Black Mesa

Half-Life is a great game, but it's been over ten years since its release. What if Half-Life were made in 2007 instead of 1999? Black Mesa is a re-imaging of Half-Life using Source, the engine powering Half-Life 2. Valve has already created an HD remake of Half-Life called Half-Life Source, but that was a simple port over to the new engine. The textures, level design, and models remained the same. Black Mesa is more than a simple remake of the original game. It's a complete re-imaging of the core game with new level design, character models, textures, voice acting, and gameplay. 

It's an ambitious game that was created by a group of modders and fans over the course of seven years. While the core ideas of the levels are still here, each one has been completely recreated, resulting in an overall larger game. Half-Life was about twelve hours long while Black Mesa is easily over fifteen, and Black Mesa doesn't even yet include the original's final four levels.

High-definition remakes have been done before, but this is a creative recreation of a game. It's more than just sexy textures and layers of post-processing tricking us into thinking an old game is new again.

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