they are currently working on a black mesa treatment of blueshift and its waaaaayyyyy better than the original, more story driven and character development
somebody is also making something called black mesa: hecu. it isnt an opposing force remake, it is a different story involving a different hecu. it does have adrian in it tho
the point of the rocket launching was attempt to close the rift as the same satellite is used in hl2 ep2 to close the super portal, this rocket basically weakened the rift which resulted that the aliens no more randomly teleported inside the facility but Nihilanth kept the rift opened and in desperation to prevent us to close the rift started more organized invasion which caught off guard the marines as they had to deal now with xenian military forces and not just wild lives and scouting forces (the vortigaunts).
@@hungry_lama Keep in the mind it's also strongly hinted that Dr.Breen was the one who framed Freeman for being the person responsible for the resonade cascade (given it was Breen himself who ordered that experiment under Gman influences)
I initially cheated on the Hat achievement pre-Xen release. I reclaimed that glory into doing it again, and even went leagues into bringing it to the endgame. It was hell of an experience but damn it was worth it. Soon, I will go for the pizza achievement. Subbed!
im always pleased an surprised by the games Skel picks to cover, what good old school taste you got brother as well as a modern sense of what good an not given the whole of things. Love the videos brother an always excited an looking forward to what you do next even if it is desus X
I disagree with the Black Mesa balancing being better, for the most part is just HL2 balacing shoved into HL1, the combat is heavily reliant on numbers to be able to make difficulty to the player because every enemy goes down easier, there's less emphasis on movement overral too. I think HL1 has its problems in balancing, specially with Gordon's deep pockets that can carry up to 10 grenades for the MP5, you were way to powerfull, but Black Mesa doesn't really fix anything for me, they just try to adapt what they have, is not bad by any means, still leagues better than HL2 underwhelming arsenal, but still flawed.
@@feitopuns Making them flinch would be pointless, they already have many openings that players can use to avoid taking damage, flinching is only necessary when games have enemies that attack more often, see Doom 2 for example, Chaingunners also stop to attack like a sentry but they are slower than the marines in HL1 and thus spend less time positiong and more time attack, in this situation flinching is useful because is one of the only ways the player has to make an opening, in HL1 you already can exploit them moving and aim better when they stop to shoot at you.
@@CoracaoAcidental98 Unfortunately that's irrelevant when you realize that the games lets you save literally anywhere you want, the quick save ruins the game's difficulty, and given how convenient it is naturally it is very difficult for the player not to use it. It's not even like what happens in emulators, since at least there the save states are a feature of the emulator and it's something completely unrelated to the games you run there, something that the user will always know and will know that by doing that they will feel like they are cheating since it's not a native feature of the games. That doesn't happen with games with native quicksaves. Other games such as the Mass Effect series addressed this issue by not allowing the player to save under a certain conditions, like being in combat, I feel this is something more games with quick save functionality should do, starting with the Stalker series.
@@Sumire973 While I do agree that saves can make combat pointless, you control the buttons that your press, the save system is a life of quality feature, if you don't want it don't use it.
@@Sumire973I mean most classic shooters have a manual save system(definitely for the better imo) and in the stalker series it is honestly pretty hard not to save scum. If you are a glutton for punishment there’s plenty of hard af stalker mods lol
Same. Also "$60", its a valve game, it hits the steam sales so often you can get it super cheap and it only gets cheaper over time. If guy didn't have a VR headset, okay, but that sentence comes across as going out of your way NOT to play it like a hipster.
@@alienatedpoet1766 Same as well, Half-Life: Alyx is fun, outdone by Half-Life 2 VR mod but still great, people seem to write it up as unimportant just cuz of the VR aspect which is a shame
H3VR ain't even a game, frankly. It's impressive at what it does, but if you're not a gun nut (and don't get me wrong I like guns, but not everyone does) there's pretty much zero substance there.
@@deadfool179 HL:A is a snails pace, HL2:VR may not be made native for VR, but so what?? It plays so good you’d forget it not. Even if it’s unarguable that HL2 has jank, it’s not exclusively known for that, it’s known as being one of the best, and funnest fps games of the decade, that even surpasses plenty of modern games of the sort that released recently or are soon to. Part of the fun is that it isn’t made for VR, it doesn’t slow you or your opponents down, it’s fun fast chaos, even if that’s not your cup of tea, doesn’t mean it’s false
Idk, in my opinion, Xen is actually my favorite part of the game. It is a technical achievement of what can be done with the source engine and is an incredibly alive yet alien world I have not seen many other games replicate. Also thanks for letting me know about that hat. I know what my next playthrough is going to be for.
@@deutschesmanutter You know, what I can totally understand that opinion. It can be a bit tedious at times and sometimes not in the "good break in the pace of the game" way. Though the good parts of this level outweigh the negatives such as the vortigaunt village, the recharge crystals for uranium weapons, and the Ascension section, at least for a normal playthrough. Also as of now I have completed the hat run of the game. I didn't have to use commands. Funnily enough it was interloper that was the most frustrating.
Unrelated to the rest of the video but Ima choose violence today and be that guy: Alyx ain't a prequel, it IS part of the main series, and it's ending ain't a retcon, it's more of a soft reboot cuz within the lore it still makes sense.
During the last large encounter with the HECU you forgot the soundtrack "forget about freeman" which i think besides we've got hostiles and questionable ethics 1 forget about freeman is the best song
Nah TH-camr named PurpleColonel made an excellent video showcasing how flawed Black Mesa is, sure it's not the worst remake of the game, but Black Mesa still fundamentally misses the point of what made HL1 gameplay so good. Also they added so many needles puzzles that pointlessly slow down the game, and they made guns shoot slower, maps bigger so gameplay is slower and so much HECU soldier spam 😢 Also this is my personal nitpick and it's not popular opinion by Xen and the next maps onward are way too long, sure Xen in HL1 felt undercooked but I do believe it would still be shorter than BM counterpart. It just kinda takes away energy from the finale, it feels like it drags on and on instead of being fast and straight to the point, fighting the final boss.
Black Mesa is my favorite game out of every game I have ever played, and I honestly believe it is miles better than the original Half-Life, not saying that it's bad, but just to state how good Black Mesa is. You say it misses the point completely on what made Half-Life so good, yet don't elaborate. It doesn't add much more puzzles than the original does besides XEN, but even then, I see it as a big improvement because XEN base game sucks bookie, man. I can't even play past the Earthbound levels because original XEN is a joke, aimbot Vortigaunts with no cover, depleting ammo that can only be refilled by finding dead researchers, and the endless Nihilanth green portal attacks back to back to back!! Making the final boss more of a slow tedious task than the original. The original game sucked at giving a linear experience, being stuck for long periods of time at unclear puzzles, lack of Health and HEV, as well as being bad at explaining the whole Vortigaunt slave situation which is BIG to Half-Life 2. Black Mesa is everything Half-Life could've been, with a beautiful XEN, and a final boss that actually delivers on all the hype that was set up. It's not just XEN, there are more hints at the start the experiment will go bad, better overall storytelling, and in my opinion is the best way to introduce newer players into the Half-Life scene
i disagree fully honestly. i respect that you don't like it but I felt the same fun feeling of half-life 1 with better explanation and tie-ins that make hl2 feel like less of a retcon and more of a continuation. black mesa might as well replace hl1 as far as I'm concerned, although I still love the gldsrc original and play it often to this day
wholeheartedly agree! I like Black Mesa, it's a great love letter to Half Life 1 and the franchise as a whole, but it is a fundamentally different game in many ways. it simply does NOT feel like Half Life, I can't even say it feels like Half Life 2 either, it's trying to be like a weird mesh of both games, while also trying to be this "super epic" movie like game with all of these "epic" set pieces with tons of explosions and epic music in the background like you're watching a fucking Michael Bay film, which don't get me wrong, it's not bad at all, but it's also nothing like Half Life... it's just a very different feel from the original. I don't think this should be anyone's introduction to the franchise, but it is something I absolutely recommend for people who have already played through the games and wants to experience the original in a different (modernized if you will) way
The take on Alyx at the start is so bad, it's ridiculous to say it's not a main series entry or that they "basically haven't made a game in the series in almost 20 years" just because it's VR/a prequel. Neither of those things invalidate it, especially because it's an amazing, fully fledged VR game with a full campaign, not just an arcade shooter or something.
It is to such an extent inaccessible and deviant from the original format of the games that it is to many unable to be experienced. It is even less relevant than many fictional universe comic books or novels just due to how much is involved in playing it.
I think Xen's pacing problems stem from how long it was in development. It took CC 8 years so they felt they had to cram as much content in there as possible. Even with the pacing issues I still think BM xen is leagues better than OG Half-Life.
the way they spam HECU soldiers around the maps it's ridiculous, especially when you consider how flawed their AI is. i thought they were going to copy what F.E.A.R. 1 did and combine it with the HECU from HL1, but the HECU in black mesa is stupid, and not in the slightest as fun to fight as the HECU soldiers from the original game. purple colonel already touched on this topick, and his videos are _almost_ the definitive black mesa takes for me lol. the game tries to hard to be a prequel to HL2, instead of a proper re-imagination of HL1. it's also odd that you find HL:A boring but claim some parts about BM to be better than the original HL, but eh, opinions i guess.
@godfrey4461 literally the exact argument. Those 2 movies are part of the marvel cinematic universe. These two game series' are part of the half life universe. If anything mcu movies are more interconnected than half life and portal, because the only mention of anything from hl in portal is the fact that they name drop black mesa. At least in the mcu different characters actually show up in each other's movies
The way you say "five, maybe six years ago", heh. Such youth. Waiting thirteen years for a Half Life instalment must seem unthinkable to you. But trust me friend, pretty soon things that happened five or six years ago will feel as if they were last week. Things blur together over the expanse of time. We will be playing Half Life 3 before you know it.
the vr mod for black mesa makes xen the original xen, kinda disappointed that i didn't get to see the new stuff in vr (also i dont remember gonark in vr black mesa but that could be my shit memory but i deffinately remember it in half life 1 vr)
I always play black mesa 2012. Sure, it ends after lambda core. But the balancing in the modern BM is trash. Hate that the soldiets are bullet sponges. Even on essy mode.
6:59 gordon doesn't need a helmet he's a highly trained professional
they are currently working on a black mesa treatment of blueshift and its waaaaayyyyy better than the original, more story driven and character development
somebody is also making something called black mesa: hecu. it isnt an opposing force remake, it is a different story involving a different hecu. it does have adrian in it tho
Made for big things mate. Liked and subbed, this video was recommended to me.
Its slick. Thanks for this, onwards to massive growth.
the point of the rocket launching was attempt to close the rift as the same satellite is used in hl2 ep2 to close the super portal, this rocket basically weakened the rift which resulted that the aliens no more randomly teleported inside the facility but Nihilanth kept the rift opened and in desperation to prevent us to close the rift started more organized invasion which caught off guard the marines as they had to deal now with xenian military forces and not just wild lives and scouting forces (the vortigaunts).
Thanks :3
@@hungry_lama Keep in the mind it's also strongly hinted that Dr.Breen was the one who framed Freeman for being the person responsible for the resonade cascade (given it was Breen himself who ordered that experiment under Gman influences)
I initially cheated on the Hat achievement pre-Xen release. I reclaimed that glory into doing it again, and even went leagues into bringing it to the endgame. It was hell of an experience but damn it was worth it.
Soon, I will go for the pizza achievement.
Subbed!
im always pleased an surprised by the games Skel picks to cover, what good old school taste you got brother as well as a modern sense of what good an not given the whole of things. Love the videos brother an always excited an looking forward to what you do next even if it is desus X
Fuckin stellar content, bro. Gonna be on the edge of my seat for that Deus Ex video (playing Revision as we speak)
The best part of Black Mesa is giving HD models of Half-Life 1 characters to creators and animators, like SFM.
I always preferred the black mesa mod version pre steam release
It will be the day when I see black mesa VR.
I wish too
I NEEEEEEEEEEED ITTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT
@@TOC11121 WEEEEEEE NEEEEEEEEEEEEEED ITTTTT!!!!!!😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭
@@YouAreAmerican1776 WEEEEEE ALLLLLLL NEEEEED IIIIIIIIIIT!
@@s2tb2007 WAAAAAAAAA😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭
i love the animorph thumbnail lol
Amazing video !! :OOOO
Wow, I think you should a stalker video. That would be awesome
I disagree with the Black Mesa balancing being better, for the most part is just HL2 balacing shoved into HL1, the combat is heavily reliant on numbers to be able to make difficulty to the player because every enemy goes down easier, there's less emphasis on movement overral too. I think HL1 has its problems in balancing, specially with Gordon's deep pockets that can carry up to 10 grenades for the MP5, you were way to powerfull, but Black Mesa doesn't really fix anything for me, they just try to adapt what they have, is not bad by any means, still leagues better than HL2 underwhelming arsenal, but still flawed.
nah half life 1 enemies are just sponge and sentries they dont even flinch and just standing while shooting
@@feitopuns Making them flinch would be pointless, they already have many openings that players can use to avoid taking damage, flinching is only necessary when games have enemies that attack more often, see Doom 2 for example, Chaingunners also stop to attack like a sentry but they are slower than the marines in HL1 and thus spend less time positiong and more time attack, in this situation flinching is useful because is one of the only ways the player has to make an opening, in HL1 you already can exploit them moving and aim better when they stop to shoot at you.
@@CoracaoAcidental98 Unfortunately that's irrelevant when you realize that the games lets you save literally anywhere you want, the quick save ruins the game's difficulty, and given how convenient it is naturally it is very difficult for the player not to use it. It's not even like what happens in emulators, since at least there the save states are a feature of the emulator and it's something completely unrelated to the games you run there, something that the user will always know and will know that by doing that they will feel like they are cheating since it's not a native feature of the games. That doesn't happen with games with native quicksaves.
Other games such as the Mass Effect series addressed this issue by not allowing the player to save under a certain conditions, like being in combat, I feel this is something more games with quick save functionality should do, starting with the Stalker series.
@@Sumire973 While I do agree that saves can make combat pointless, you control the buttons that your press, the save system is a life of quality feature, if you don't want it don't use it.
@@Sumire973I mean most classic shooters have a manual save system(definitely for the better imo) and in the stalker series it is honestly pretty hard not to save scum. If you are a glutton for punishment there’s plenty of hard af stalker mods lol
Cool Skel-lore dude! :D
I have a feeling this guy is salty because alyx is VR only
I just got addicted to this game again and now this video releases?
i love the gman doing his best barney impression lol
The most op character does not exist.
OTIS
dude ur so underrated, also why is there 2015 in the title i thought you were playing the 2015 build of black mesa
yo, i KNOW i just started the video but like, you can't say h3vr is more fun if you never even played alyx tho
Same.
Also "$60", its a valve game, it hits the steam sales so often you can get it super cheap and it only gets cheaper over time. If guy didn't have a VR headset, okay, but that sentence comes across as going out of your way NOT to play it like a hipster.
@@alienatedpoet1766 Same as well, Half-Life: Alyx is fun, outdone by Half-Life 2 VR mod but still great, people seem to write it up as unimportant just cuz of the VR aspect which is a shame
H3VR ain't even a game, frankly. It's impressive at what it does, but if you're not a gun nut (and don't get me wrong I like guns, but not everyone does) there's pretty much zero substance there.
@@YouAreAmerican1776 hl2vr is nowhere near hla. Its still hl2 with jank that wasnt intented for pc back in 2004 and definitely isnt intenses for vr
@@deadfool179 HL:A is a snails pace, HL2:VR may not be made native for VR, but so what?? It plays so good you’d forget it not. Even if it’s unarguable that HL2 has jank, it’s not exclusively known for that, it’s known as being one of the best, and funnest fps games of the decade, that even surpasses plenty of modern games of the sort that released recently or are soon to. Part of the fun is that it isn’t made for VR, it doesn’t slow you or your opponents down, it’s fun fast chaos, even if that’s not your cup of tea, doesn’t mean it’s false
episode 2 is almost legal... just one more year :D
Idk, in my opinion, Xen is actually my favorite part of the game. It is a technical achievement of what can be done with the source engine and is an incredibly alive yet alien world I have not seen many other games replicate.
Also thanks for letting me know about that hat. I know what my next playthrough is going to be for.
Well good luck on your journey. Hopefully you won’t have to use console commands like I did :p
Xen's alright but MAN, they fucked interloper so bad, the only redeeming parts are the visuals but that's just a given.
@@deutschesmanutter You know, what I can totally understand that opinion. It can be a bit tedious at times and sometimes not in the "good break in the pace of the game" way. Though the good parts of this level outweigh the negatives such as the vortigaunt village, the recharge crystals for uranium weapons, and the Ascension section, at least for a normal playthrough.
Also as of now I have completed the hat run of the game. I didn't have to use commands. Funnily enough it was interloper that was the most frustrating.
@@davidmaxwell1578 I uh, may have cheated a shitload of times in interloper because well.. it's annoying to play through
@@deutschesmanutter Sometimes it do be like that
Unrelated to the rest of the video but Ima choose violence today and be that guy: Alyx ain't a prequel, it IS part of the main series, and it's ending ain't a retcon, it's more of a soft reboot cuz within the lore it still makes sense.
Stram definitely lets you buy games that your PC cant handle
Stram
@@YouAreAmerican1776Tight
i used to be afraid of and freaked out by the icthyosaur.
but now, in Black Mesa, i HUNT THEM FOR SPORT.
During the last large encounter with the HECU you forgot the soundtrack "forget about freeman" which i think besides we've got hostiles and questionable ethics 1 forget about freeman is the best song
That take on HL:ALYX in the opening is pretty shit not gonna lie.
Nice playthrough though!
when the fate series
It's strange how hl1 fans seem to hate certain chapters. The puzzles and platforming are what defines half life.
Nah TH-camr named PurpleColonel made an excellent video showcasing how flawed Black Mesa is, sure it's not the worst remake of the game, but Black Mesa still fundamentally misses the point of what made HL1 gameplay so good. Also they added so many needles puzzles that pointlessly slow down the game, and they made guns shoot slower, maps bigger so gameplay is slower and so much HECU soldier spam 😢
Also this is my personal nitpick and it's not popular opinion by Xen and the next maps onward are way too long, sure Xen in HL1 felt undercooked but I do believe it would still be shorter than BM counterpart. It just kinda takes away energy from the finale, it feels like it drags on and on instead of being fast and straight to the point, fighting the final boss.
Black Mesa is my favorite game out of every game I have ever played, and I honestly believe it is miles better than the original Half-Life, not saying that it's bad, but just to state how good Black Mesa is. You say it misses the point completely on what made Half-Life so good, yet don't elaborate. It doesn't add much more puzzles than the original does besides XEN, but even then, I see it as a big improvement because XEN base game sucks bookie, man. I can't even play past the Earthbound levels because original XEN is a joke, aimbot Vortigaunts with no cover, depleting ammo that can only be refilled by finding dead researchers, and the endless Nihilanth green portal attacks back to back to back!! Making the final boss more of a slow tedious task than the original. The original game sucked at giving a linear experience, being stuck for long periods of time at unclear puzzles, lack of Health and HEV, as well as being bad at explaining the whole Vortigaunt slave situation which is BIG to Half-Life 2. Black Mesa is everything Half-Life could've been, with a beautiful XEN, and a final boss that actually delivers on all the hype that was set up. It's not just XEN, there are more hints at the start the experiment will go bad, better overall storytelling, and in my opinion is the best way to introduce newer players into the Half-Life scene
i disagree fully honestly. i respect that you don't like it but I felt the same fun feeling of half-life 1 with better explanation and tie-ins that make hl2 feel like less of a retcon and more of a continuation. black mesa might as well replace hl1 as far as I'm concerned, although I still love the gldsrc original and play it often to this day
wholeheartedly agree!
I like Black Mesa, it's a great love letter to Half Life 1 and the franchise as a whole, but it is a fundamentally different game in many ways. it simply does NOT feel like Half Life, I can't even say it feels like Half Life 2 either, it's trying to be like a weird mesh of both games, while also trying to be this "super epic" movie like game with all of these "epic" set pieces with tons of explosions and epic music in the background like you're watching a fucking Michael Bay film, which don't get me wrong, it's not bad at all, but it's also nothing like Half Life... it's just a very different feel from the original.
I don't think this should be anyone's introduction to the franchise, but it is something I absolutely recommend for people who have already played through the games and wants to experience the original in a different (modernized if you will) way
4:28 aint no way bruh thats the pathos dmr
This vid so very very close to civvie11 almost exact same wording
The take on Alyx at the start is so bad, it's ridiculous to say it's not a main series entry or that they "basically haven't made a game in the series in almost 20 years" just because it's VR/a prequel. Neither of those things invalidate it, especially because it's an amazing, fully fledged VR game with a full campaign, not just an arcade shooter or something.
It is to such an extent inaccessible and deviant from the original format of the games that it is to many unable to be experienced.
It is even less relevant than many fictional universe comic books or novels just due to how much is involved in playing it.
Buddy only has 700+ subs??
Edit: Big bro just hit 800
is funny how no one acknowledges half life alyx existence just because its vr
It's shite too
@@Solaar_Punk no.
I think Xen's pacing problems stem from how long it was in development. It took CC 8 years so they felt they had to cram as much content in there as possible. Even with the pacing issues I still think BM xen is leagues better than OG Half-Life.
the way they spam HECU soldiers around the maps it's ridiculous, especially when you consider how flawed their AI is. i thought they were going to copy what F.E.A.R. 1 did and combine it with the HECU from HL1, but the HECU in black mesa is stupid, and not in the slightest as fun to fight as the HECU soldiers from the original game.
purple colonel already touched on this topick, and his videos are _almost_ the definitive black mesa takes for me lol. the game tries to hard to be a prequel to HL2, instead of a proper re-imagination of HL1. it's also odd that you find HL:A boring but claim some parts about BM to be better than the original HL, but eh, opinions i guess.
Why don't people count the portal games as half life games? Same universe no? Don't hate on me it's just a question. 😇
Why don't people count the Iron Man movies as Captain America movies? Same universe right?
It's a completly different game genre. Half-Life is an FPS, Portal is a puzzle game.
@@mattyteerifles2863 Not a good argument since Iron Man movies are classified as MCU movies. And so is Captain America...
@godfrey4461 literally the exact argument. Those 2 movies are part of the marvel cinematic universe. These two game series' are part of the half life universe. If anything mcu movies are more interconnected than half life and portal, because the only mention of anything from hl in portal is the fact that they name drop black mesa. At least in the mcu different characters actually show up in each other's movies
@@mattyteerifles2863 There's also the Borealis in Portal 2... and the subtle references to the Combine... And Blapperture Mesa.
The way you say "five, maybe six years ago", heh. Such youth. Waiting thirteen years for a Half Life instalment must seem unthinkable to you. But trust me friend, pretty soon things that happened five or six years ago will feel as if they were last week. Things blur together over the expanse of time. We will be playing Half Life 3 before you know it.
the vr mod for black mesa makes xen the original xen, kinda disappointed that i didn't get to see the new stuff in vr
(also i dont remember gonark in vr black mesa but that could be my shit memory but i deffinately remember it in half life 1 vr)
Why does bro only have 900 subs?
Blλck mesa
I always play black mesa 2012. Sure, it ends after lambda core. But the balancing in the modern BM is trash. Hate that the soldiets are bullet sponges. Even on essy mode.
Q