Black mesa gameplay how to#

The combine soldier animations could've been reused here, they at least keep a low center of gravity which makes it look like they know they're in a firefight. I don't think it was a good idea to use these non-combatty animations on an enemy character, because they look so awkward when applied to a character who is supposed to be a combat trained, fearsome opponent. Lots of characters like Guards, Human grunts and Vortigaunts also use the movement animations that the Citizens of city 17 use where they run with their arms on their sides, slowly accelerating into a jogging pace and then decelerating.

The alien grunts are funnily enough much more easier to fight against because it's actually possible to dodge their projectiles, and they don't have a dumb Dark Souls dodge that they deploy when you pull the trigger.

Black mesa gameplay how to#

I don't know how to describe it.Ī lot of the enemies behave in an annoying way, Vortigaunts will dodge your attacks so quickly and will repeat the dodge back and forth so that it looks like they're doing a Thriller dance. There exist high resolution concept art of this creature and the Black Mesa team totally missed the mark on how to bring it into HD: įor some reason the human face models look kinda strange. Some of the redesigns like the Alien Grunt do not really look as good from an aesthetic sense compared to the original, now they look like the Brutes from Halo with a third arm in their chest, instead of the super buff alien with sleek reflective armor that was in the original Half-Life.

You can disable this by disabling all the dynamic shadows, which means that this game's gameplay can be improved by changing the graphics settings. If there's an object, like a table or a railing that you're standing in front of, the shadow of that railing will cover everything in the center of your view. The crossbow takes way too long to reload and recock.Ī big annoyance for me is the way how the Flashlight works: It's placed below your camera, and points into the center of your view. A lot of the weapons feel kinda unpleasant and lack satisfaction. There are many firefights in spaces where the enemies stand 400 meters away from you, with them being 10 pixels tall on your screen and all your weapons are mid-range at best. It's a valiant effort to recreate an old game with a team of fans, but I think the game makes many design misses that the original didn't.