#Black mesa game Pc
#Black mesa game series

Black Mesa, a staggeringly ambitious fan-made, Valve-sanctioned remake of the original Half-Life, finally left Early Access on Steam this month. And even though I dearly love it, I would understand if the original Half-Life, with its crude вЂ90s visuals, couldnвЂ™t be one of them for you.ДЇortunately, it doesnвЂ™t have to be. There are lots of examples of older titles that I come to years after the fact and enjoy just as much as I would have upon release, but for whatever reason, Half-Life 2 could never be one of them. I also know what itвЂ™s like to feel like youвЂ™ve missed the technological boat on a game.

#Black mesa game Pc

(Though I do think Episode 2 is great.)ДЄll of this is to say that, first of all, if youвЂ™re priced out of Half-Life: Alyx because of the need for a gaming PC and a VR headset, I feel you. Revisiting it on PC now, with its leaden combat and interminable vehicle sequences, I can only feel the same way.

I could appreciate what the game was doing on an artistic level, and its physics system was clearly groundbreaking, but it felt like a slog to play. But it was still a compromised version, and the Xbox 360вЂ™s suboptimal backwards compatibility only made matters worse. In hindsight, that port was a technical miracle. The first time I played it was years later when I got an Xbox 360 and decided to check out the original Xbox version. By the time it came out, I was a student with nothing but an Apple iBook to my name, and PC gaming just wasnвЂ™t a possibility for me. Half-Life 2, though, I never really got on with. Just witness how Valve still isnвЂ™t able to make enough $1,000 headsets to meet demand for Half-Life: Alyx, which is coming out in a couple of weeks.

#Black mesa game series

But history has proven my hot take to be a pretty solid one - Half-LifeвЂ™s blend of first-person shooting and narrative storytelling was incredibly influential, and it went on to spawn a series that stokes near-unparalleled hype and reverence to this day. That wasnвЂ™t saying much, really, since weвЂ™d only just set up our first family computer, and IвЂ™d barely started playing video games. Upon its release in 1998, Half-Life instantly became my favorite game of all time.