The Right Men in All the Wrong Places: Let's Play the Half-Life Anthology

[Blastinus]

A Very Brief Synopsis

In 1998, video game storytelling was changing. Blizzard was changing the face of strategy gaming with Starcraft, Thief: The Dark Project was introducing gamers to atmospheric stealth, and a fledgling company in Kirkland, Washington was developing a game that would revolutionize the First-Person Shooter. That company was Valve Software, and that game was Half-Life 1. Rather than the level-based shooters of old, with an emphasis on action and facing rooms full of enemies, Half-Life took a new approach, incorporating seamless loading and an unbroken 1st-person perspective to tell the story of a lone scientist's goal to escape a situation gone terribly wrong. The game was a smash hit, and Valve Software would soon become known for their unique narrative style, at least until they stopped producing games and just raked in the earnings from their digital distribution platform, but we'll get to that eventually.

A Simple Plan

Put short, I am going to LP every game relating to Half-Life 1, its sequel Half-Life 2, and do brief features on the mods and unique projects that sprang off of it. For games that have had modern re-releases or graphical updates, I'll use the version that's most recent. For example, if a Half-Life mod has had a Source Engine port, I'll use that version instead of the original, except to highlight a few major differences. No point, for instance, in playing Half-Life Source when there's a fully functional commercial fanmade project that does the same thing, but better. This could take a while, but my current situation offers me all the time in the world, so that shouldn't be a problem.

A Soon-to-Be Long List

Black Mesa - Standing in for Half-Life 1

Part 1: Anomalous Materials
Part 2: Unforeseen Consequences
Part 3: Office Complex
Part 4: We've Got Hostiles
Part 5: Blast Pit
Part 6: Power Up
Part 7: On a Rail
Part 8: Apprehension
Part 9: Residue Processing
Part 10: Questionable Ethics
Part 11: Surface Tension Pt.1
Part 12: Surface Tension Pt.2
Part 13: Forget About Freeman
Part 14: Lambda Core
Part 15: Xen Pt.1
Part 16: Xen Pt.2
Part 17: Gonarch's Lair
Part 18: Interloper Pt.1
Part 19: Interloper Pt.2
Part 20: Nihilanth
Bonus 1: Uplink

Blue Shift

Part 1: Duty Calls
Part 2: Captive Freight
Bonus 2: Hazard Course
Part 3: Focal Point

[Blastinus]

Reserved for something. I don't know.

[Blastinus]

Our first subject is Black Mesa, here to represent Half-Life 1, the game that started it all. As I explain in the video, this fanmade project began not too long after the release of Half-Life 2, and would go through many iterations under the monicker of Black Mesa: Source before eventually becoming known as Black Mesa when it released commercially in 2015. The game offers the same narrative as the original Half-Life, but with a number of major nods to the rest of the series and several modifications to level design, weapons, and monsters. If there's any extreme deviation, I'll bring in footage of the original game to supplement it.

I chose Black Mesa because it's an incredibly polished and professional project. The team put the long development time to great use, and it shows. The game uses a lot of the "notice this" style lighting tricks that Valve would eventually incorporate into their later games, and the sound design and voice acting is incredibly good. All the easter eggs and shoutouts in this game are going to be a headache in the editing stage, but it's going to be worth it.

Our first update is the tram ride. You might notice this as every FPS introduction ever made, except without the part where you're in a helicopter that explodes suddenly. We'll get to that particular trope eventually. There's no action until right up towards the end, because we're just setting up the situation leading up to the calamity. If you watched my Doom 3 LP, this format is going to seem suspiciously familiar.

[Carbon dioxide]

I'm sad you didn't try applying the Science Beam to the stool.

[Blastinus]

I'm sad you didn't try applying the Science Beam to the stool.

I was already planning on opening the next video with science-based shenanigans that I neglected to demonstrate, so I'll just throw that onto the list. I suspect that I'll be missing stuff often.

[Kibayasu]

Don't forget the lunch room puns!

It's always neat watching someone play a Half Life because there's always something else to find, or at least enough that you forget about it. Plus it can be somewhat organic even in its hallways.

[Blastinus]

A content warning for this part and the rest of the game. The original Half-Life wasn't light on the gore, and Black Mesa goes one step beyond. If watching limbs fly off isn't your cup of tea, you might want to give this a pass.

Nonetheless, having awoken from...whatever that was at the end of last episode, we're tasked with simply making our way topside and trying to get out of dodge. Gordon Freeman is not a hero in the traditional sense and the game doesn't expect you to be one. The people who don't die immediately after you see them will be unable to follow you and not all of them are going to make it out. It's a sobering thought, but in a situation like this, our main goal is just survival, although that doesn't mean we can't lend a hand when the opportunity presents itself.

You may note, if you've played Half-Life 1 before, that weapon placements have been shifted forward in general. Black Mesa tries to experiment in its design, and not everything will be a 1:1 replica. In addition, our ammo capacity has been drastically cut down from the original, but the ammo drops haven't been altered in a significant way, meaning that we're likely to see multiple instances where we have to leave ammo behind. I'm not sure about why this was done, since Half-Life isn't survival horror. It's an FPS game with a horror theme.

As well, we've been tasked with our first bonus objective that carries over all game long, and...actually, let's talk about the hat. You've only seen what it's like when it's perfectly vertical, but if the hat's knocked around, it can tip over on its side, and that's when you realize the true horror of this achievement. The hat is incredibly lightweight so any impact will send it flying all over the place, and it rolls, oh does it ever roll. In fact, once it's been tipped over, the hat will not stop rolling until it hits something or it goes over an edge, possibly irretrievably so. I'm not going to show you my hat playthrough, because it's not particularly enjoyable, but for every encounter from here on out, imagine also having to wrestle with a prop that seems determined to destroy itself at every available opportunity.

[Carbon dioxide]

So, are you saying the purple tophat challenge is literally the eggplant challenge from Spelunky?

It's purple, you can get it way at the beginning, it is real easy to lose it, and there's an easter egg if you manage to carry it all the way to the end of the game.

[Kibayasu]

I don't know why its a top hat in Black Mesa but Half Life 2 Episode 2 had an achievement for carrying a garden gnome from (near) the beginning of the game to (near) the end of the game. It was similarly annoying, especially when you got to the car section.

It's my disposition but I like the new-ish tone in the Black Mesa start though the flare thing definitely feels like something someone figured out how to do and just enjoyed it too much.

[Blastinus]

I don't know if Half-Life was the first game to have looping structures in their level design, but Valve certainly jumped full-tilt into this design philosophy, and Black Mesa follows suit. Office Complex is an escort quest where you're constantly asked to leave your escorts behind so you can move ahead of everyone and open a door from the other side. On the one hand, that sounds frustrating, but on the other, as your cadre expands, you realize that a measly handgun is actually quite the force to be reckoned with when you have three or four of them going at once.

You may notice that I didn't cover the full length of the level. That's because I'm trying to divide it up into more manageable chunks. Office Complex is about the same length as Unforeseen Consequences, but it ends kinda suddenly and just hops right into the next story beat. The continuous narrative they're going for makes it difficult to know where to start and stop. I'm going to aim for 20-35 minutes in most cases, since that seems like a decent length.

[Kibayasu]

Poor security guard, thought of jumping and/or crouching around simple obstacles and died.

I've always really enjoyed Office Complex. Other levels do some looping but not nearly as much and at this point its still kind of a horror game so the lighting and hazards and teleporting monsters and scientists getting barnacled/vented really creates a mood. Then the complex itself turns on you in a tiny bit of foreshadowing.

[Blastinus]

After ascending however many elevators, staircases, and ladders, the surface is finally in sight, but what we find there might not be what we were hoping for.

If you know anything at all about the Half-Life series, then you probably know that at some point or other, Gordon Freeman runs afoul of the law. Like, it's not as if the series makes a big effort to hide the fact. The original HECU marines used a complicated series of scripted behaviors that would allow them to pass for an advanced AI, though they still showed their deficiencies in certain areas. From what I understand, Black Mesa: Source souped up the AI and made them deadlier and more aggressive, then the developers realized that they'd gone too far and dialed them down a notch for the retail release while still keeping them pretty intelligent. What results is a series of encounters that will keep you constantly on the move and playing Cat and Mouse as you use your superior speed and durability to overwhelm their positions. It's a lot of fun!

[Kibayasu]

That's one way to handle the brief surface area, I cowered in the warehouse until everything is dead.

It's kind of funny, in my head a soldier very obviously shouting "We've got hostiles!" as soon as the first one sees Gordon in this level is something of an iconic moment but at this point I'm pretty sure that doesn't actually happen. Probably just some random encounter I combined with the chapter title a long time ago.

I also looked up the original HECU voice and wow, you weren't kidding. Its literally Doctor Claw.

[Blastinus]

Well, I suppose it's worth mentioning that I'm playing on the lowest difficulty, what this game calls "Normal". The next one up, "Black Mesa", would probably tear me a new one if I ran in as recklessly as I did. I'm doing so for the sake of presentation and to also make the whole experience less frustrating, since even after toning things down from how they were pre-retail, you're still likely to see your shields go down in no time flat if you're being dumb on anything higher than Normal.

[Blastinus]

I don't think the implications of this section of Black Mesa really hit me when I was a kid, but hearing about Flint, MI and other areas that have been contaminated by corporate negligence, it's really hard to not see their attitudes towards biohazardous waste as anything short of malicious. This stuff's so corrosive and nasty that containers and pipes are leaking and being breached everywhere you look, and you expect me to believe that the facility's exterior walls WON'T start seeping this stuff out into the surrounding environment?

Anyway, soapboxing aside, the primary setpiece of Blast Pit is, of course, the central rocket chamber with the blind, yet all-hearing Tentacles. The idea of bulletproof monsters that had to be killed by puzzles wasn't entirely new back then, but they were mostly gimmicks like having to ride a teleporter into a monster in order to frag it from within. An unshootable monster runs a bit counter to, you know, a game about shooting things, but it works in this case because Gordon isn't an unstoppable badass. He's a scientist who has to come up with unconventional solutions to problems, and this won't be the last time he has to deal with issues in a roundabout way.

[Blastinus]

I'll tell you one thing about HECU encounters: there's never a shortage of stuff blowing up. Power Up, like most chapter titles, has two meanings. The first, of course, is that we have to fight our way to a generator in order to provide enough juice to start a mechanism. The second is that both the aliens and Gordon are adding more tools to their arsenal. In our case, it's the Magnum Revolver, a souped-up handgun capable of flooring most mid-tier enemies with a single well-placed headshot. For a lot of HECU encounters, this baby is going to be our bread and butter.

In their case, it's the Gargantua, a surprisingly mobile and VERY deadly miniboss that cannot be killed by conventional firepower. It used to be in Half-Life 1 that you could damage them with heavy weaponry and explosives, but their only weakness is environmental puzzles now, and there will be more of them down the line, believe you me. This chapter is just a taste of what's to come.

And yes, I know that there are two sniper weapons in this game. You don't need to remind me.

[Kibayasu]

I don't think I ever even tried to use trip mines. Ever. In the original Half Life too. Unless you count accidentally blowing yourself up with enemy trip mines "using" them.

Those plugs are a bit of a (probably unintentional) dirty trick if you think all you need to do is hit a button.

[Blastinus]

Those plugs are a bit of a (probably unintentional) dirty trick if you think all you need to do is hit a button.

Well, then Black Mesa: Definitive Edition has you covered.



Happy Thanksgiving to everyone who actually celebrates that. If not, Happy Thursday. It's one of the better days of the week.

This update is a bit special because in the middle of it, Black Mesa was updated to the next big version, what they call the Definitive Edition. That the game was still in development was news to me as well. Rather unhelpful news, since it means that all of my saves are now completely incompatible with the current version of the game, up to and including my purple top hat playthrough. Joy...

On a Rail itself has gone through a rather major revision from its maze-like Half-Life 1 counterpart, becoming what is effectively a straight line with the occasional stop to deal with monster/marine-shaped bumps in the road. And then it went through ANOTHER revision when the Definitive Edition dropped yesterday. The meaning of the title is self-evident, really. Gordon Freeman is being forced to be the big hero that Black Mesa needs because the doors won't open until he does so. One man's tireless quest for survival is inadvertently causing him to become a one-man army against a corrupt government and also mankind's last hope against an alien invasion, all because the tools for the world's salvation happen to be strewn along his path. It's sort of comical, in a way, like those old cartoons showing a guy tripping and bumbling his way into foiling a spy plot when all he did was stand in the wrong place at the right time.

[Kibayasu]

In fact I do like that Power Up change. Not only changing the plugs to switches with lights but sending the player through the transformer area to get to the generator area. They had already made it better than the original by not having part of the puzzle be running down a long blind corridor away from the gargantuan so that just improves it more.

It's nice that they made the rocket launch look like a rocket launch, even if you can't necessarily see it.

[Blastinus]

In fact I do like that Power Up change. Not only changing the plugs to switches with lights but sending the player through the transformer area to get to the generator area. They had already made it better than the original by not having part of the puzzle be running down a long blind corridor away from the gargantuan so that just improves it more.

It's nice that they made the rocket launch look like a rocket launch, even if you can't necessarily see it.

Yeah, I really like what they've done for Power Up as well. They also changed the surface battle at the end of We've Got Hostiles so that the player actually engages with it a bit more and doesn't just make a mad dash for the ladder; putting obstacles in the way and putting the entrance on the opposite side of that little building so you have to run around it and get exposed more to gunfire. I'm not planning to show that off, but it's a fun change. Anyway:



Apprehension presumably refers to the general opinion people have of this chapter, because this and the next one are a bit of a low point for the game if I'm going to be honest. Take your pick of: enemies that either get way too close or too far away, environmental puzzles, 1st-person platforming, murky swimming sections, and even more warehouses. It doesn't help that the enemies in this segment are all kinds that play into my illogical paranoia, so I felt a bit on edge as I was recording it. It says a lot that I was able to get past this point at all, since when I was a kid, I was so afraid of sharks that every playthrough of Half-Life 1 would end right here. At the shark cage.

Oh, and we also got to see a little of Half-Life: Source. Released in 2004 to coincide with Half-Life 2, it's a barebones remake of Half-Life 1 with Source Engine add-ons like realistic water, ragdoll physics, and support for 16:9 widescreen resolutions instead of the original game's 4:3. Sounds fantastic, right? Well, the problem is that it was obviously a slap-dash job and it came with a variety of issues. For instance, you won't see it in the video, but the leeches we encounter can actually bite at you from out of arm's reach while other enemies can end up not doing any damage at all. Also, the menu options claim that you can enable subtitles, but they don't end up appearing, even if you toggle that on. I'll be avoiding HL: Source for the most part, except if there's a bug that's very funny, but it was worth showing off because Black Mesa cut an enemy out that will become important later in the series.

[Kibayasu]

Yeah I don't miss leaches.

I still love industrial decay so Apprehension's mood helps make it work for me. I really felt the reduced ammo count on the the grenade launcherin the assassin hanger though, it can take 3 just to hit one and on harder difficulties you'll be taking a lot of damage no matter what.

Changing the charging station to an exit is another small but good change. It's certainly hard to get through the hanger without feeling the need to regain some armor afterwards but obvious progress is a much better indicator, though you might feel a bit cheated if you collect everything from the area first!

[Carbon dioxide]

Now that I see a side to side comparison of Black Mesa to the original looks of Half Life, well obviously Black Mesa is the better game in many regards, but I feel that at least, in this section, the colors in the original game are just a little bit more vibrant.

[Blastinus]

Now that I see a side to side comparison of Black Mesa to the original looks of Half Life, well obviously Black Mesa is the better game in many regards, but I feel that at least, in this section, the colors in the original game are just a little bit more vibrant.

Yes, I suppose you could say that Black Mesa leans too heavily on "real is brown" from time to time, but you must admit, when something glows, it glows. I never get tired of seeing their interpretation of HEV batteries, because they stand out wherever you find them.

[Blastinus]

People like me say that Residue Processing is crap. They're wrong. It's actually a woven tapestry of beautiful spiraling patterns circling around a level that is still crap despite it. What you're seeing is the practiced version, the one where I went through it two or three times before and know precisely where to go, what valves to turn, what buttons to press, and when to stop moving so as to not get crushed or melted. It's hard to show what it's like to be constantly falling off things, messing up jumps, and being hopelessly lost without the video not being fun, so for the sake of accuracy, when you watch this video, imagine the myriad number of ways that things could go horribly wrong, and assume that I've done them at least once.

Fortunately, the next few videos will more than make up for this one. If you thought that we were a little light on combat before, the game's going to make up for that with compound interest.

[Kibayasu]

Despite my repeated admiration of dilapidated industrial I think Residue's problems is that it is extremely a video game level. The linking parts if you need to repeat sections are nice but the obstacles themselves are all just obvious platforming to get around. Crushers, fire traps, grinders, death pits, one way paths, its all there.

On the other hand questionable ethics is great so even if Residue Processing is the worst you hit a 90 degree slope upward quickly.

[Blastinus]

Questionable Ethics is the big twist of the game, where you start to realize that the Resonance Cascade was not an accident, and in fact, the crystal sample that started this whole mess was probably just as much a stolen sample as the aliens in this lab. It's hard not to see the scientists in a much darker light after this, and yet, for the moment, they're not the ones shooting us in the face. We can deal with the whole matter of dissecting and burning sentient beings later.

In addition to playing around with a number of iffy contraptions, we also gain access to a couple new weapons. The Snarks are...a curiosity, I guess. They don't really do much unless you unleash them in large quantities, and if they don't see an enemy straight away, they'll just turn around and attack you instead. The Gauss Gun though, that's a beautiful weapon, albeit hampered by the fact that ammo for it is super rare and it eats through said ammunition at a ridiculous speed. Plus if you hold down the supercharge for too long...well, we saw how that works out. The thing both of these weapons share in common is that they both give you an achievement for killing yourself with them, because of course they do.

Last thing: in addition to the top hat, we also now have a pizza box. Despite what I was trying to do, you actually can only take one of these two items with you to the end of the game, so if you're going for all the achievements, that's two separate challenge runs, and they're mutually exclusive with one another. The fun, it never ends...

[Kibayasu]

I love Questionable Ethics and I really like the detail that Black Mesa got to add to it. There's fights and music cues along the way but the general silence of the place (compared to the disaster of the first labs or the industrial parts afterwards) as you observe the "experiments" and "specimens" is just downright eerie.

[Blastinus]

It's too bad that from here on out, silence is a precious commodity.



Yessir, it's time to get into the heftier chunk of the game. Surface Tension was a sizable chapter in its original form, but Black Mesa's expanded it out in all directions, possibly as an apology for what they did to On a Rail. That means more gunfights, more setpieces, more explosions. Surface Tension is so big, in fact, that for the first time in this LP, we're having to divide a chapter into multiple parts.

It won't be the last time either.

For this portion, we're covering up until our first couple of encounters with tanks. Or at least, what I assume are tanks. It's no exaggeration to say that I couldn't tell a Bradley from a Sherman, and I suspect that the vehicles in this episode are neither of those things. All you need to know is they've got a turret on the top that swivels and makes booms happen. Even with Black Mesa giving them proper movement instead of having them just be stationary artillery, they're still not that hard to take down.

[Kibayasu]

There is of course a mod that restores the desert/tentacle area as well.

The canyon section with the hat feels like its the car section with the gnome in Episode 2 - incredibly unwieldy and frustrating.

[Blastinus]

There's a little bit more of Surface Tension after this video's over, but for the most part, this concludes our long, tiring romp through what has effectively become a war zone, and humanity as a whole seems to be on the losing side. Seeing control of the situation steadily break down as the marines become isolated and overwhelmed is a sobering spectacle to behold...at least until they turn right around and start shooting at us, at which point all the sympathy's gone.

Not much to say here otherwise. As I said in the video, there are only two "soldier" types of alien invaders, and so you're not going to see a lot of mixed confrontations with a variety of enemy types. If there's a complaint to make about Half-Life, and one that carries into Black Mesa as well, it's that the emphasis on this being a survival story means that enemies are really bullet sponge-y and that there's a sense of dread that comes with looking around the next corner instead of an excitement for the next battle. It's effective for the story they're trying to tell, but it also means that the gunplay isn't the game's strong point, which might be just a wee bit problematic for something called a First Person Shooter.

Regardless, the next chapter will wind things down slightly once we get back under cover. Surface Tension is the big crescendo of the story, and it doesn't get as crazy as this.

[Kibayasu]

That flaming husk of a building was indeed in the original and it was indeed an awkward bit of platforming.

I found those bounce? pads to actually be a bit of a problem in Black Mesa. In the original they stood out - you couldn't help but investigate them (and maybe crawl away with a couple of broken legs the first time) - but I had trouble finding a couple of them in Black Mesa because the greater amount of detail on everything else meant they blended more easily into the background. I wonder if someone who hadn't ever played Half Life would have trouble with them.

[Blastinus]

That flaming husk of a building was indeed in the original and it was indeed an awkward bit of platforming.

I found those bounce? pads to actually be a bit of a problem in Black Mesa. In the original they stood out - you couldn't help but investigate them (and maybe crawl away with a couple of broken legs the first time) - but I had trouble finding a couple of them in Black Mesa because the greater amount of detail on everything else meant they blended more easily into the background. I wonder if someone who hadn't ever played Half Life would have trouble with them.

Actually, that's a rather funny story. I glossed over it in my recording there, but the first floor of the parking garage took me a while to figure out in my first run through because all the doors and stuff were locked, and it didn't quite click with me at first that the thingie in the center was supposed to be a bounce pad. Once you realize that, the whole parking garage section is a breeze to navigate, but there's that initial hurdle to get through. I think they could have perhaps done a better job of introducing them.

[Blastinus]

So this video is kind of a mess. Forget About Freeman isn't annoying or bad like Residue Processing, but it's also a chapter that's very...well...it exists. After the craziness of Surface Tension and the science-related shenanigans that are about to occur in the next chapter, it feels like straight-up filler; a chapter that exists purely to transition the player to the next major beat of the story. Black Mesa tries to spice it up with a giant outdoor combat section (that used to be just a tank and two dudes), but they overcompensated to the degree that it's easier to just run away from it.

Also, those Black Ops assassins are back for some reason, but that's technically not part of this chapter. I just threw it in there because they don't really fit the next one either. They don't fit this story really...anywhere. They're just weird.

[Kibayasu]

Punishing the marines even more in Black Mesa than the original feels like a nod to Opposing Force in a way. Just piling shit on top of shit to make the attempt at making them slightly more than mindless government goons.

[Blastinus]

So, here we are, the end of all the 2015 content. Back when this was originally released as retail, it'd just leave you hanging without an ending, promising that, in the future, there would be a conclusion. That future would turn out to be the year 2019, a heckuva long time to wait. When you consider that the original Black Mesa: Source was released in 2012, that just makes it even worse.

Lambda Core itself feels a bit strange, honestly. I think the fact that they're still throwing mechanics at the player and introducing new enemies makes it hard to call it a conclusion of any kind, and there's a whole team of scientists and one irate security guard who we get introduced to and subsequently abandon without any closure about their fate. Video game storytelling wasn't really a thing back in the 90's, but there's still a sense that there should have been something a bit more climactic, especially when in the early chapters, the Black Mesa team didn't stick to formula and tried something new with the flares. It feels like, starting around Blast Pit, the story went right back on the rails, and it hasn't drifted from the original blueprint since.

I guess that's fine. It means that there won't be any major continuity issues when I get to the other games in the series. I just feel like it could have been bigger, is all.

[Kibayasu]

Speaking of Blast Pit I think the problem with the first half of Lambda is that you've done this exact idea before. Two paths, two switches to push to progress. A bit more sciencey looking this time but familiar.

One small thing I miss from the original? There was a scientist with a shotgun guarding the door to the supply depot, only one that decided to defend themselves.

[Blastinus]

To say that the original version of Xen was a letdown would be putting it lightly. After everything else that fans had gone through up to that point, the grand finale took them to a sparsely-inhabited alien dimension where suddenly they were required to do precision platforming with brand new rules that they had next to no time to get acquainted with. Original Xen has some really dodgy design and the entirety of it, all four chapters, can be comfortably finished within the space of an hour or less. Needless to say, there was some room for expansion.

And expand the Crowbar Collective did. Xen, the first chapter, is about an hour and a half in length, maybe even closer to two hours, and it features a variety of different biomes, including a jungle and a swampy area. Considering that the Black Mesa Research Facility is located mostly in a desert canyon, there wasn't a lot of opportunity to have setpieces with watery environments and vegetation, so this is a great place to do something like that. My opinion varies on whether it's padding or not, but one thing I know for sure is that the visuals are fantastic, a real treat for the eyes.

One thing you'll notice in our travels is an Eye of Sauron-esque citadel floating in the distance. The original Half-Life mostly just involved teleporting from place to place until you reached the final boss's lair basically out of nowhere, whereas the level design for Black Mesa constantly brings us back to vistas where we can see the citadel, so as to inform us of our goal and give our journey a little more meaning. I really like this concept, and I didn't point it out in the video, so I wanted to mention it here.

We're also introduced to two new monsters, well, actually just variants on old monsters, but they are new to the series, and it's not like Valve themselves won't just slap a coat of paint on an existing enemy and try to pass it off as a new obstacle in the future, but that's something way, way off. Forget I said anything.

[Kibayasu]

What ire I do have for nu-Xen, which actually isn't a whole lot, is saved for the later sections. It might just be that new car smell but I can't hate at all these first few sections and their intricacies. The flora/fauna, backgrounds, decaying portable labs, scattered research doohickeys, its all just such a dense place to poke around in.

Replicating the explosives warehouse is the one stumble, at best you might say it was set up to stop things from getting into the lab from that side which obviously didn't work (the aliens can teleport don't you know).

[Blastinus]

Hello everyone, and welcome to an exciting new year!*

*year may not actually be exciting.



Finishing up the first chapter of Xen here, we find ourselves powering up a teleporter as per usual, but the game's gone and added a mound of complications to draw things out. Nonetheless, this officially brings an end to our sightseeing tour. This first chapter was just to get our feet wet with the new platforming mechanics and make sure that we were comfortable with long jumping in a variety of different scenarios. The next three chapters of the game are going to be decidedly more intense, and so we should appreciate the pretty scenery while we can.

And also, yeah, it's been officially revealed that we're still being tracked and supported by our friends back in Black Mesa. In the original Half-Life, once they got you through the portal, the Earth-side plotline effectively came to a screeching halt. These constant containers teleporting in are as good a sign as any that there's still time to save the day. That's kind of a comforting thought.

[Kibayasu]

Didn't know rockets could still fly underwater, albeit poorly.

I do enjoy that the first thing Gordon does in Black Mesa's Xen when he find some machinery is exactly what he did on Earth: break something.