Ok, I See Why People Like Black Mesa 

OG Half-Life 1 have a training room, it's a tutorial chapter. It even explains which glass is breakable and specifically mention that crouch = stealth mode.

1:50 This is a reference to the player model of the original half life, where Gordon Freeman has a little ponytail lmao Also, at 45:00, it's a bit difficult to call it "overdone" when Half Life was basically one of if not the first to use this trope.

I think the thing which stood out to me the most in this video is you pointing out that it never actually says that crouching = quieter. It's one of those assumptions I've just developed over the years and so just kind of took it as a default. The original game does somewhat communicate this with sound cues, but I don't know how much Black Mesa preserved it. Your footsteps in Half Life are quite loud, especially on certain surfaces (eg metal walkways), and crouchwalking does make them much quieter. Your experience with the floating barrels puzzle after the rocket launch is kind of funny to me because it's ripped almost 1-1 from a physics puzzle in Half Life 2. Half Life 2 in general had a lot more physics puzzles on account of the shiny new physics engine they were showing off.

You *can* actually burn them, you just didn't get close enough and instead allowed it to swat it away.

The microwave is very important to the lore. But yes, the terms near the beginning in a nutshell are just making sure the lasers are cleared out properly. Hand holding is rare in Half Life games, as that obstructs the point of their games, which is to promote player experimentation and creativity, and wants the player to find their own solutions to problems. Watch the documentary on the creation of Half Life for its 25th anniversary

You get confused too often... But regardless I love to watch people experience half-life. Keep up the work though man.

I wish people stopped played Black Mesa first.

Oh but you see they are in the same universe this fact is 100% Canon you'll find out in the future

skipping half life 1 and it's expansions when looking at the half-life series should be a war crime, it would also helped you understand some mechanics better if you played half-life 1's training course

Black Mesa needs to be taken as a different game, because that's what it is, it does things better, but also worse than og Half-Life, which imo you should have played first because of that.

36:26 just play opposing force (but probably after you play the original half life because black mesa is very different)

"Hmmm this tentacle thing is attracted to sound... I lots of really loud grenades... lets just run" Hehehehe... yeah, half life was a bit unintuitive sometimes. For bigbrains, unlike us.

not only are you basically obligated to do the Half Life Alyx but you should also do the Entropy Zero 1 and 2 cause if Portal Revolutions is basically Portal 3 then Entropy Zero 2 is basically Half Life 3

The unkillable monstrosity IS killable if you have the weaponry for it, but this one is much better to kill using the trap puzzle.

We didn’t invade xen, we simply started exploring it, xen and the nilanith started to invade our world to get out of xen.

3:25 That science jargon actually makes sense. Brewster's law is basically about refraction of light, as in how things in clear water like pools give false distance. So Brewster's plates uses that to its advantage to prevent very bright light producing (super luminescent) diode (The D in LED, gottem). *TLDR: Check if half-reflective thingy protects the thing that's producing the bright light* 32:30 You bomb the turrets, with grenades or satchels otherwise it takes good & quick aim. 35:45 Easiest would be to fire from cover without aiming at helicopter or anything else & then poke out for a moment to "guide" the rocket using the laser to make the rocket change trajectory to the heli But damn, this vid made me realise how dumb gamers have become (or is it Americans again? idk😂). Nobody thinks of the approach of "lets try everything possible to see what works or nah, its fine to make mistakes".

You can go straight into hl 2 now ir maybe you would like to play the hl1 exspansions

You can actually shoot and kill the turrets. I don't blame you for not trying though since they deal loads of damage.

Can you see why people love classic Tomb Raider ;P

yep play the original Half-Life now, the biggest difference is Zen

5 hours ago and 15 dislikes... not good... THOOSE WERE STOLEN FROM SUBNAUTICA VIDEO!!!!

i prefer the half life 1 xen

Part of why things weren’t explained as much back then, is because you were expected to read the manuals. They would try and get the basics across in-game if they had the space and time to do so, but the manual was your main source. You were expected to read especially since you needed it in order to install the game in the first place. It’s less bad design and just limitations and expectations of the era.

"Humans are the bad guys because we invaded them first" is not AT ALL what they were going for. None of the aliens you fight are even naturally FROM Xen, they also teleported there from their different home dimensions just like we did, Xen is the link between all dimensions, nothing is actually native to there. The aliens were invading us to escape from something else, which makes us perfectly justifiable in defending ourselves.

you are now obligated to do the entire Half Life series up to Alyx

Idk if anybody has pointed this out yet but the lesson they were going for around 45:00 wasn't that humans are the bad guys, it was more of a "humans fucked around and found out" type deal

the original half life did a better job of tutorializing weapon switching and breakable glass, because you get the crowbar while standing in front of a glass door thats jammed and forces you to break it.

I do think it would have been a better idea to play the original Half-Life 1, Black Mesa is a cool fan-made remake without a doubt, but it does lack some of the design the original game has, I feel. Still glad you enjoyed it.

The start in the train is nowadays not so impressiv, but back in the day it was the first time a game did something like a interactive intro. Every Half Life Game did revolutionize the Gaming Szene. 2:40 It was a thing at Valve that someone unintentionally blew up food in the Microwave. So they made it also a insider Joke in the game.

Kudos on delving into a fantastic remake of a classic game. I hope you will explore the sequels as well. That being said, I was generally perplexed by the occasional moment of cluelessness on display here. It's all water under the bridge now, when you have finished the game already. But just to point out a list of things that others might have noticed in your video, because I need to affirm my sanity: There is an actual fully immersive, in depth and thoroughly enjoyable tutorial BAKED IN. Launches from the main menu... The basic pistol fires under water. Your expectation that all things are scripted (I have no agency) really struck a chord with me. The original half-life was very heavily scripted, but not in a way the modern shooters are. To answer a point you made about not being able to save anyone (it's intended humor, I know), you have SO MUCH agency in this game, as was proven when you gave that scientist a 12 gage dental job, just to see if you could. The quick movement pace of the half-life series (especially the first entry) gives more modern audiences the illusion that this is an action shooter, similar to COD's and such. Which causes tunnel-vision to many players. You dash through the game, never expecting interaction or important details to be present in the environment. Coupled with the ability to move around while lore and plot is being explained, this seems to render already short attention spans even more stunted. Obvious things in the environment, such as buttons, seem increasingly difficult to notice for many younger gamers, since the aforementioned fast-pace action has trained them to look for big red/yellow signs, pointing them to the "interaction" button.

Black Mesa is missing the Hazard Course, which was Half-Life 1's tutorial chapter, and is the only place certain mechanics are explained. someone remade it so it's available on the Steam Workshop though, which is nice. doesn't explain the turrets, but it does explain the fact that crouching makes you quiet

A lot of the game design criricisms you made, like in around 17:50 mark, are misplaced. The game wasn't relying on you knowing game conventions to know what to do there. It's relying on you using your head to piece things together. -You were told to be quiet; so you know the monster is sensitive to sound. -You were given an infinite supply of bombs. Which makes you want to throw it to see what happens. (Which you did) -When you do throw the bombs, you were supposed to notice that the monster reacts to it. A bomb that explodes at the bottom makes them go to the bottom. (Which you didn't notice? Even though you were seeing if the bombs will kill the moster?) You're supposed to realize in this moment that you can use the sound of the bombs to distract the monster. Thats why the game gave you an infinite supply of bombs there. Half Life *does* do a lot of hand holding, it's just not spelling it out in big letters. And when it introduces a mechanic, it introduces it in a way where the player sees the mechanic in plain sight in a safe environment. It's a show don't tell type of approach to introducing mechanics. I don't blame you for not getting any of this though. Modern games constantly spell things out to us so much, that us gamers just subconsciously expect that we don't need to think when learning mechanics in a game. Plus, a lot of old games *are* badly designed in the way you described. So i cant blame you for thinking that Half Life had the same design problems when it really didn't. Also there's a tutorial level that teaches you all the fundamental mechanics you complained about not being taught to you; like the item switching. Don't know if Black Meaa has it tho.

playing titanfall2: felt weird killing human characters playing black mesa: "Can I kill him?"

The reason you were struggling so much with the turrets is that yeah, bullets don't have enough force to knock them over. Now, if only you had tools in your arsenal that had a bit more force...like, enough to send things flying...

All the talk at 45:15 seems a little bit misplaced to me. Whatever the status of the tropes discussed in gaming generally, it is definitely not the case that Half Life is trying to get you to merely feel bad for the residents of Xen. Rather, you see that the experiments done by the scientists, whicha re ethically questionable in themselves, have terrible consequences for earth and humanity which they were unwilling to see clearly even as they understood how wrong things could end up being. In the final chapter the game encourages you to go forth and kill the creature responsible for keeping the portal open despite your efforts to close it at Black Mesa; this isn't about whether we are the conquerors and the Xen are the virtuous victims, but rather that humanity tampered with forces we didn't understand and thus it falls to us to try and make up for our mistakes. They do show you the exploitation of the Vortigaunts, but the point is not only that they are being colonized by humanity, but that the both of us are being manipulated and exploited by other powerful forces. The Nihilanth is an exploiter just like the scientists at the facility were, so for all parties involved Freeman is as close to a liberator as the context of the games allows.

I wonder how many people noticed at 2:41 one of the quick options on the microwave is "Head Crab"

you should’ve played the original 1998 Half Life, as it does have some things that never made it to the fan revision of the game

black mesa really isn't a replacement for the OG half life

Half-Life is a game that you have to pay attention and reason when you play it, so this is where you can appreciate the damage that the newer games with a lot of tutorials ingame and arrows guiding you where to go..did lol

"Plus, they are gross, so we are right" dude just summarized colonialism

half-life (1998) is different enough to warrant a playthrough

I will say playing the original first is a bit of a better experience because you can then appreciate all the little things in Black Mesa. And Black Mesa has a bunch of mechanics from Half-Life 2. So it will make the jump to Half-Life 2 way less impressive.

the original game (with some notable exceptions) often was better at giving tutorials, but for the best examples for good tutorials, half-life 2 is the way to go. also the voice acting is way better in the original game

I love that it isn't the voice actors being bad, they're just mimicking the exact tone of voice of the original half-life NPCs because they know it's iconic

Watching him just let that guard get killed from behind the gate, locking him out from getting that sweet, sweet shotgun early physically hurt me.

This is your brain on modern slop

you better get along well with that crowbar, since it'll be your buddy till the end of time

dude just cant take a clue

49:19 It's implied they were remotely controlled through their shackles

Black Mesa is allowed to exist becouse Valve made a horrible remaster to Source. Then Crowbar Collective did Black Mesa and Valve help them to end Xen.

That first tram ride was showing off the game engine capabilities

He 100% should've played the original first

One of the Half-Life games' main traits is that you can always learn mechanics by experimenting, press F6 and see if something works or how something works and pray it doesn't kill you.

Valve science facilities trying to piss OSHA off as fast as possible:

17:30 You are given some hints in this area though they are subtle, for example you need to be quiet which means walks/crouching instead of well RUNNING which shouldn't need gamer knowledge as well as being given explosives which are definitely louder to draw it's attention away. 18:30 It was possible in the original I do not know if Black Mesa kept that part. Regardless it required most if not all of your ammo of everything to defeat specifically explosives iirc. 21:50 Use explosives against turrets.

Has this guy ever played a game before? Seems like its his first one

Half life as a series is very heavy in environmental storytelling. Also Xen was entirly redone from the ground up from the original game, its a major improvement and incorperates lore later esablished in hl2 and hl:a.

Magnusson does, in fact, hold a grudge on you for killing his casserole.

Glass that looks bullet proof cant break, glass that looks like normal glass can break. Pretty obvious.

I miss games where you had to figure out game mechanics on your own

The glass and weapon switching (along with other basic mechanics like stealth) were tutorialized in a more explicit way in the 1998 Half Life, where you had a whole mission before the actual campaign in which Gordon goes through an obstacle course and trains how to use the HEV suit and its functions Black Mesa for some reason assumes that you already know all the controls and basic mechanics, which I can understand on one end, as it's made by and partially for LONG time fans of the Half LIfe series, but it's also a remake, and new players like yourself are always sorta drawn more to the prettier and newer version of a game, so more explicit tutorialization might've helped It'll be interesting to see how you feel about Half Life 2 and the two short Episodes if you ever decide to play them (also Entropy Zero 1 and 2, short games where you play as a bad guy in the series, made to be played after you finish the mainline Half Lives)

You said a couple of times: "this game does not tell or establish a thing/mechanic X" - there is a tutorial in the game that does just this or at least the original game had. Not sure if Black Mesa did.

You know, I'd usually recommend people to play BM if they wanna try the series, but the amount of confusion you are having makes me suggest that you need to play HL1. I don't blame you for the confusion, it's understandable and you found a fair flaw in the game. Judging by this video, I am convinced that I should let people try HL even for a bit, even just the tutorial, before playing BM. On the side note, you've been enjoying this game much, especially the rocket part. I like how ecstatic you are about it. xD

If you hop backwards in half life 2 you can go mach jesus

The cluelessness and so much confusion COULD HAVE BEEN PREVENTED If you played the Original "Half-Life" game,that "Black Mesa" was based off...

I don't blame you for getting confused. The game assumes you have a good bit of knowledge about Half-Life. This is why I cautioned against playing Black Mesa before Half-Life 1 under one of the vods. Black Mesa is also not an old game; it released in 2020, and it changed a lot of stuff from the original Half-Life design wise. So a lot of the times you forgive the game for being old were undeserved, especially when the original Half-Life explained many of those things better in 1998. I think Xen was beautified a bit too much in comparison with the original. Xen is supposed to be dark and oppressing, not the idealized version of alien life we humans hope is out there. I do still think Xen was generally done better in Black Mesa. A lot of your confusion can be explained by the clutter Black Mesa puts everywhere and the design changes that don't really need to be there; like the vent section into the closed off room before the weird slope elevator. Black Mesa also loses the attachment you build towards the character models in HL1, which affects your ability to quickly recognize them in Half-Life 2. Even with all of that, though, Black Mesa is still very, very good.

The turret is anything but advanced. It is a dumb defense. It shoots anything that moves when it is active.

Nobody can stop me from playing with the ceiling noodles

8:24 "I would love to." Walks right past a first aid kit.

little does he know the original half-life is VERY different at times so he'll have to play that too at some point

Second! I am just like you, I missed on all classic games as a kid ( like portal), I am really enjoying discovering these games with you for the first time :)

Black Mesa was my first Half Life experience, and it was a hell of an experience

Had you saved the guard behind the gate towards the beginning of the game, he unlocks the gate for you and allows you to get the shotgun much earlier.

Not sure if you are interested in recommendations, but if you wanna test if a game can make you cry of sadness or not, I heavily recommend you the game of "The Walking Dead By Telltale Games, Season 1". (don't look at the other seasons, as they might have screenshots that can spoil you which characters survive the first game). I promise you, it's an amazing game, it's not hard to beat, and the story is... it will leave you without words. And I bet you it will make you cry, not just feel sad, but actually make you tear up.

SHOULD HAVE PLAYED THE OG HALF LIFE BUT STILL AWESOME U GOTTA PLAY ALL GAMES

Valve games actually require you to rub your two brain cells together to form a game plan, rather than everything that might be slightly more obtuse than "use the mouse to look around" being spoon-fed to you.

Older games like this just assumed you would do the normal human thing. Someone tells you to sneak in real life, of course you crouch and walk low. I guess the devs didn't think you need any more prompting than "you should sneak"

Don't overlook playing through Opposing Force and Blue Shift, oh, and maybe the original Half Life game

maybe its different in Black Mesa remake but it feels like you went very far in the initial outbreak without the crowbar compared to the original

PLEASE PLAY HALF-LIFE (1) and then HALF-LIFE 2!!! YOU WON'T REGRET IT!!! THOSE ARE THE BEST VALVE GAMES EVER!!!(Portal and the TF2 IS ALSO PERFECT!!)

While this game is definitely fun, you have to remember it is a remake and some of the original art and feeling of the actual first Half-Life by Valve was lost in the translation. When you get to playing Half Life 2, its 2 episodes and Half-Life: Alyx I think you will really begin to appreciate the world building & story telling Valve is so familiar for. And oh, you'll get to understand the G-Man and Aperture Science's relevance in all of this a bit better... :)

I'm sorry, but watching many of these "first time playing Half-Life" type videos and just about all of them giving me some sort of "the game didn't straight up tell me how to do everything therefore I refuse to actually try things" is hilarious. Sometimes, it really, really isn't the game's fault for expecting you to use your brain a little bit.

18:25 Chat was trying to get you to kill an unkillable (through conventional means) enemy. 45:36 the humans weren’t really “invading” Xen, they were just sending survey teams to research stuff (though I suppose there *were* a few aliens that were captured in Questionable Ethics…). However, the human’s exploration into Xen did not influence the resonance cascade at all, other than the crystal sample shoved into the laser beam that caused it being from Xen. 47:33 It’s called the Gonarch. 48:00 yes, you were actually fighting it, your rockets were doing damage, the Gonarch just has a *lot* of health. 54:34 It’s never actually explained anywhere (at least that I know of) who his employers are, or how he has these powers.

I recommend playing the 2 Psychonauts games! (Maybe all 3 if you have a VR headset.) But yeah the 2 big ones are 3D Platforming games with an incredible story about entering the minds of the people around you. Being able to physically see the events that shaped these characters minds & how they act. Theyre also quite funny & heartfelt.

Theory on the turret that shoots humans. In portal 2 cave Johnson implied that black mesa was engaging in corporate theft. (This is why they went from testing elite subjects like war heroes and astronauts to homeless people) So maybe that turret is a repurposed apature science turret

9:52 This is actually an improvement over the original Half-Life. It used the same mechanism, but if you didn't confirm your selection fast enough, it would auto-cancel the weapon switch. This meant that the left mouse button would go back to being the fire button. Quite a bit of ammo was wasted while trying to switch weapons. 28:03 "Oh I hate it! Kill it with fire!" (twenty seconds later) "Did I just kill it? Um.... my bad." 44:58 You don't have to worry, that's not what's going on. We didn't harm them first, they invaded entirely on their own for reasons that will be expanded on in HL2. 49:15 The collars the "scrawny aliens" are wearing are remotes for the "brain boys".

Original definitely would've been better. ESPECIALLY if you're going to continue with the rest of the games.

Turrets are easily killed by grenades or those bombs you manually detonate. I haven't watched your streams so I don't know if you figured that out. Based on this video it didn't seem like you thought of that. I honestly have never seen anyone have much trouble with the turrets until this video. Sure they're annoying, but most of them can be taken down without taking damage. Just chuck a grenade from cover or something.

The problem was you were playing the game as a modern first person shooter, trying to get from point A to point B as fast as possible, and not treating it as a puzzle and platformer game with first person shooter combat. The game is about figuring out what to do next and tackling the next puzzle while blowing up baddies as you do.

One of my favorite details to share when someone new plays the first game asks why the beginning tram ride is so long. Its because it had never been done before. At the time the first half life came out, most if not all games at the time didn’t really have stories at the forefront. When a game started, it threw you into the action immediately. The story took a back seat to gameplay. But not with half life. You start the game not as some bad ass hero or super important person, you are just a guy late to work. There are npcs walking around and talking to you. Theres no action until like an hour or so into the game. Half life was a milestone in gaming, not just for the gameplay, but for the story too. Something that wasn't shown in other games before

Youuuuu should have played the original. I know it’s old or whatever but all the issues you are having are better explained there.

You really should have played the original Half-Life first before Black Mesa. Black Mesa isnt a one to one recreation although it is very faithful for the most part. No matter how closely the original was followed, and dont get me wrong I think Black Mesa is great, its not Half-Life its Black Mesa. Its a fan revision of the original not the original.

The HL2 video should be titled "Ok, I See Why people Like Half-Life 2 Too"

I have yet to play Black Mesa, but just from watching this video, I feel like it takes away a certain charm the original had, the goofy sound effects, the antiquated style, even the level progression is slightly different.

The voice lines always gave me the giggles. Theres one guy doing all the security guard lines and another 2 doing all the male and female scientist lines.

Omg, you missed, like, 50% of things in the game, specially early on 😂 Not an attack on you, but man, modern game design really have coddled younger generation of players to the point of expecting the game to do all the thinking for them and to put up guard rails so they won't need to use their own brain

A part of me is frustrated whenever I watch you not understand very basic video game knowledge, until I remember you literally _lack_ basic video game knowledge. Half-life may not be the greatest game for new gamers. D:

hey you should now play the original half life 😁

The "little turkeys" are infant headcrabs. Gonarch appears to be the mother of all the headcrabs.

Turrets aren't unkillable, you knock them over with explosions or by doing enough damage.