An absolutely spectacular reimagining that stays true to the source material while introducing meaningful quality-of-life improvements and expanded lore, making it feel like a brand-new experience. The graphics hold up impressively well even by today’s standards, and they’ve even managed to make Xen not just enjoyable, but one of the most fascinating parts of the game—it might just be my favorite section. Truly stellar work, and I can't wait to see what this team does next.

The work-in-progress Blue Shift remake is also shaping up beautifully—and it's completely free at this stage. Here’s hoping they tackle Opposing Force as well.

On the downside, there are some graphical bugs on Steam Deck and Linux in general, though oddly enough, the Half-Life 2 version doesn’t seem to have the same issues.

When I was a kid, my family bought a PC with games on it, most of the times we were interested in playing Counter Striker, but I always noticed that there is another game within the CS game files called "hl", first time I opened it I didn't understand what is it(I didn't know English back then) and I would just play it for minutes then leave and go back to Counter Strike, and then after years I understood what it was, but couldn't play it. I came across Black Mesa days ago and read saw it is Half Life remake and thought why not play Half life now after almost 15 years and try to finish it. Honestly this remake was fun, not only because it let me play the full original game with better graphics and other enhanced elements, but it didn't take the Half Life original experience I had the first time I played Half Life as a kid, I really loved every enjoyed every moment playing this game, thanks for the people worked to remake a masterpiece to another masterpiece...

Black Mesa has been recommended by this player.