Lizardsquid, maker of noises @lizardsquid@computerfairi.es

I've been playing Black Mesa, and I've gotten up to Xen, and I have to say that they've done an outstanding job.

They've managed to make it feel alien, while also expanding on the mechanics of the core game.

It's beautiful, and (most importantly to me) it actually makes the story behind xen more clear.

The scientists at black mesa were already sending survey teams to explore xen, and while that's said in some side dialogue in half life 1, you never really saw it.

(cont)

gears, cogs,
sprockets and sprogs,
That's all you need,
to make some frogs

hello sweetlings, softlings, and otherlings!

It's this weird mix between

a really strong aesthetic, and interesting stealth gameplay mixed with mechanics about light

and

an interface that makes it feel like they didn't think the game was worth the effort to just polish it a little bit more.

Things that feel Early-access-y:

It has dialogue, but it doesn't have subtitles.

The main menu and loading screens have text at the bottom of the screen telling you what version number it is.

There's a mechanic for scanning your environment for reasources. Pressing the key doesn't do anything that visually looks like a scan - floating icons that represent where resources are just appear.

The health and food bar look like placeholders.

• The game has an amazing atmosphere
• It's very tense (it's so tense I had to stop playing after only 20 minutes or so, but that's probably exasperated by my current sitch)
• It's very pretty
• Despite coming out of early access.... it feels like it's still an early access game - the last few touches that are needed just aren't there. (cont)

Grood mrormyin