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Oh, Black Mesa. How you tease us. With your release date projections, and your shiny new engine, and your ability to make make manifest our wildest dreams. Widescreen clip's after the jump.
Back when we thought the Large Hadron Collider was going to kill us all, instead of just hum for a few days then break down, we learned that an emergency package had been sent to the site. Within, everything that Gordon Freeman needed to save us from the horrors of an alien-spewing vortex. At the time, it was a cute joke, but there was always the lingering understanding that nobody at the LHC would actually get it. The package, or the joke. Turns out they did! Sandro Bonacini, who works there, got the joke, and eventually the package as well. He's Gordon. Stefano Michelis also got the joke, and for his troubles, is about to get whacked. Oh, those wacky scientists.
Welcome to my third annual post on new media for the Half-Life fan-created remake Black Mesa (formerly known as Black Mesa: Source). It doesn't appear to be any closer to release than it was when I wrote about it in 2006 and 2007, but the new screen shots, released on the original game's ten year anniversary, are worth a peek.
With the release of Left 4 Dead just around the corner, now would be an excellent to to reacquaint yourself with some of the wonderful games Valve has released in the past. To help you in that endeavour, Valve has released the Valve Complete Pack on Steam, a compilation of everything they've released since the dawn of time. That includes Half-Life in all its many forms, Counter-Strike, Team Fortress 2 and Classic, Portal, and hell, they've even got Peggle Extreme in there for good measure.
There are giggles tucked away here and there within the Half-Life universe, but really, it's a serious game. Full of very serious things. So what better way to break up all that seriousness than with a bunch of snacky treats! On offer here are recipes for Vortigaunt cupcakes, headcrab baozi and small, delicious HL biscuits. The vortigaunts look a little messy, but if you could squeeze some BBQ pork into those headcrabs you'd have a culinary sensation.
No one is suggesting a future iteration of Half-Life's protagonist will suddenly start talking, like Chief Bromden savouring Juicy Fruit, but Matt Smith, writing at Thunderbolt Games, has an eloquent defence of Gordon Freeman's muteness, why it works so well in this series, and why Freeman is such a beloved character despite saying nary a word.
In reality, the activation of the large Hadron Collider won't end the planet. But reality is boring. Wouldn't it be more interesting if it really did usher in our ultimate destruction? OK, maybe not interesting. More like...terrible. So terrible that, uh, actually, we'd better make sure it doesn't mean the complete end of the human race. And what better way to ensure the safety of homo sapiens than to do what the gang at news aggregator site Reddit did, and send an emergency package to Switzerland. Who was it addressed to? The only man who's been through this whole "catastrophic, world-ending physics experiment" thing before. Within? A crowbar, a book and a note.
"Get this to Gordon Freeman. He'll know what to do".
Crowbar, headcrab, and Half-Life strategy guide shipped to CERN [Reddit, thanks Timmo!]
The build-up for this title has been immense — and the reviews are rolling in. There were those first Spore reviews, and yes, there were pros and there were cons. Many don't like that the gameplay for Spore really isn't all that complex. It's too casual, some say! What does Will Wright think of the reviews, though?
We were very focused, if anything, on making a game for more casual players. Spore has more depth than, let's say, The Sims did. But we looked at the Metacritic scores for Sims 2, which was around 90, and something like Half-Life, which was 97, and we decided — quite a while back --- that we would rather have the Metacritic and sales of "Sims 2″ than the Metacritic and sales of Half-Life.
Oh. Okay.
Will Wright Reacts To Critical 'Spore' Reviews, Reveals Personal Playing Style [Multiplayer]
All hail the Enlightenment — Thomas Freeman has an interesting look at science and attitudes towards science in Half-Life and Portal. What do such attitudes spell for future releases?
