Many of the criticisms directed at Half-Life: Source were aimed specifically at its use of the Source engine found in Half-Life 2. Given that it used character models and textures from the original Half-Life, it’s fair to say that Valve could have done a better job. Thankfully, a group of sufficiently talented people agreed. The developers over at blackmesasource.com believe that Half-Life: Source was inadequate as the Source engine port of Half-Life and have decided to remake Half-Life using the version of the Source engine that powered The Orange Box. Not a bad idea at all. Whilst this may be old news to some, the new trailer is sure to generate more interest in this project.
According to the developers over at blackmesasource.com, “Black Mesa was founded to fully reconstruct the Half-Life universe utilizing Source to its fullest potential in terms of art detail, level sizes and code features.” Judging by the new trailer, it seems like they’re on target to do just that. Although much of the game has been built from scratch, they believe it stays faithful to the original Half-Life concept, with higher-resolution textures and more detailed world models. However, no remake would be complete without at least one new feature, which is why the team plan to introduce a co-op mode.
Much like all Source Engine mods (although calling this a Source Engine mod doesn’t really do it justice) Black Mesa requires a copy of any Source Engine game installed on Steam to play. So if you’re busy with that whole zombie apocalypse at the moment, then you’ll be good to go when Black Mesa is released for download at some point in 2009.
