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We Check Out The New Black Mesa Mod To See If It Lives Up To Its Name - Performance and Final Thoughts

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Sean Kalinich
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hl2 2012-09-16 13-48-55-91

In 1998 a new company crated from former Microsoft employees launched a game that would change the way we played first person shooters forever. The game was Half Life and although it followed games like Castle Wolfenstien and Doom it brought something new to the genre, thinking and puzzle solving. Instead of just walking into a room and killing all the bad guys you had to solve puzzles and interact with the environment to make it through the game. The enemies you faced were also smarter than what was present in Doom or Wolfenstien. Half Life also introduced one of the iconic characters in gaming: Dr. Gordon Freeman and his trusty crowbar. Now a group called Black Mesa Source has brought the original Half Life to a new generation of gamers. They have taken the original game (up to the Lambda Core) and refreshed it with new graphics and a few surprises for those of us that have played before. So let’s see if this new release of the classic Half Life can recreate the magic that the Valve brought to us with our first meeting with Gordon Freeman and the anomalous materials lab at Black Mesa.

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Performance -
The Black Mesa Mod is based off of the engine for Half Life 2 which means that you can play this with very light resources. This is good news for many as it means that more people can enjoy this than many of the new games that have hit the market recently. This is actually in keeping with something that Valve has always tried to do, offer games that can be played by the largest number of people instead of requiring heavy duty hardware. With the 590GTX that is in our test system we maintained over 300 FPS average during game play with all of the eye candy on.

hl2 2012-09-16 13-59-19-12Final Thoughts -
Black Mesa is an excellent mod and one that pays homage to the original in every way. This release should open up the original Half Life to a new generation of fans especially as it is a free game. We would like to see Black Mesa Source finish the game and include the final levels, but we are glad they released what they have especially since Valve has nothing new to show us in the saga of Gordon Freeman. This is one game that I will certainly be playing through to the end and will likely play again and again Half Life as a game is simply too good not to and this new Mod only makes it better.

Was it worth it?
Considering the fact that Black Mesa is a free download that only requires Steam we can say without reservation that it is worth it. The new graphics are not stellar, but they are certainly an improvement over the original while the back ground conversations are an added bonus. We have also heard that a “no steam” version of this release is out there if you are opposed to installing Steam on the computer. This last bit of news means there is no reason at all not to grab this game and play it.

You can grab the Black Mesa Mod From Black Mesa Source

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