Playing Black Mesa

In this post I will share my experience about my playing of Black Mesa, a mod of the orginal game called Half Life. Built on the "Source" engine, available for free download on Steam, Black Mesa has very improved look compared to the orignal. You can read whats written on the books, shelves, walls, better light refraction, shading, which makes the whole experience much more comfortable.

While playing I got to some software issues:

It happened to get stuck in one position. I could only turn my self around but not being able to move or do other things. This happened when I wanted to replay second chapter after finishing the complete game.
Also when loading screen appeared many time the game crashed. So I had to restart it from last saved point. Ok, not much of an issue since I finished the whole game. I hope the team will fix this issue.

I was really enjoing while listening to the Black Mesa soundtrack. It really adds much to the playing experience especially when you get to places where there is a big fight with many soldiers and/or creatures, therefore increasing the tension so that you feel what is like to be in place of Gordon Freeman :))

What makes this game good is that it is rich with puzzles the player has to solve in order to progress. You are traveling trough cooling pipes, corridors, reef edges, jumping obstacles, shooting with soldiers, fighting tanks, aeroplanes, helicopters, launching rockets, avoiding laser detonating bombs, etc... One thing to note, before progressing trough the game: learn how to use the controls properly. For example jump+crouch move. I couldn't finish the laser level without dying hundreds of times. It is the place where I learned to use jump+crouch move properly. Unfortunatelly Black Mesa team didn't included the guide/practice chapter which is a part of Half Life. In fact the last chapters of Half Life were also not included, chapters like, Xen, Gonarch's lair, Interlooper, Nihilanth.
The team took about 8-9 years to complete this part. I hope the ending will be available soon.

I tried to make as many as possible, screenshots of the most important parts of the game using the Steam's F12 functionality. I made about 200 screenshots, so I will post them in parts.This part has 51 screenshots.