and very fucking weird but it's an alien world in an old game so at the time it felt rather fine. It's only in recent years I realized people hated it and although I can see why, I think the main problem is that it's just too long.
xen was one of my favorite finale chapters. of course it was rushed to being finished cause valve during it's early years had a tight deadline, still though the whole came comes full circle in this chapter.
I appreciate this video, when i was 5 and first made it to xen it blew the hinges off my imagination of just what that place was! I get the criticisms, especially playing today but xen still holds a special place in my heart ❤ ty rad had
Beat this game a long time ago with no intent to ever play through it again. It was a miserable experience to say the least
I don't know, to me Xen always seemed pretty cool. I was more frustrated with the fight with the tentacles, because I didn't understand what to do
Great video! Just really solid all round.
how can you say you can dream about that when you could've played "Black Mesa" xen is completely reworked, it looks crazy
I never finished Black Mesa, but I saw what Xen was like from watching other people's walkthroughs. Remembering how frustrating it was in the original HL, damn... They did hell of a job redesigning it. Even if I decided to replay HL tommorow, I don't think I can play the original. It's way too frustrating.
i actually don't dislike xen as much as other people do, now the black mesa mod on the other hand...
I always liked Xen, it is what it need to be strange, disorienting, "infinite", hard, extremely dangerous, bleak. When I played it the firts times I was felling that and I was more tense all the time that in many other parts of the game since any dark corner can have an enemy, you can fall anytime, you have low ammo (I use a lot the hivehand for controllers so now is not a big problem but a problem as always which helps to build the atmosphere).
It can be better since It was a last minute addition but It is already really good when you see what Xen is trying to show you as an different dimension full of life from anothers and infinite dimensions and not only as a level on a videogame.
Zen the only part where i had to look up where to go and where to find some ammo
1) If the players are annoyed by those simple platforms, so what do players say about DOOM ETERNAL ???!!!
2) crabs and baby head crabs annoying? come one. game has to be more difficult.
this should be a perfect coverage for "Why Do Players Hate" series
i mean, let's face it
the general consensus among *ALL* of the Half Life 1 fans *HATES* HD Models
i could felt like i'm one of those rare minorities that don't mind about it
Jumping out of those holes to land on a flying stingray was pure cancer
What you're actually meant to do is find a cave at the back of that island that leads you to an elevating platform which you can jump off right onto the teleporter
On my first ever playthrougg of the entirety of the half life series back-to-back, I never went to the internet and watched videos about the games as I was afraid they'll affect my view on the game, my first playthrough of HL1, I still remember how the scientist and the security guard talked about Xen being a point of no return and when they gave me loads of guns and ammo, it set the mood, this is the finale the game had ramped up to, I thought the game had peaked at Surface Tension but Xen felt new. The lack of ammo and batteries and having to loot those from old dead bodies really intensified the feeling that I might not go back to earth, the Gonarch fight was confusing at first but I got the hang of it, I felt really awesome on interloper when I rode thos super high spike things and the flying aliens into the portal whilst being chased by vortigaunts and controllers, and the factory made it look like I was invading them instead of them invading us. Znd the Nihilant fight was epic too, I still remember when I found out the yellow crydtal can be broken and getting excited as I knew he was dead, I used those launching pads, and spammed the living shit out of his head with the MP5 alt fire and bullets, it felt badass. I really liked Xen on my first playthrough and I dont know why people dont like it, yeah it looks rushed and odd and its hard to avoid getting damaged but overall I thought that Xen was the thing that made Gordon into a living legend in gaming, from barely surviving in BM to becoming humanity's last hope on Xen. (All that was before I played hl2 so I had no idea) point is, I liked Xen :)
Well TBH, I'm not sure the rifts were closed between Xen and Earth when the Nihilanth died. Maybe the link was never severed between the two worlds.
i just finished Half Life like 10 mins ago and Xen looks cool, but holy crap was it hard, i had to go look at a walkthrough a lot during this part of the game. Xen is not a bad chapter, its just hard and confusing.
It's hard because it's at the final quarter of the game
It's supposed to be hard
"Why Do Players Dislike Xen?"
'cuz they're crybabes
I think the biggest problem with Xen is that it requires the player to have A LOT of patience right at the endgame. That’s why I play Half-Life in chunks.
Does anyone have the same problem with the big spider alien where he stops moving at the last part.
Xen, too long? Well shit... I strongly suggest them not to play Black Mesa. Xen alone takes 4 hours
The problem with Xen: The players.
one time when i was fighting Gonarch and i killed him and jumped through the portal. GUESS WHAT, those small fuckers when into the portal with me and i got mobed by baby head crabs before i could do anything.
I did some platforming and then stopped playing when I got to a section where everything was brown in brown. Never finished the game in any playthrough. I don't hate this chapter, I ignore it.
My only complain is the Gonarch being nearly unkillable
When I played it on ps2 got stuck in the last phase, literally emptied all my ammo on her and never got into the exploding animation
7:06 idk why, i never had any problem in this chamber.
maybe i'm too young to see that it's bad '-', maybe i have good vision? NO
the black Mesa source xen is better, people likes it for having beautiful stuff
Who the hell says Xen is bad? That's not true.
Xen is totally cool and misterous and trancendant enough to keep things interesting and feel like you're a true expolorer. It also creates a nice cotranst betrween human architecture and completely alien vision and even laws of phisics.
Uh, everyone?
1 word: interloper
I love Xen and I love it even more in Black Mesa remake. then again, I'm the kind of person who plays Blood on Extra Crispy difficulty and enjoys it so maybe I'm just special like that.
Seriously though, Nihilanth is pretty easy once you learn to use the long jump to dodge his attacks or quickly move into cover behind all the spikes.
I absolutely loved Xen first time I got to it. It was such a drastic change, and so LATE into the game, that it completely blew me away. I thought the design, the sound effects, everything was so perfectly alien and surreal. Yeah it gets a bit annoying at parts, personally i found platforming in interloper with all those floating alien guys really infuriating, but I really didn't mind that much, the atmosphere more than made up for it.
The long-jump module is the biggest problem, as y'can't render a button to use it (funnily enough, Duke Nukem could use a JETPACK wit' a single button push 5 years prior). The floating Alien Controllers are easy to pick off, but y'must conserve 9mm ammo on them as much as possible. The alien hand and the molecule exciter are also awesome against them.
For some reason, I didn't find Interloper as bad as other people did. It was difficult, but not really to the point of frustration and I didn't feel much of the difficulty spike compared to the previous levels. I also dare to say, it was reasonably long and pretty well designed while other Xen chapters I found to be too short and lackluster / rushed / unfinished.