half life source
After eight years in the making, the release of ‘↑Black Mesa‘ is only nine days away. Here’s the ‘about’ ↑from its very own wiki:
Black Mesa (formerly Black Mesa: Source) is a Half-Life 2 total conversion remaking of Valve Software’s award-winning PC game, Half-Life.
Utilizing the Source engine, Black Mesa will reintroduce the player as Doctor Gordon Freeman, along with the original cast of memorable characters and environments seen in Half-Life. Black Mesa was built and founded on the basis that Half-Life: Source didn’t fully live up to the potential of a Source engine port of Half-Life. As such, Black Mesa was founded to fully reconstruct the Half-Life universe utilizing Source to its fullest potential in terms of art detail, level sizes and code features. It should be noted that the project is being built from the ground up and is not a simple port of Half Life maps and models into the Source Engine. The idea is to remake the storyline used in Half Life into a new polished Source Engine version with new models, maps, soundtrack, voice acting and textures.
This total conversion will not require Half-Life: Source to play – only a copy of any Source Engine game installed on Steam.
And if we already are at it, allow me to point out two cyberpunked ‘Half-Life 2’ mods:
↑Dystopia [see ↑review at ↑cyberpunkreview] is a cyberpunk themed total conversion of Half Life 2, created by an amateur development team and released to the public for free.
Dystopia places the player into tense combat situations in a high tech world spanned by computer networks. As either Punk Mercenaries or Corporate Security Forces the player will fight through the physical world to gain access, via jack-in terminals, to cyberspace.
Cyberspace is a three dimensional representation of the world’s network. Inside cyberspace players will launch programs to hack into systems linked to the physical world while fighting off enemy hackers and defending critical systems. Gameplay progresses through inter-linked physical and cyberspace objectives, some are completed in either the physical world or cyberspace, others only by a well timed combination of the two.
Whether the player is a heavily augmented combat mercenary armed to the teeth with the latest in firepower, or a twitch reflex cyberdecker racing to infiltrate a cyberspace node; they’ll be immersed in an action packed battle. Only through skillful use of the high tech arsenal we’re making available and intelligent team play will players truly jack-in and kick ass.
↑G-String is the latest mod that throws us into a cyberpunk world. Against a background of a dying Earth dominated by civil unrest against air-supply corporations, you’ll be traveling and fighting through corporate fascists, berserk robots, and your own mutations as you join the “War Against Money.” Just be prepared for a few surprises along the way.
The Story: Dwindling oil supplies spark a nuclear war in the Middle East, leaving what little bit remains unreachable and unusable. This triggers massive earthquakes that shake North America and sink Asia, while Africa and South America are raped of their natural resources. The polar ice caps didn’t melt, they just moved to Europe. The fallout, pollution, and deforestation has made the air poisonous so that people who wander outside must wear environmental suits with air-filtration systems or risk destroying their lungs. Whole cities are encased in domes that allow large air filtration and recycling systems make the air a bit more breathable. But as the companies that run the systems collect all currency in the world, some have begun to fight back against those who finance them. [from ↑review at ↑cyberpunkreview]
I recently played the original Half-Life and almost immediately got into the same unique feeling I experienced during my first playthrough, ages ago. I am really curious how Black Mesa will keep up to the old one :)
Interestingly though, as I talked to a friend who studies game design the other day, she wasn’t impressed at all, since Black Mesa is ‘only another remake’…
Greenlight it on Steam!