Black Mesa Half Life Review

With no Half-life 3 in the plans Valve has spent its energy creating a free download known as Black Mesa to satisfy fans of the hit Half Life series. 

After 8 years, 40 volunteer developers created Black Mesa for Half Life fans.  Black Mesa is free and exclusive to PC and never will be released to a concole.  The first part of the game was released on September 14, 2012. The team plans to release the Xen levels sometime later; with the current content, they estimate that players will have eight to ten hours of content to complete.

You play as a younger Dr. Gordon at the Black Mesa facility. As a prequel, it details how certain events lead up to the Half Life world we know and love. The game is solid. It plays as a mod to the half life 2 engine, and gamplay is fair since its free. 

Load times are a pain and some enemies are aggressive and tougher than they should, but the game is free and playable for fans. I'm sure the developers will get send patches to get the bugs out. So far so good. With free being a factor i'll give the Black Mesa a 7.5/10.  Story is linear and not much but gameplay is consistant and what I come to expect.