gearbox pump access half life opposing force

Anyone who has played and loved Half-Life will be familiar with the “Black Mesa Inbound” tram ride whose impact still reverberates through AAA design today – take a gander at the early sections of Bioshock Infinite (Irrational Games, 2013) for example. The developers are not shy to point this out. The developers have tinkered with the original design meaning Black Mesa is always familiar yet alien. This is a peculiar result because Black Mesa is not a recreation of Half-Life in Source. There’s a friction between the crumbling memory of Half-Life and the freshness of Black Mesa which only further erodes the memory of the original. Black Mesa is a place I feel like I know well. I played the expansions Opposing Force (Gearbox Software, 1999) and Blue Shift (Gearbox Software, 2001). I know I’ve witnessed the first couple of chapters countless times and watched Mrs. Black Mesa has altered my memories of the original. It’s done a bang-up job of messing with my head. Over the last couple of months, I’ve been playing Black Mesa (Crowbar Collective, 2012), the remake of Half-Life in the Source engine that had been in development for eight years. Especially when we’re talking about Half-Life (Valve Software, 1998) which has got “historical significance” stamped all over it. These signals from the past disrupt attempts to be level-headed in the present. Hand on heart, do you know if they’re actually any good in this day and age? We’re all victims of nostalgia-tinted glasses and revisiting a game is always tainted with those memories of your first engagement.

Gearbox pump access half life opposing force