Black Mesa: Source

[Cirno]

Shit, did you do that from memory?

[Plasma]

I tried to remember the tram intro without looking it up online... and I did a pretty good job. I failed at the third paragraph though... the part with the retinal scanner.
I've downloaded the game, it's installed... now I wait for the night to begin my HL adventure. This is going to be epic.

PS: if the servers crash tonight, well... I'll be dealing with a resonance cascade, so that's way more important.

[Plasma]

I couldn't wait. So I played a bit, just wanted to see the tram sequence. But turns out, it's tough to stop. So, I've played for a lot longer, and it's awesome. It really feels like Valve would have made exactly this same version if they had the Source engine back then.

It is the original HL, but they really improved on everything. They even added special puzzles with physics, a lot more scientist dialogues, tonnes of easter eggs, and more. Anyway, I have to force myself to keep playing...

[Cirno]

I'm installing it now. I sure hope they know game design better than they know game distribution.

The torrent is flagged as private, and instead of using a self-extracting exe, they have an installer that extracts 7zip to %temp% to run it on the .7z.

[Dave]

Indeed, and the torrent download server wasn't even working for a long while. When installing, my anti-virus kept giving me warnings.

[Plasma]

Weird, I had no problems what so ever. Downloaded from the torrent, took 2 hours. I launched the installer, and it installed itself in my steam folder in sourcemods. Then it asked me if I wanted to start the game and it worked.

The only thing you need to do first is to install Source SDK 2007 from the Tools menu.

[Cirno]

I still don't get what the blast doors in "We've got hostiles!" are supposed to do.

[JackCnKing]

 

[Plasma]

Made it to Surface Tension. I'll stop on the dam.
Now this is getting harder. I'm playing on Hard, and it is.

[Plasma]

And I'm done!
Too bad it's missing the last part, even if it's the worst part of the game... Xen.

Anyway, I highly recommend everybody to download the mod and play it. Whether you've played the original Half Life or you haven't. If you enjoy single player FPS, you can't do a lot worse than Black Mesa. And it's free! Just one thing: if you're not very good at FPS, play on Normal or Easy. Hard is quite hard, it is definitely a challenge. As for tips: remember to use your crowbar to break all crates, they contain goodies. Also, F6 to quicksave. Quicksave often, but not when you're very low on health and when you're in combat. If you quicksave right before you die, that usually means you have to restart from an autosave point, which sucks. And as usual, keep multiple save files.

Now, I just hope we'll see Xen soon. Then I'll be able to start my HL2 playthrough

[Dave]

I did it! I made it off the tram! That was intense

[JackCnKing]

Nop~