At times it is arguably too ambitious, and ironically, could have done with a bit of a Valve-style editing.
This is a professional-grade redesign that radically rethinks Half-Life’s final few chapters, while still managing to maintain the spirit of Valve’s vision. Crowbar Collective have transformed Half-Life’s infamously weak and scrappy ending into one of the highlights of the entire game. But I’ll tell you this, if Black Mesa wasn’t its own game before, it sure as hell is now.īlack Mesa: Xen is amazing. Is Black Mesa still a mod at that point? I’m not sure.
So good, in fact, that in 2015 Valve gave the team permission to release Black Mesa on Steam as a paid-for Early Access game. It was brilliant, better than anyone could hope for from a band of voluntary modders coming together from all over the globe. At what point does a mod become a game in its own right? Eight years ago, Crowbar Collective launched the Black Mesa bit of Black Mesa, taking players from Gordon Freeman’s iconic tram-ride to work right through to his departure via the Lambda Core portal to the border world of Xen.
