Ren - Moved to chitter.xyz @Nine@computerfairi.es

yeah, so, Gammon Linespam (glinner) has his own masto instance, much like gab did, called glindr.org

block the shit outta it because he almost certainly is using it so him and his million sockpuppet account holding TERFalumps can spy on the fediverse and harass people.

So yeah, fuck 'im up

(added quotes around celebrity because fuck glinner, he's a piece of filth and doesn't deserve any accolade or measure of recognition)

heck forgot how fun Assault Android Cactus is to play. the Steam controller takes some getting used to mind you

Also plenty of little bits of environmental storytelling, that I deeply appreciate. It was absolutely worth the wait. Job well done for Crowbar Collective!

Final thoughts? Black Mesa is THE way to play Halflife. fuck the original, just play Black Mesa, it's a lot better than Half Life 1. There's been a few cuts here and there but honestly I think the game is a perfect length now. Xen was a very long segment originally but much of that was literally wandering around lost as fuck because it was dull and boring and ugly and confusing.

Xen in Black Mesa is beautiful and eerie and creepy and fantastically laid out!

Crowbar Collective clearly learned all the lessons of recent game design when remaking Half Life 1. Bits that were previously like "ah jeez what the fuck do I do here!?" are a lot more intuitive. hell, Xen as a whole is WAY easier to navigate and know what you're meant to be doing, and I love how much character they give the Vortigaunts despite not understanding a word they say.

Despite some visual glitches and the fact that the latter half (Interloper onwards) is brutally hard even on easy mode (seriously yikes!!), plus some occasional crashes and hitches in performance, it runs really well and looks incredible!

The Nihilanth boss fight is... WAY more goddamn epic, way more thematic too! It was actually FUN as opposed to an exercise in abject frustration and lack of feedback.

Welp, that's Black Mesa completed! Holy crap. That was... genuinely good.

Xen is entirely unrecognisable from its original incarnation in Half Life 1.

For a start it's actually goddamn fun. and MUCH easier to navigate and know what you're doing.

The gonarch battle is ... not just a boss fight. There's like, an entire CHAPTER dedicated to being hunted by, Hunting in return, and trying to fight it/escape it, before you finally get to its climactic battle.

i got a snorlax in pokemon btw

i called it Benadryl

shake shake

Dang that's a pretty slick trailer. Wonder if that's still in Unity or they moved to Unreal or something because dang those lighting effects are rad.

8 whole weapons apparently, and they're going to simulate even MORE of the mechanics of the guns. That's... I worry about that last bit a little to be honest.

But honestly if you'd have asked me about Receiver before I tried it out, I would have said "eeh, I don't think that'll be very fun at all, probably too complex..."

aaand yet...

aw whaaaat

receiver 2 is coming!?

Okay if I have one complaint it's that... some of the structures and archetecture are just... way too human in Xen, as in stuff NOT constructed by humans.

like, there's a few obviously human bits of tech in Xen from previous expeditions, but like in areas where there's clearly no human influence, there's... very human looking windows y'know??

oh. ... oh dear you directly HAVE to do something that causes an alarm to be raised and ... oh wow that explains why they fight you at first sight earlier. they're being controlled. Wow... poor things. ;; also no matter what at least one Vort dies during the attack where the Controllers turn up and mind control them all to kill you. Each Controller you take out though saves all the vorts they were controlling at least!..

I'm just... walking through their village now and just... watching and listening to them chatter to each other and seeing them go about their lives, they were teleporting a bunch of themselves somewhere, dunno where, but I'm gonan guess not for war, for escape I think

there's like four of them and they're being yelled at I guess by two of the big grunt guys with the hivehand weapons? and if you drop into the area or get seen, the vorts just run away immediately and the grunts attack you. Even after the grunts are dead the four vorts just hide from you and cower, poor things. so obv. I didn't kill them or harm them at all.

I think that if you did, the vort village might be hostile to you? Maybe? idk. but they let me through!

oh my god i just

okay this is really, really good, damn, Crowbar Collective did an AMAZING job with the Xen part of this game, no wonder it took so long, it's like they took the general concept of Xen ,and then just... said... "fuck it let's make our OWN Xen, just... toss out all the OG Half Life xen shit."

It's amazing. You actually find a village of Vortigaunts and you don't have to kill any of them. I mean you meet some earlier that if you don't kill just run away