After over a decade of work (and nine months after actually releasing the game), the Black Mesa gang are finally just about finished remaking Half-Life. Today they launch a big update they’re calling the ‘Definitive Edition’, with changes including a visual refresh of many areas, performance improvements, extra polishing, and a redo of one level from the bit with all the trains. They… still have a few wee fixes to follow, but it seems they’re really, truly, mad, deeply almost done with it.

(more…)

What is the half-life of Half-Life? I would have long ago described Valve’s first-person shooter as my favourite game, but revisiting it last month in preparation for Half-Life: Alyx made clear how many parts of its design have aged.

Enter Black Mesa, a fan-made remake of the original Half-Life, inside Half-Life 2’s Source engine. Over 8 years since we first reviewed its earliest release, the project is now complete. It is a triumph on many levels, and in terms of scale and polish, the most impressive fan game ever made. But it remains, underneath, Half-Life – with all that that entails.

(more…)

Long in the works Black Mesa the fan-made Half-Life remake is out. For real. It’s been in development longer than some folks who might play it today have been alive. Black Mesa 1.0 is now live and officially a graduate from Steam Early Access. From the sounds of it, Crowbar Collective’s 15-year project is coming out Cum Laude.

(more…)

After fifteen years in development in various forms, Black Mesa will finally launch in full on March 5. Started as a mod, the Valve-sanctioned remake of Half-Life eventually became its own commercial game and entered early access in May 2015. Since then, they’ve been working on remaking the much-maligned final chapter of Xen, overhauling and fixing bits, and generally tweaking. Which they’ve now about finished. A few fixes will follow after that, granted, but the end is oh so close.

(more…)

Ambitious and seemingly never-ending, Black Mesa‘s long development has almost reached its completion. Developers Crowbar Collective released a content-complete version 1.0 beta of the Half-Life remake on Steam earlier this week – an uninterrupted journey through Black Mesa’s corridors and the Xen border world. Sixteen years after a group of dissatisfied modders sought to one-up Valve’s Source port of Half-Life, Gordon Freeman’s no good, very long day at work might finally be over.

(more…)

Fifteen years. Five UK Prime Ministers. Both my entire High School and University runs combined. Through it all, Black Mesa has been there, churning away, promising that one day it’d be done. After eight years, it was. Sort of. Released a Xen-less mod, it would take another eight years for the developers behind the notorious Half-Life remake, Crowbar Collective, to finally be done with it. Posting on Steam earlier today, the team announced that a full, final version of Black Mesa is imminent – with a 1.0 preview due for public testing any day now.

(more…)

After fifteen years of development in one form or another, Black Mesa is almost finished. A new public beta build of the Valve-sanctioned Half-Life fan remake unveils the final chapters of Xen, the alien world much-maligned in Half-Life and absent from the initial release of Black Mesa. With this, the game can now be played in full from beginning to end. And damn, their expanded version of Xen is real fancy. The developers still have some work to do before leaving beta and say they’re keen to hear feedback from players but the end is so close I can smell G-Man’s government-issue aftershave.

(more…)

As the many hapless scientists now wearing wee aliens as hats (and Valve Software themselves) could tell you, one need be careful with Half-Life’s alien dimension of Xen. That’s why the gang behind sanctioned remake Black Mesa gang have taken their time remaking those much-reviled end-game levels, initially releasing the game without any Xen then getting back to work on it. They’ve been gradually expanding Xen in a beta branch, and now they invite us to that weird meaty factory processing (cloning? packaging?) aliens. The unexpected concept made it my favourite part of Xen, so I’m glad to see them go for it.

(more…)

It feels like only yesterday that Half-Life remake Black Mesa was a joke. The highest-profile vaporware of the Source modding community. That thing had been milling around since 2005. Nobody thought it would ever actually come out. I remember feeling properly shook when eventually did in 2012, seven years later.

Except, it wasn’t exactly done. Crowbar Collective have been trying to figure out Xen, Half-Life’s notorious last chapter, for almost as long as the Earth bits were in development. With today’s Gonarch chapter entering public beta, it got a little bit closer to completion.

(more…)

The long-delayed Xen chapters of Black Mesa – Crowbar Collective’s remake of the original Half-Life – feel tantalisingly close now. In a Steam blog post yesterday, the devs warn that “If you want the polished, complete Xen experience, you should wait. It won t be long!”, but if you’re ready for your first taste of their re-imagined alien world, you can try it now. The first three (of nineteen) maps are available to play as an opt-in beta, with the intent of testing how badly PCs buckle under the extensive changes they’ve made under the hood. Below, some thoughts on the new Xen.

(more…)