HALF-LIFE 3 (probably) confirmed

Well, it only took thirteen years, but it now appears likely that a proper sequel to Half-Life 2 and its expansions is finally on the way.

MAJOR, MAJOR SPOILERS FOR HALF-LIFE: ALYX FOLLOW

The news came in the closing moments of the latest game in the Half-Life series, Half-Life: Alyx. An "interquel" set between Half-Life and Half-Life 2, the game was expected to be a VR showcase and a stand-alone story that would not impact on the future of the series. However, the game's ending is a huge surprise and ties directly into the cliffhanger ending that we were left on thirteen years ago in Half-Life 2: Episode Two.

The game follows Alyx as she gets wind of an artifact that the Combine has hidden in City 17's Quarantine Zone, an area where the flora and fauna of the alien border world of Xen has manifested on Earth. Early in the game it appears to be a weapon of mass destruction, but as the story progresses Alyx's supporting team, including her father Eli and "guy in the van" Russell, discover that it is in fact a prison constraining an individual in temporal stasis. Combine data files confirm that the individual escaped from the Black Mesa Research Facility and raised hell along the way. Eli concludes that the prisoner is none other than Gordon Freeman (the playable character in Half-Life, Half-Life 2, and the latter's two expansions).

After numerous challenges, Alyx breaks into the prison and opens it, only to find it isn't Gordon at all but instead the mysterious G-Man, a familiar figure from previous games in the series. The G-Man tells Alyx that he is grateful for her intervention and offers her a reward, a "nudge" in time. She asks him to make it so the Combine never invaded Earth, but he refuses, saying that would be far more than a nudge. Instead he offers to change the future for her. He shows her the moment five years in the future that her father, Eli, is murdered by a Combine advisor in the closing seconds of Half-Life 2: Episode 2, and offers her a chance to intervene. She does so, killing the advisor before it can kill her father. The G-Man then cautions Alyx that she is now his new operative, to replace Gordon Freeman whose performance is becoming "unsatisfactory." Like Gordon and Adrian Shephard (from Half-Life: Opposing Force) before her, Alyx is recruited into the G-Man's private group of operatives and seemingly removed from space/time.

There is then a flash of light and, post-credits sequence, the player resumes control of Gordon Freeman at the very end of Episode Two. A confused Gordon sees a now-alive Eli in front of him, the Combine Advisor dead in the background, and Alyx nowhere to be seen as Eli rants about this being the "unforeseen consequences" they were warned about previously. Eli vows to kill the G-Man - who can briefly be seen walking off in the distance - and throws Gordon's crowbar to him, telling him he has work to do.

The ending retcons that of Episode Two, in which Eli is killed and we end with Alyx weeping over her father's body. Writer Marc Laidlaw later revealed how he planned to resolve the cliffhanger in Episode Three, with Alyx and Gordon journeying to the Aperture Science vessel Borealis which was caught in multiple time frames and using it as a bomb to sever the link between the Combine homeworld (revealed to be an enormous Dyson Sphere) and Earth. At the last minute the G-Man would appear and rescue Alyx, but leave Gordon to his fate. Gordon would be saved and returned to Earth by the vortigaunts, with Alyx now missing and Gordon planning to find and rescue her, possibly going up against the G-Man directly.

It appears that Half-Life: Alyx has fulfilled some of the same story criteria whilst changing things around, so that Alyx's recruitment takes place at the end of Episode Two (presumably her memory of the intervening period was suppressed or eliminated) instead and Gordon's search for Alyx and a way of defeating the Combine once and for all will now simultaneously play out in a prospective Half-Life 3.

And does this mean Half-Life 3 is on the way? It appears so. Valve know their customers and wouldn't have an ending like this unless it was setup work for a future game in the series. It's also clear that Alyx was partially a way of updating their tech, engine and assets in preparation for an even more ambitious project, with the pre-release interviews for the game leaning heavily on the idea that more Half-Life content will be coming down the pipe (global pandemic notwithstanding, of course).

When Half-Life 3 might appear is another question, but fans may take heart from Alyx's unusually fast development time (the game was developed in about three years, surprisingly efficient for a modern AAA shooter). The real question is in which format it will appear. Half-Life: Alyx got away with being a VR game because of its status as a side-project. Making Half-Life 3 itself VR-only would be vastly more contentious and controversial, but if the sales for Alyx are good enough maybe Valve will be tempted to go down that route.

In the meantime, fans and theorists are going to have a field day working out what this all means for the slow-gestating franchise.

Black Mesa 1.0

For Gordon Freeman, it's just another day at work at the Black Mesa Research Facility. At least, until portals to another dimension open up, depositing hostile creatures into the facility and overloading its power systems. Equipped only with his Hazardous Environment Suit and a number of mundane and experimental weapons, Gordon must fight his way to the Lambda Complex, overcoming aliens and a secret US marine force sent in to restore order...and eliminate witnesses.

Black Mesa is a fan-made recreation of classic first-person shooter Half-Life (1998), made with the approval of original developers Valve Software. The game was previously released in 2012 (my review here) after eight years of development, but was missing the final chapters set in the mysterious alien world of Xen. After a further eight years of development, the Xen chapters have been added and the rest of the game overhauled and given a shine. It's now possible for players old and new to enjoy the full Half-Life experience from beginning to end.

The question is how the game holds up, and the answer is remarkably well. The Source Engine is getting on a bit and early chapters of the game do feel a lot more dated than they did eight years ago, especially character models. The outdoor areas also feel like they could do with a bit more of an overhaul, with lighting effects and distance views feeling distinctly under-par, although not too bad.

Luckily, for the most of the game you're fighting alien monsters in relatively tight confines, and then enemy soldiers in larger and more elaborate areas and for this the graphics are more than adequate. Half-Life's prize assets, in its sense of pacing, location and level design, remain intact and improved upon. Enemy AI also remains formidable, especially for the soldiers, and combat is still ferocious and fun without getting bogged down with modern frippery like cover systems and regenerating health. If you enjoyed Black Mesa's original release in 2012, you'll still enjoy the Black Mesa parts of this game and possibly even moreso. Some changes for the 1.0 release include slimming down several levels and making them shorter and leaner to improve the game's ferocious pacing, simplifying a few puzzles and generally making the experience tighter.

And then we get to Xen.

Xen has always been a millstone around Half-Life's neck. After fighting alien monsters in familiar surroundings (ordinary office rooms, industrial locations, warehouses), we take the fight to the alien homeworld, a collection of floating asteroids and moons linked by teleporters or long-range jumps. It worked okay in 1998 but some of the platforming jump puzzles were tedious and the unfamiliar visuals made finding the path forward a chore. The main thing in its favour was that it was short: from beginning to end Xen took maybe an hour to an hour and a half to get through, considerably less than the 10+ hours spent in Black Mesa itself.

Black Mesa's Xen has been radically overhauled. It looks graphically gorgeous, with constant, amazing vistas that look like they've jumped off a 1970s prog rock album cover. The soundtrack in this part of the game is also fantastic, with ethereal, haunting tunes. It's all very moody.

It's also now very long. Xen is more than twice as long as its 1998 incarnation and maybe closer to three times. The first half of Xen has been improved a lot with pacing and more focus on traversing larger environments through logical puzzles and ferocious combat, with a lot of the detailed platforming from the original release thrown out. There's even some new enemies, such as underwater barnacles that pull you down rather than up, and infant houndeyes which now explode rather than erupting sonic blasts at you. This part of the game is great fun, with a lot of thought that's clearly gone into how to make Xen better from a gameplay perspective whilst retaining its alien landscape and atmosphere. There's a few too many power cable puzzles in this part of the game, but nothing too outrageous.

Unfortunately, things get less impressive when the player encounters the Gonarch. The infamous pendulous mobile testicle monster was a horrific revelation in the original game, but a bit of a chore to fight. For some reason, the Gonarch boss fight has now been increased in length several times over, with Freeman playing cat-and-mouse with the creature through an underground cave network full of flaming gas traps and not-always-clear paths forward. Even worse, the Gonarch is completely indestructible until you finally corner it in its lair, but no information is relayed to the player to confirm this, meaning a lot of ammo is wasted before you can finally kill the damn thing.

The section after the Gonarch is then mind-numbingly tedious. The sumptuous vistas disappear and Freeman instead spends what feels like ages clambering through narrow pipes connecting power cables together and trying to find the path forward, which becomes progressively more laborious (especially when the path forward is sometimes just blindly hurling yourself onto a conveyor belt or standing on the edge of a bit of scenery that looks more like a bug than a clear path forward). The only good point in this section is a sequence where Freeman apparently (it's a bit unclear) frees the vortigaunts from slavery, which much better sets up the events of Half-Life 2.

Things rally at the last hurdle: the battle against the Nihilanth is much more involved, with Freeman ascending on a huge lift through different environments home to various aliens that he must fend off before proceeding. The ferocious combat in this section makes up for the final boss fight, which was perfunctory in the first game and, though better in Black Mesa, still a bit too straightforward.

The addition of Xen makes Black Mesa functionally complete, but it also feels like it could have done with a lot more polishing and cutting. The sequence is far too overlong and doesn't add much to the game. In fact, condensing the time between the Gonarch and the Nihilanth (which in the original game were much less than half an hour apart) back to the original and streamlining out some of the more tedious forcefield and power supply puzzles is all that's needed to bring the game to perfection. Crowbar Collective have promised a Black Mesa 1.5 at some point which will bring all the graphics up to a much higher quality and iron out the problems, and I hope they considering making big changes to Xen to make it more worthwhile. I do wonder if they rushed Black Mesa 1.0 out of the door to tie in with the release of Half-Life: Alyx (a VR interquel set between Half-Life 1 and 2), which is due in a few days.

As it stands, Black Mesa 1.0 (****½, falling to *** for the final section after the Gonarch fight) is the best modern way of experiencing Half-Life, with most of the game now a crisp, fast-paced, action-packed shooter which still stands head and toes above the competition. I played Halo: Reach, reportedly the best game in that series, a few weeks ago and Black Mesa is superior on every front, from enemy AI and weapons loadout to level design and pacing. The first part of the Xen section is also breathtakingly impressive and enjoyable to play. The second half is much more of a chore, and drags down the game's overall quality. This is something that hopefully will be fixed in forthcoming revisions. The game is available now via Steam.

BLACK MESA gets a new engine, official Steam support

Black Mesa, the excellent recreation of the original Half-Life in the Source Engine, has won the approval of Valve and is getting an official Steam re-release. This re-release will run on an updated engine, possibly Source 2 (currently being used for the in-development-but-not-formally-confirmed-yet Left For Dead 3 and Half-Life 3) or the latest version of the original Source that is powering the likes of Portal 2 and (in a heavily modified form) Titanfall. There will also be other, unspecified, extras.

According to the team, the original version will remain available for free, whilst the new version will incur a 'minimal' cost. They also report that the second part of Black Mesa, which will cover the controversial Xen levels of the original game, is still a way off as development for the past year has focused on the Steam version of Black Mesa.

Black Mesa is excellent, so this news is welcome. It's also possible (my speculation) that an official release will pave the way for it to come out on consoles as well.

Black Mesa

When it comes to the genre of first-person shooters, there have been several gamechangers during its lifespan. The mass-popularisation of the genre through id's Doom was an early one. The success of 2001's Medal of Honour: Allied Assault inspiring dozens of 'realistic' shooters using real weapons and history was another. But towering over all of them is Half-Life. Released in 1998 it transformed the genre from mindless shooting to something based more around characters, personal narrative, puzzles and full immersion in the world it depicted.

More recent shooters have seemingly ignored the lessons laid down by Half-Life, becoming lost in a few short hours of tiresome, badly-acted cut-scenes and even more tiresome gimmicks like regenerating health and cover systems. Yet returning to Half-Life, or introducing it to new players, is almost impossible. What was a fantastic-looking game on release is now a painful collection of blocky models and low-res textures. What is needed is a full HD remake of the game which preserves the pacing, weapons and enemies but updates everything else.

Happily, Black Mesa is a (nearly) full HD remake of the game which preserves the pacing, weapons and enemies but updates everything else. Created over a period of eight years (!) - or two years longer than it took for Valve themselves to make Half-Life 2 - by gamers and fans working in their own time, Black Mesa is a carefully-crafted love letter to the franchise. The attention to detail in the game is tremendous, and it's quality easily exceeds that of many 'proper' Triple-A releases. Even the voice-acting (all re-recorded, as reusing the original game's audio files was legally dubious) eclipses that of many supposedly professional games.

The game opens as the original Half-Life did, with you standing on a tram as it makes its way into the Black Mesa Research Facility in New Mexico. You play Gordon Freeman, a 27-year-old theoretical physicist and graduate of MIT. Freeman is a silent protagonist who never speaks, allowing the player to come up with his own personality and interpretation for the character. The iconic tram ride shows the similarities and differences between the original game and the remake. The areas you pass on the tram are more or less the same, but are now inhabited by more people with more activity going on. A mech clearing up a chemical spill have now been joined by two scared scientists trapped against a nearby wall. Other spaces, formerly bare, are now bustling with people moving equipment around. The reception area to the main lab has been transformed from a poky square room into a cavernous circular chamber filled with computer screens. A nearby canteen has changed from a small room with a table in it to a large public space filled with vending machines.

There are multiple models for scientist and soldier characters now (including the introduction of female characters), lending more realism to scenes where Gordon forms up a posse. Amusingly, Dr. Kleiner and Eli Vance (from Half-Life 2) show up as younger characters, in keeping with the canon. The developers have resisted the urge to thrown in other appearances from Half-Life 2 characters: Administrator Breen is referenced, but does not appear (as he did not appear in the original game), whilst Barney also does not appear: whilst multiple security guards in the original game had the 'Barney voice', the canon Barney is the one glimpsed briefly trying to open a door as Gordon passes by on his tram journey, and otherwise does not feature in the original Half-Life, only its expansion, Blue Shift.

The weapons load-out is the same as in the original game, and pleasingly you can carry a full arsenal around with you rather than having the current, tiresome restriction of two-guns-per-person (or whatever) shoehorned into the title. The variety and types of enemy is also the same. The integration of the Source Engine's physics system also gives rise to the closest thing the game has to a new weapon, the ability to pick up flares and throw them at enemies, setting them on fire.

As noted above, the game has been redesigned on a micro scale in many areas: few rooms or corridors avoid having had some tweaks to make them more interesting, from whiteboards filled with amusing jokes (or occasionally dirty cartoons) to a mug featuring the Chuckle Brothers (dubious UK comedians) sitting on a security guard's desk. The general layout of the game is the same as before, but a few areas have been opened up. Whilst still a linear shooter, some areas do feature multiple paths, requiring Gordon to scout out surrounding corridors and rooms for bonus weapons and ammo before finding what is the correct way to proceed. These changes, though minor, do hugely enhance the feeling of Black Mesa as a place where, under normal circumstances, people work together.

Something that did come as a surprise whilst playing the game was the fact that, by modern standards, Half-Life is only barely a shooter. The game can happily go half an hour at a time without having any combat, instead throwing puzzles and environmental challenges at the player that must be negotiated without a shot being fired. These range from having to open up valves to prime a rocket engine with fuel and coolant so it can be fired into a blast pit, killing a giant, triple-tentacled monster inside, to finding a way of powering up a computer system so you can use it to unlock a blast door.

Combat, when it does take place, is intense and also quite tough: the AI of both the alien invaders and the marines sent to deal with them and also wipe out any eyewitnesses is impressive, especially given fan consensus that the original Half-Life actually featured better AI than Half-Life 2. Whether the smart, tough enemies of Half-Life would survive the transition to Black Mesa was a key question for many fans, even a dealbreaker, and it's a relief to report that they have. Enemies are smart and canny, knowing when to take cover, flank you and use grenades to flush you into a killzone.

Unfortunately, the game's transition to Source means that the controls suffer a little. The original game sometimes used a feature called 'crouch-jumping' to allow you to reach tall ledges that would otherwise be out of reach. For some reason Black Mesa actually forces you to use crouch-jumping far more than the original game, almost for every single jump in the game. When you have to run fast and crouch-jump (requiring three simultaneous button pushes whilst using the mouse at the same time), it's almost impossible to execute the move. It turns out the development team set the jumping parameters too low, but it's very easy to go into the source files and modify it back to something sane. The game also has a lot of problems with ladders. In fact, the only FPS I've ever seen handle ladders well was the original Half-Life. Every other game, including Half-Life's own sequels and expansions (and now its remake), seems to love sticking you to ladders to the point of mouse-throwing rage when it results in you dying. Also, for some reason, the 'walk slowly' button does not work, which makes traversing the aforementioned blast pit (inhabited by an indestructible triple-tentacled blind monster that hunts by sound alone) absolutely horrendous, although it's completely unnecessary for any other part of the game.

These problems seem fairly minor when you consider the overwhelming quality of the game. A few areas feel like they could have been truncated a little bit (the residue processing sequence in particular is a little dull) but overall, Black Mesa is a phenomenal achievement. The original game's superior level design, excellent weapons and impressive AI are now enhanced by modern graphics, a subtle-but-brilliant redesign of many areas to work better with physics and a new, moody soundtrack. The game does have a different ending to the original, however, concluding in the Lambda Complex as you prepare to teleport to Xen. The thorough, exacting redesign of the game means that Xen is not yet ready. However even this has its benefits, as the Xen levels are the most widely-hated part of the original game. Their absence makes Black Mesa a tighter, more focused (though, at over 10 hours, still very long by modern standards) experience, even if the bizarreness of the place (a refreshing antidote to 10 hours of grey walls) is missed a little.

Black Mesa (*****) is available now from the developers' website, completely legally and free of charge. The game will also be available from Steam in a few weeks.

Four major new old games in the next month

Looking at the more notable new game releases of the next month, it's surprising that four of the highest-profile are in fact remakes or re-releases of older games in new formats.

First up (tomorrow!) is Black Mesa, the free remake of the original Half-Life using the Source Engine. More than six years in the making, the game is looking very impressive indeed. Anyone with Steam installed on their PC will be able to download and play it tomorrow.

That's followed by the release of Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition on 18 September. This is an upgraded and updated version of the original game, with significant UI improvements, compatibility with tablets and Macs, and some new content (in the shape of three new NPC companions and a major new dungeon). Baldur's Gate II will follow next year. Both games include the original expansions.

Then, on 28 September, we get Carrier Command: Gaea Mission. From the makers of the ARMA franchise, this is a remake and recreation of the classic 1987 action strategy game, casting the player as the commander of an aircraft carrier playing hide-and-seek with an enemy carrier whilst trying to conquer a chain of islands.

Finally, on 9 October, we get XCOM: Enemy Unknown. A modern remake of UFO: Enemy Unknown (X-COM: UFO Defense in the United States) from the makers of the Civilization series, the game retains the turn-based tactical combat of its forebear, whilst combining it with impressive modern visuals.

BLACK MESA gets a release date

The long, long-awaited game Black Mesa has finally gotten a release date: 14 September, or just twelve days from now.

Relive the classic dialogue: "Forget about Freeman!" "They're waiting for you, in the test chamber." "ARGH!"

Black Mesa is a fan-made mod for Half-Life. It recreates the entire game of Half-Life in the latest version of the Source Engine, with vastly superior graphics. Made with the approval of Valve, Black Mesa has been in development since shortly after Half-Life 2 was released in 2004. It's actually been in the making for longer than Half-Life 3 and both of the episode expansions for HL2.

The Black Mesa team have added a caveat however: the game will only go up as far as the Lambda Core level (at the end of which you teleport to the planet Xen). The team is still working on the controversial Xen levels (most fans' least favourite part of the original game) and looking for a way of making them more compelling. Still, even shorn of the game's climax (the highlight of which is the confrontation with a giant mobile bollock spider monster), this is a pretty large game (about 10 hours).

You will require a copy of Half-Life 2 and the original Half-Life to enjoy Black Mesa, with no further payment required.

UPDATE: Black Mesa does not require a copy of HL1 or 2. It just needs the Source SDK, which is included with all downloads of Steam, which is available for free.