8/15/12 – Your one-stop-shop for self-indulgence, rage tantrums, and xenophobia is coming to town again, so be sure to stock up because you never know when another visit will come out of our asses. Mike hasn’t played anything but FFXI since our last show, Brian is still stuck on Vice City, and Eric hasn’t touched a controller at all, but thankfully the team over at OUYA has given us quite a bit to consider. Like “Is Canabalt in HD with a controller what I’ve been waiting for all my life?” And “Where do controllers come from?” You will leave a different person than when you entered. Smarter. Faster. Taller, even.
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Feels bad, man.
anyway, completely unrelated, but look who’s got a countdown timer
http://www.blackmesasource.com/
Oh my… They aren’t even trying to be mysterious about it.
Holy shit I commented and it worked!!!! Happy Labor Day indeed!
Holy shit, they’re done! Perfect excuse to play this game again. Been a while since I peeked in on those guys’ progress though, let’s see what they’ve been up to…
“Black Mesa is a re-envisioning of Valve Software’s seminal game Half-Life.”
…wait …a “re-envisioning”?
“All-new music, voice acting, choreography and added dialogue…”
OK take it easy Brian, this probably just reflects necessary rebuilds of un-duplicatable resources. Clearly they have respect for this seminal game and the vision of the original deisgners, I’m sure that they’re not going to…
“In a nutshell, play Half-life the way we think it was meant to be played!”
NOBODY FUCKING CARES WHAT YOU FUCKING THINK. WHO THE FUCK ARE YOU, ORSON WELLS? STICK TO THE SCRIPT ASSHOLES!
“8-10 Hours of single-player gameplay, up to the Lambda Core chapter.”
First of all, was the difficulty notched down to modern easymode gameplay standards, or are you expecting us all to speedrun our way through this? And just so I understand this, no Xen? Is this some kind of sick joke? So basically you’re just releasing this without the entire 3rd act, of probably one of the most critical mindfucking 3rd acts of any videogame, and arguably any visual media since Kubrick’s 2001.
I’m out.
OK, who am I kidding I’m still playing this game. I’m just not going to like it. Or you.
I told myself I wasn’t going to engage in another pointless internet argument but here we go…
1st of all, I am not going to bitch at anyone who spends 8 years of their life on a labor of love they are never going to see a dime off of… kinda like I never have a disparaging word towards a bunch of guys who bullshit in front of a mic every couple of weeks for no other reason except they feel like it…
2nd of all, before you pass any judgement, especially as harsh as this, you should at least know what the fuck you are talking about. That means actually playing the thing, instead of shooting from the hip with your “educated guesses” and “knowledgeable critique” BS. You either have 1st hand knowledge or you don’t have shit.
3rd, I did play a big chunk of it this weekend and its actually pretty damn good. Having played the original multiple times, plus the straight port to the source engine valve released years ago, I can tell you this in head and shoulders above a “stick to the script” approach. There are a lot of subtle and thoughtful touches that really make this an improvement, nostalgia be dammed. Its worth judging on its own merits, which I recommend anyone to do for an excellent game experience.
Is it perfect? Of course not. But it is a very well done refitting and refinement of the original and a staggering amount of quality work done by a pretty small group of enthusiasts. If you have played and loved the original, you will see and appreciate the massive beauty of the work done and the little details and the small touches that mark this as a love letter to Valve and to the fans of HL.
Only a couple of hours in, I have to conceed I was (almost) entirely incorrect. This game showcases a perfect combination of fauning respect for the source material and legitimately intelligent incorporation of their own creative input into the perfect context of the developers’ modern aesthetic. Arguabley, the original developers themselves might not have been able to showcase the “post-Portal” aesthetic nearly as well as these talented fans seemed to have been able to pull off.
That said, I can confidently say that it’s nothing less that a MISTAKE to not include the Act 3 “Xen” material in this release. If it weren’t for that oversight, this game would have indeed been the way the game “was meant to [have] been played”, and I would have to recommend this to all of my friends who haven’t touched this series yet (which ends up being alot more people than you would expect!!!). As it stands, without that 3rd act, I feel obliged to “demand” they IGNORE this remake and go back and play the original game before they play this one (yes Mike: this means you!) And as great as this is, that makes it a missed opportunity, to say the least.