I decided I wanted to play through the Half-Life games and figured I would go with Black Mesa over the original. I'm not sure what could be changed about this game to make it better. I only played on normal difficulty, but I found the combat, movement, and physics to be intuitive and satisfying. As you progress through the levels you are given new weapons to use and enemies to use them against, and every weapon serves to fill it's own niche. The animation/texture quality and sound design is fantastic.

On the note of movement and physics; I was surprised to find out just how much of a puzzle game Black Mesa proved to be, in addition to it's action and sci-fi horror genres. The puzzles were challenging at times, but never close to unfair, and therefore satisfying to figure out.

Among this game's many gleaming qualities is it's art. The art and setting of this game's many levels are beautiful and interesting (especially the later levels), which depict a variety of environments that range from dark and anxiety inducing corridors to magnificent megastructures to the color-filed cosmos.

The story isn't the focus of the game, and that's okay. The simple premise of running for your life from a freak interdimensional experiment gone wrong whilst maybe fixing things along the way was enough to keep me invested. Although the story of Half-Life/Black Mesa is not a character driven one, we do meet with/save/are helped by quirky NPCs through the game. The final conflict is exhilarating and followed up by a final chapter with a major eye opening interaction that is kinda sudden and confusing, but serves to fuel excitement for diving into the following Half-Life stories. Overall the plot was engaging and fun.

One small detail that made a big impact for me was the lack of traditional loading screens. Despite the game pausing and putting the actual words "loading" on my screen, I felt constantly more immersed this way than if the game would fade to black or to a screen with concept art and a tool-tip in between levels/areas.

I bought this game on sale, but after spending many hours hooked on it I can say confidently that it's worth the full price. If you like sci-fi, horror, action, puzzles, shooting fun weapons, or any combination of these qualities, give Black Mesa a shot. I doubt you will be disappointed.