This is an engine limitation the Black Mesa development team at Crowbar Collective likely had no way of working around, but it still makes it feel very old because you just don’t see that kind of thing anymore.Įven so, the atmosphere and action that made the original game so brilliant is brought out and highlighted even more in this version. Just like in 1998, they too frequently freeze the action as you’re walking down a hallway for around five seconds, even on an SSD. The most jarring thing, though, is the loading screens. Human character models and animations aren’t quite up to the standard Valve set with Half-Life 2 in 2004 (let alone the new bar about to be set in Half-Life: Alyx) and textures are pretty rough in a lot of places. but not as good as I willfully misremembered. Everything looks a lot better than it originally did, for sure.

As someone who hasn’t replayed Half-Life since Valve ported it to the Source engine (without updating any of the models or textures) back in 2004, playing Black Mesa and fighting off a familiar interdimensional invasion was like putting on some smudged-up rose-colored glasses.

Black mesa research facility image