Black Mesa Mod Released

Even with it's flaws I enjoyed the mod. However this is the one thing I really hate about it.
It makes the whole game feel incomplete and well, shorter.
Agreed. I'll admit I'm glad to have been proven wrong by this mod. The devs are great at filling existing level designs with so much detail.
 
More feedback as I progress further in the game: they did an awesome job with the assassins and I love the weapon feel of the tau cannon. The ichthyosaurs are pretty goofy and messing with them reminds me of another point: just about any enemy in the game can be stun-locked with a crowbar beatdown. Kinda weird and wonder if it was intentional. Ichys shouldn't be unable to bite you in half just because a dude is swinging something in their face.

I also liked their new trash compactor. It's a perfect example of BM's mission as I understand it which was to create new and interesting detail thanks to the capabilities of the Source engine.
 
Is it the head bob? You can turn it off at the options panel.
Head bob and just motion sickness, if I put the head bob off its a little bit better. Next stop: Residu processing
 
So I finally got around to playing a bit of this, and like everyone else I am super impressed with the level of detail and overall quality of the mod. I haven't played Half Life for a couple of years, so some of the differences are kinda lost on me...

I basically played up to where you get the crowbar. I personally didn't find the flare part itself annoying, but it did seem kind of odd not using the crowbar to get your first kill.

Overall, good first play session, and look forward to seeing some of the setpieces later on in the game.
 
Finally finished it. I liked it a lot, in fact, a lot more than I thought I would from the video review. There were some crippling performance issues in the lambda core final battle, which made it harder to enjoy the wonderful job they did creating that room. The Surface Tension mortar-the-Garg scene was really weak, and the glitchy interface to fire z missiles was almost impossible to use. Looks like z-layering was to blame but I have no way of knowing. What else ... I thought the extra lines they gave the scientists were great throughout the game. In fact, they did a really good job in general adding color where there was blank space in the original game. You really do get lost in the detail at times, especially when running around the reactor rooms in Lambda Core.

Most of the time the recreation of setpieces was faithful. I didn't notice nearly as much streamlining in the later part of the game that bothered me so much in places like On A Rail.

Despite its shortcomings, I think the team did an amazing job, considering it was pulled off by an amateur team. A better part of a decade's hard work paid off, and I eagerly await the hellish jump challenges in Xen, and hopefully maybe return to Bounce for the first time in a decade for some glorious deathmatch.
 
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