Black Mesa Is Genius, And Here's Why*

Wowww

Hey man, just wanted to say thank you for the shoutout and for the kind words in this video :) Had a couple of people send me your way and I am glad I found you - the effort you put into this video is evident right from the get go and I watched the entire thing in one go because I was so absorbed at what you were saying and your expert command at explaining what it is that makes Black Mesa such a good game. I knew right away the passion you had for it when you explained the three-pronged approach at how Valve designs games, and how Crowbar Collective reinforces this design in their gameplay. Great stuff! P.S. you are absolutely right Interloper is killing me right now :(

The fact Valve not only allowed Black Mesa to be made, but allowed them to sell it for profit on their own host platform is one of the reasons Valve is one of the few remaining game devs who actually care about their community (like how they actually responded to save TF2)

Okay but consider this… if Xen is technically “Act 3” of the original Half-Life’s story, suddenly it’s suckiness makes perfect sense, because everybody knows Valve Can’t Count To Three.

Xen: The land of desktop wallpapers.

Holy moly, time to make some popcorn O.O

i always loved the geological arc of half life: starting out prett deep in the facility, thinking you know your stuff, then trying to escape to the surface only to be forced back even deeper than ever before to very slowly tram your way back to the surface..then struggle your way along the surface to such a degree that you start missing the calm depths of the facility, only to then descent back into it

the science team helping you, and the environmental storytelling in xen is unreal. i love that despite the vortigaunts not knowing earth languages yet, you understand their turmoil being used as slaves by nihilanth. its just so amazing

There's so many tiny little details and fan service for people like me which shows how much of a passion project Black Mesa is. Both it and the original Half-Life are both incredible in their own right EDIT: Just finished the video, excellent stuff man. Definitely looking forward to whatever you make next!

You honestly give the impression that you are a established YouTuber that just lost their channel and decided to just make a new one instead of recovering the old one

I’ve been working on a small AI modification for Black Mess that adds a little bit more character to the marines. Early on in We’ve Got Hostiles, they are very aggressive. They push their advantage any chance they get. As you show yourself to be a threat, they start holding back more and more, until eventually in Forget About Freeman only the shotgunners are still rushing you, everyone else is mostly trying to stay back, especially the corpsmen. Basically, by FAF the military is not targeting you, they are AFRAID of you.

The problem with the original Xen isn't that "it sucks." It's that Valve over-committed to the "alien nature" of it. You end up with terrain which is virtually unrecognisable, meaning the player is no longer equipped to deduce how to proceed with the game. Thematically that makes sense, in that it's supposed to immerse the player in the surreal strangeness of the environment. In practice, however, it forces a severe disconnect as the player has to fall back on incredibly basic trial and error. Stick your head in all the holes, hit Use on everything, jump on all the things, hope to eventually stumble into the path forward by blind chance. When you do that, it ceases to matter what terrain looks like or how it feels. We're not using environmental cues to solve logical puzzles. We're disregarding the environment in favour of methodically (or chaotically) trying all possible combinations. I still like Xen because it has some very neat ideas, but it lacks an overall ruleset for the player to follow. The game ceases to communicate. Black Mesa's Xen is... kind of a mess in its own right, being DRASTICALLY too long for what it is and padded with too many walking simulator segments. However, the Crowbar Collective folks did manage to impart the sort of "visual language" to the world that Valve never did. They left the player a ledge to grab onto, and a reason to pay attention.

I laughed at "A theoretical degree in physics". Gordon Freeman is truly Fantastic.

I'm just convinced that every single resident of the commonwealth countries has a game review channel at this point.

52:20 “Well, I guess we can’t put off talking about Xen any longer, can we?-“ Ad break starts peak comedy lol

9:29 the dude had the balls to put himself in game explaining why he should make a remake. We’re just gonna gloss over the fact that the man fought doubters and haters throughout the entire development, and still even after publishing Black Mesa still included stuff like this to still continue his fight against non-believers. I can still remember when Crowbar released Black Mesa there was still vocal backlash against it’s creation, let alone people trying to legally get it taken down simply out of merit of it existing.

Valve’s Game Design philosophy: - make game - take 10+ years to make sequel - spend the next millennium laughing on a pile of money

I'm never going to forget that whenever I'm walking on a fleshy surface it's a wet ass being clapped

I love the Gonarch thematically. You've been fighting headcrabs all game long, probably having killed hundreds of them by the time you get to Xen. They've gone from a serious threat to a mild nuisance, even becoming cute by the endgame... then you discover where they've all been coming from. You meet the hulking beast of a mama, and it almost feels like she personally wants revenge against you for mass slaughtering her babies. It'd be like if before saving Peach from Bowser, you had to face of the great mother of all goombas, and answer for your crimes of stomping so many of them through your game. I love the Gonarch, and the fact that 20 years later there are still more headcrabs, leads me to believe that there are more Gonarchs out there.