or just talk about the games in general. Is Black Mesa better than the original Half-Life? What is the best Half-Life game? Why are the games still so good? How about the post-soviet setting? How about how cool it is that most of the main enemies are cops and troops?
Love the Half-Life games, although I definitely prefer 2 over 1. I dunno, I’ve never really got the takes that the games are outdated, I really wish I lived in the world where they were because I’d fucking love to have more games like this, but I really don’t see anything that has surpassed HL2 (I can see it to some extent with HL1), there’s just something about it. Even with the whole boomer shooter trend, most games seem to be taking inspiration from the earlier generation of shooters, few true HL2-style games around.
Black Mesa’s alright, but I really don’t like a lot of the changes that were made. Never understood the On A Rail hate (especially when, like, Residue Processing exists, no way On A Rail is worse than endless fucking conveyor belts), I actually genuinely love all the vehicle segments and wish more games had that “road-trip where you occasionally stop to explore a little or deal with something blocking the path” vibe, Metro: Last Light had its own On A Rail style section and it was pretty good. So that getting cut down was kind of annoying, and Xen I just really don’t like - it drags way worse than the original ever did, that one cable puzzle just comes up again and again, and aesthetically, while the whole space jungle thing is kind of neat (and the “Sauron-eye tower as landmark to indicate how close you are to the end” is really cool, although of course HL2 did that with the Citadel too to some extent, but I just love shit like that, give me less minimaps with objective markers and more massive towers for me to inch towards), the barren wasteland (or really, little pockets of floating mini-wastelands) of the original Xen makes it feel so much more unique, and, well, alien. I’ve had several Black Mesa playthroughs which just fizzle out at that point - maybe the final section is better, but I’ve played through it so few times because my spirit was drained by cable puzzles that I can’t really comment on what happens there.
How about other mods? There’s just so much amazing stuff, HL1 in particular basically has several extra expansion packs thanks to mods - Echoes, Field Intensity and Delta Particles are all amazing and I would pretty much consider them on the level of the actual expansions (maybe even better than Blue Shift, tbh), maybe short of voice acting but that’s understandable for free mods. Plenty of great stuff for HL2 as well.