Black Mesa Review

Written: 28-01-2026
Also published on Steam

I tried the first Half Life in 2022 after playing and loving Half Life 2 and its episodes the year before. I unfortunately couldn't get into it though. I don't know if it was bad timing, or me trying to play it on a controller but something didn't click. It was undoubtedly well designed but I didn't want to keep playing after getting about 5 hours in so I dropped it. I feel like valve are cooking up something Half Life, this is a hunch based on them releasing the Steam Machine this year, so I wanted to experience the story of Half Life.

I enjoyed Black Mesa a lot. It did what I loved about Half Life 2, always adding new mechanics and ideas in each level without them being overwhelming, and I happily finished it playing with a controller this time. There were certainly some areas that I felt more mixed about, but overall I would recommend the game.

The levels, while most are in one research lab, all feel distinct. This is due to unique environments, puzzles, and encounters. You work through labs, offices, cliff faces, reactors, tunnels, sewers and, an alien alternate dimension. All while fighting the military and various forms of aliens. The threat of the enemies slowly escalates from slow zombies to tanks throughout the earth sections of the game. Encounters are rarely just enemies in a corridor too, they are often fought in unique setups that you have to work out how to navigate. There are also plenty of puzzles which are mostly fun and engaging. All of this keeps you on your toes and keeps the game engaging.

Unfortunately this doesn't persist for the whole game in my experience. Once I reached Xen, the alien world, the pace slowed and a lot of the content felt somewhat recycled. There were conveyor belt sections, labs with puzzles to progress through and rooms filled with explosives like earlier in the game. These sections are still good, but aren't as good as the earlier sections. Also, in this later section of the game there is no military which greatly reduces enemy variety. The puzzles hear also felt a lot weaker and more tedious. I heard a lot of Xen is completely new for this game and it does feel like when the team had to come up with more original ideas they weren't quite as goods as the ones they had remade.

The next thing I would like to talk about is the environmental storytelling. I love a game that never takes you out of the gameplay by forcing you into cutscenes. Cutscenes are fine, but they aren't as immersive for me. This game does this very well, some of the story is told through dialogue, but most of it is just you walking through the environments and experiencing it. Through this you see the experiments that were done, what caused the aliens to be released and how people have been affected by the consequences. This is an area that persists into Xen well, with research labs, and the Vortigaunts being forced to work by the other aliens. This environmental storytelling is masterfully done in varied ways.

Weapon variety is also excellent. We see revolvers, shotguns, grenades, tripmines, machine guns, weird alien insect shooters, crossbows, rocket launchers and more. All of these feel really good to use and have a solid impact. I would like to note that the machine gun and original pistol are awful against the soldiers though, this took a while for me to figure out and almost stopped me from playing before I realised everything else worked much better. These weapons get introduced at a good pace and the levels are designed in ways that make each weapon have its purpose. The only weapon that I didn't find much use for were the satchel bombs, which had one puzzle that required them.

Overall a great game and a remake that got me to play through the original Half Life story. I would recommend it for people that are interested in the series, but would say play Half Life 2 first. Now bring on Half Life 3 Valve. Or literally any other singleplayer game.

Sidenote: This game has an aim assist that can be turned on in the settings. It feels a little to generous and I played through most of the game with it off, but it could be what you need if you want to play the game with a controller as most controller FPS games do have this. Just thought I would mention it since it wasn't on by default.