Regardless of what some older, more jaded PC gamers may say, gaming on computers actually started in November of 1998 with a little game called Half-Life. But as time has passed and graphics have managed to improve, newer gamers to the PC gaming fold have missed out on this historical title. Thankfully, a total remaster of the original Half-Life called Black Mesa came out to fix that. Although it launched back in March of this year, work on the game has been ongoing. It officially wrapped up today with one final update, transforming the game into Black Mesa: Definitive Edition.
A blog post on the game’s Steam page from developer Crowbar Collective confirms that this is in fact the end of Black Mesa‘s development. Of course, any bugs that pop up will be squashed, but players shouldn’t expect any more content.
Half-Life given new life
While Black Mesa was already a fantastic way to re-live the beginning of the Half-Life franchise, this latest update makes that experience even better. Besides general optimizations to improve performance on low to mid-range rigs, the update also includes “massive polish and art updates throughout the game.” It’s not exactly clear what that means, but one could assume that Xen is probably looking a lot spookier now. Of course, our own Andrew Farrell knows, as he reviewed the game in March and had plenty of good things to say about it.
With its update to Black Mesa: Definitive Edition, the game has also received full workshop support. Expect big things to come from this game’s modding community, or at least files that replace Gordon Freeman’s model with an anime girl. Of course, the game still has its issues. Controller support on the main menu is wonky, and sometimes the bloom in multiplayer maps gets turned up to “eye frying-ly bright.” Still, this final update for Black Mesa should give players more than enough reason to revisit the shady, underground science facility where Freeman’s legend started.
