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 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 Part 4: Power Struggle Opposing Force Part 1: Boot Camp Part 2: We Are Pulling Out Part 3: Missing in Action Part 4: Friendly Fire Part 5: Vicarious Reality Part 6: Worlds Collide Blastinus fucked around with this message at 22:41 on Oct 29, 2023 |
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Nov 8, 2020 18:15
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Bonus Content: Black Mesa/Half Life: Carbon Dioxide explains Tauons and Gluons and whether you could actually put them in a gun. Blastinus fucked around with this message at 04:30 on Dec 23, 2020 |
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Nov 8, 2020 18:15
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 Part 1: Anomalous Materials 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.
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Nov 8, 2020 18:16
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On the subject of MODs I played the hell out of multiplayer Science & Industry and Firearms. The single-player MODs were generally of much worse quality and I can't remember any names. I remember one that took place during the Vietnam War that wasn't horrible, but it was pretty much Half-Life 1 meets Vietnam, you still fought the same enemies from Half-Life and it had nothing to do with the actual war. There was another anime-inspired TC that was surprisingly not crap, but all I remember are posters strewn about the game stating "GIRLS ARE NOT SLAVES". It was...weird.
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Nov 8, 2020 18:52
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Yeah, I'm not going extensively into the modding scene, just focusing on the ones that would eventually get turned into commercial products. Counter-Strike, Day of Defeat, Team Fortress mainly, though also pulling in stuff like Garry's Mod and the like just for a brief look-see. I suspect I'm also going to be missing a few, but I think it's fine to just stick with the fundamentals.
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Nov 8, 2020 19:02
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Hopefully you won't be doing that horrible Hunt the Freeman or whatever.
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Nov 8, 2020 19:30
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I'm really torn about Black Mesa - it's a great ride most of the way through, but when it shits the bed, it shits the bad hard, with some parts that ended up souring the game for me retroactively - coughinterlopercough. That being said, I loved your Doom 3 LP and definitely look forward to you tackling the Half-Life series.
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Nov 8, 2020 21:27
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Samovar posted:Hopefully you won't be doing that horrible Hunt the Freeman or whatever. Oh don't worry, I gave Blast a few ideas today and, well, there are now plans for Hunt Down The Freeman 
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Nov 9, 2020 01:41
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Also a little fun tidbit that you don't see in the video but in the dynamic main menu bit for Black Mesa Inbound, you can actually see Gordon Freeman sitting on the bench nearest to the camera waiting for the tram. Down in the lower left there. When the game starts, if you look back to the benches when the tram starts moving, you'll see that the person sitting there (Gordon) is gone (because he's you), meanwhile all the other NPCs from the title screen are still milling about the tram station. It's a nice touch that I don't think many people notice on their own.
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Nov 9, 2020 01:50
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nine-gear crow posted:Also a little fun tidbit that you don't see in the video but in the dynamic main menu bit for Black Mesa Inbound, you can actually see Gordon Freeman sitting on the bench nearest to the camera waiting for the tram. Down in the lower left there. That's a nice catch, and unfortunately, my save's already too far ahead in the plot for it to be visible, since the dynamic main menu updates as you go along. I'm sure that there's some way to reset it, but a quick Google search doesn't bring up anything fruitful. For the record, by the way, my update schedule is usually once every 2-3 days, barring any unusual changes. The next update should drop on Tuesday. e: Actually, I've gotten some results with using the developer console to go to "map background01", though that doesn't enable the menu options at the same time. Still, it's a start. Blastinus fucked around with this message at 03:53 on Nov 9, 2020 |
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Nov 9, 2020 03:26
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One of the biggest changes I've noticed in the first episode: there are women in Black Mesa!
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Nov 9, 2020 23:14
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Cythereal posted:One of the biggest changes I've noticed in the first episode: there are women in Black Mesa! The Black Mesa Research Facility is an equal opportunity employer.
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Nov 9, 2020 23:25
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Part 2: Unforeseen Consequences 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.
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Nov 10, 2020 17:31
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Hmmm. That green stuff across the canal at the end... does Black Mesa incorporate parts of Opposing Force, and this is an early teaser of that expansion's grappling hook of sorts?
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Nov 10, 2020 19:56
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Cythereal posted:Hmmm. That green stuff across the canal at the end... does Black Mesa incorporate parts of Opposing Force, and this is an early teaser of that expansion's grappling hook of sorts? If you're talking about around 35 minutes or so, that was where I was standing before when the Bullsquid was spitting at me. In this version, anything that gets hit by the Bullsquid's projectile attack gets permanently colored bright green, and since it's now more of a shotgun blast, that leaves a lot of green junk around after any encounter.
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Nov 10, 2020 20:03
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Blastinus posted:If you're talking about around 35 minutes or so, that was where I was standing before when the Bullsquid was spitting at me. In this version, anything that gets hit by the Bullsquid's projectile attack gets permanently colored bright green, and since it's now more of a shotgun blast, that leaves a lot of green junk around after any encounter. Ah. Neat, I suppose, but also disappointing. Opposing Force was great with how weird it got in places with some of the weapons and environments.
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Nov 10, 2020 20:06
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Cythereal posted:Ah. Neat, I suppose, but also disappointing. Opposing Force was great with how weird it got in places with some of the weapons and environments. Oh, I agree. It's next on the list after Black Mesa, and it'll be a lot of fun talking about all the weird stuff they did with it.
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Nov 10, 2020 20:09
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Oh, hey. I binged your Doom3 LP a short while back (though the 'lost mission' I ain't watching, main and main expansion were good though), so I'm gonna be watching this quite happily.
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Nov 10, 2020 20:29
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Unforseen Consequences really got a lot of love and the entire section is expanded compared to the original. Sector C in the original looked like a series of corridors leading to the Test Chamber. The side labs, warehouses and cleaning rooms make it look a bit more realistic.
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Nov 10, 2020 23:15
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I've been curious about Black Mesa for a while, so I'm quite happy to follow along with this! Also, the lighting engine, the wall textures, and the way the two interact really reminds me of Deus Ex: Revision. I can't quite put a finger on why.
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Nov 12, 2020 08:23
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Yes! I've been wanting to see this series through, and find out what the hype is about. I know some spoilers, and I played the beginning of 1 at a friend's house, but my knowledge is fairly limited.
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Nov 12, 2020 16:47
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Oh man, I used to get so nerd-mad about Black Mesa. I don't even remember how I came across it, but modernizing Half-Life was such a neat idea and all the pictures they had on their site looked great! Except as a fan project they didn't exactly have a schedule or, you know, budget. There would be a post on their site saying they were going to start monthly updates, and then no more posts for a year. I actually still have the trailer from 2008 saved on my computer that says it will be finished and released in 2009. And a quick check on Steam shows they didn't exactly "finish" the game until 2019. On a different note, good luck on the Half-Life megathread! I have on a couple occasions thought about taking it on, but I quickly realized I couldn't handle it.
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Nov 12, 2020 22:52
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FrenzyTheKillbot posted:Oh man, I used to get so nerd-mad about Black Mesa. I don't even remember how I came across it, but modernizing Half-Life was such a neat idea and all the pictures they had on their site looked great! Except as a fan project they didn't exactly have a schedule or, you know, budget. There would be a post on their site saying they were going to start monthly updates, and then no more posts for a year. I actually still have the trailer from 2008 saved on my computer that says it will be finished and released in 2009. And a quick check on Steam shows they didn't exactly "finish" the game until 2019. Yeah, the game used to end right before the final set of levels. It's only become fully playable very recently. On a different note, the next update might have to wait until Saturday. Blame Yakuza 7 more than anything else. I've got most of the footage already. It's just editing and post-commentary.
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Nov 13, 2020 16:24
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Part 3: Office Complex 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.
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Nov 14, 2020 17:25
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Regarding the military presence, you can see a military helicopter and squad of soldiers during the opening tram ride - the manual explains that Black Mesa is built into a decommissioned nuclear missile base and does a lot of work for the military, so it's not entirely unreasonable that there would be an on-site military force. Not enough to contain this clusterfuck, of course. The evacuation of residents from that news broadcast is as much or more about the danger of chemical spills from the facility as the alien threat, I'd imagine. We've seen already in the LP that Black Mesa is an OSHA inspector's worst nightmare at the best of times, and the resonance cascade is not helping. 
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Nov 14, 2020 19:36
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azren posted:Yes! I've been wanting to see this series through, and find out what the hype is about. I know some spoilers, and I played the beginning of 1 at a friend's house, but my knowledge is fairly limited. It's a weird one, because coming at the series from a modern eye everything is going to look incredibly cliched and vanilla -- but that's because in a lot of cases, Half-Life is where those clichés came from. It's one of those games like Mario 64 which, while not inventing a genre, sets the blueprint for future instalments of that genre.
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Nov 16, 2020 10:56
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If we're looking at mods that were sold professionally, can I put in a bid for Gunman Chronicles? It was a clunky but decent mod that Sierra picked up and sold, with a wonderful Space Western setting (sadly combined with some stupid difficulty of the non-fun kind, before you get through the game's first level and find decent weapons). It's very rare to find these days but I have an original CD. Gunman had some surprisingly interesting ideas with programmable weapons that had a LOT of different fire modes. Amusingly if you enter a valid Gunman CD key into Steam you get the entire Half-Life back catalogue, possibly as some sort of apology!
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Nov 16, 2020 16:48
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That sounds very interesting. I should give it a look-see. Thanks for the suggestion! We're looking at tomorrow for the next update. I should be able to get it done tonight, but on the off-chance that something holds me up, Tuesday seems like a safe bet. Blastinus fucked around with this message at 22:01 on Nov 16, 2020 |
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Nov 16, 2020 21:28
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Part 4: We've Got Hostiles 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!
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Nov 18, 2020 04:14
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I played the early release and yes, the marines were murderous. They were just about survivable here but in later levels, something about the way those levels were set up meant that outdoor zones were death traps. It took me dozens of attempts to get past some setpieces.
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Nov 18, 2020 13:10
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A few things about this chapter: The SMG is indeed an MP-5, though one or another of the expansions in the original Half-Life replaced it with an M4 assault rifle. The shotgun is a SPAS-12, and the pistol is a Glock 17. The military being bad guys was spoiled on the box of the copy of Half-Life I got as a kid, where they were shown front and center - it was the aliens that were left to be a surprise for me as a kid. Note that the V-22 Osprey seen at the end here is visibly damaged and taking fire from something...
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Nov 18, 2020 15:12
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Cythereal posted:The SMG is indeed an MP-5, though one or another of the expansions in the original Half-Life replaced it with an M4 assault rifle. M16 actually. And that was the one where you played as Barney so Blue Shift. But then that also replaced the Glock 17 model with a Beretta M9 instead and updated the shotgun to a proper SPAS-12 as well. Loxbourne posted:something about the way those levels were set up meant that outdoor zones were death traps. I think I dropped the game at some outdoor gauntlet fight that was just a bit too much to handle, especially when health packs were nowhere to be found.
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Nov 18, 2020 15:33
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Hey stop complaining about the Black Mesa turrets. The ones of the competitor company Aperture Science literally explode the second they tip over, at least you can upright the Black Mesa ones and they still work. Heck, Aperture's futuristic sleek talking turrets aren't any better than Aperture's original ones from Portal 2. They had like centuries to improve upon the concept and they never bothered, while the Black Mesa ones were better from the start.
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Nov 18, 2020 19:27
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'Corporal. Are all threats in the perimeter neutralized?' 'Sir, we're now executing the last janitor as we speak, sir!' 'Have the turrets and tripmines been deployed?' 'Sir, yes, sir!' 'Are they set to shoot and explode on anything that moves?' 'Sir, one of them unloaded its entire ammo into a moth, sir!' 'Is the announcement system set to use the spooky malevolent male voice?' 'Oh shi- Sir, no, sir' 'Then why are you standing here, dumbass? Get on with it!' 'Sir, yes, sir!' 'And do fifty pushups when you're done! loving slackers.'
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Nov 18, 2020 19:41
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Gantolandon posted:'Corporal. Are all threats in the perimeter neutralized?' The soothing feminine announcer voice is being refurbished for a future installment. We'll get to that in due time.
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Nov 18, 2020 20:27
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I find it weird that none of the marines have dropped grenades for the machine gun's grenade launcher. You'd think they'd be the best source of finding them, but apparently not.
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Nov 18, 2020 21:28
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You can't just have all the fun right away.
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Nov 19, 2020 09:21
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AradoBalanga posted:I find it weird that none of the marines have dropped grenades for the machine gun's grenade launcher. You'd think they'd be the best source of finding them, but apparently not. It's a while before the game gives you any of those. They're a way to make the SMG/machine gun relevant again in the late game when more powerful weapons are available. Half-Life 1 is very, very 90s. I'm not sure if you'd get an outcry these days for a game that has you shooting American troops (you certainly would have immediately post 9/11), but the story concept is very much rooted in the X-Files conspiracy world. Hence having a sinister man in black following us around and the military ordered to kill everyone to cover the incident up. What concept art has been released over the years suggests that the original concept for the game was even more gonzo than what we already got, with all kinds of weird and wacky aliens and weapons. Most of the big HL1 SP mods ran with this and went a firmly X-Files direction. Anyone remember Poke-646? There was some very good stuff out there in the 00s.
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Nov 19, 2020 14:08
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My 2 cents on the ethics stuff you mentioned in the video: While it is certainly a topic worth considering, I feel that when you become someone whose job includes carrying and using a gun, you have accepted that you might end up shot to death. These scientists haven't given the impression that they are prepared for combat, Freeman's excellent gunmanship notwithstanding. Additionally, and perhaps more importantly, it is my opinion that once you have opened fire on helpless people who are surrendering, orders or no, you have forfeited any claim to a moral high ground.
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Nov 19, 2020 23:32
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Part 5: Blast Pit 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.
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Nov 21, 2020 00:34
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