Black Mesa

This is the Source mod that everyone's been spooging about lately.  It's basically a fan-made recreation of Half-Life 1 in the Source engine.  When I heard of it, the first thing that came to my mind was "don't we already have Half-Life: Source?"

I'm still confused as to why Black Mesa needs to exist, but regardless, it does, and I've played a bit of it.  It's not a huge priority since I've beaten Half-Life 1, but... yeah.

There are two things that I welcome over Half-Life 1's engine: you can jump while running downhill now, and there's a "quick weapon swap" setting in the options.  'Bout fuckin' time.  No more having to click to select a weapon, just scroll to it or press the key just like any other FPS ever.

Using the Source engine carries a fairly hefty hard drive footprint, which means I probably won't keep it around forever.  I'll probably keep it until it's actually downloadable through Steam.  Also, you get the HEV suit zoom feature that Half-Life 2 has, which is cool.

Unfortunately, ammo and health are scarce, and it seems like you can't use the Source engine physics to your advantage.  I got to a part where in HL1 I had to push a few crates into the water to jump on them, but in Black Mesa all the crates in the area are destructible and don't hold up very well.  Barring that, I tried to use the barnacles on the ceiling to get out of the water and continue on, but that proved to be impossible.  So basically I'm stuck in the water, unable to get out on either side.  So there are definitely some level design issues.

And that's all I've played of it.  Via the Source engine it does fix some of my gripes from HL1, but... while it's good, I don't really see the need to get all hyped about it.