Posted 12 June 2026
Black Mesa is a remake of the first Half-Life game in the Source Engine. I played part of the original game (and never finished it) close to 15 years ago and don't remember all that much of it, so I'm unfortunately not able to compare and contrast the two games.
Like in the original Half-Life, there are two parts to the game: the Black Mesa facility itself, and the border world of Xen. Personally, I think that there are three parts to the game: the first part of the Black Mesa facility, the second part of the Black Mesa facility, and Xen. Chapters 11 to 14 (Questionable Ethics, Surface Tension, Forget About Freeman, and Lambda Core) definitely feel different than the chapters preceding them. Gordon's in a part of Black Mesa where scientists have been visiting Xen and studying the aliens.
I only ever got up to Chapter 6 (Blast Pit) in the original, so I was pretty startled to see all the labs dedicated to studying alien life. I genuinely didn't know that was a thing Black Mesa was doing. Keep in mind that the original Half-Life was released in 1998. Somehow, I never had this spoiled for me for 28 years.
So, Xen. In Black Mesa, Xen has been completely redesigned. I have seen some screenshots and video of the original Xen, but like I said earlier, I never got that far in the original game so I can't compare the two. Xen is genuinely beautiful. However, I think it goes on for far too long. The alien factory in Chapter 17 (Interloper) is a serious slog. Several times, I thought I was getting close to the end of the chapter and then there would be another section with platforming and puzzles. The platforming ended up being quite a problem for me. I fell into bottomless pits while fighting enemies so many times.
The final boss, Nihilanth, ended up being less difficult than I thought it would be. I didn't die once! I had more trouble with a few of the previous boss fights, particularly Gonarch.
Although I did get pretty close to dying by the end of the fight, as can be seen in this screenshot.
