∇
troperville

∇
tools

∇
toys

Must be Monday. New podcast! Just click on the fancy logo below.
SubpagesAwesome
Funny
Main
VideoGame
YMMV
main index

Narrative

Genre

Media

Topical Tropes

Other Categories

TV Tropes Org
new edits
workshops
reviews
YKTTW
tweets
random
Video Game: Black Mesa
Black Mesa is a mod for the Source Engine that recreates Half-Life 1. It has been in development since the release of Half-Life 2 in 2004, and has had its first release, which runs from the starting chapter Black Mesa Inbound to the climactic Lambda Core chapter, in September 2012. The final four chapters, constituting the Xen part of the game, and a multiplayer component are still under development and will be released at a later point.

The time put into developing the mod certainly shows. Each level is updated and expanded, characters behave much more realistically, and the famous 4-scientist problem has been eliminated through the use of procedurally-generated faces. Add to this the fact that it's entirely free, and you really have no excuse not to give it a go.

Black Mesa provides examples of:

  • Ambiguously Gay: The scientist who complains about those ridiculous ties. At first you might think he's just uncomfortable rather than concerned about fashion, but then he clinches it with this line to Gordon:
    "I say, that suit certainly flatters your fundament."
  • Adaptation Distillation: Quite a few areas have been removed or combined, mostly the vent maze from We've Got Hostiles, as well as parts of On A Rail that were thought by the developers to drag on too long and add nothing... Surface Tension has also been cut in length, but that was more due to one of the developers quitting in the 11th hour and leaving a chunk of it unfinished. The Hazard Course chapter was removed completely, because it was felt to be a waste of resources. There is a third-party add-on that adds the complete cut part of ''Surface Tension''. There is also an (in-progress) add-on by the same developer that adds the complete cut part of ''On a Rail'', while fixing the cut part's shortcomings. Finally, there is a community project to remake The Hazard Course out of nostalgia.
  • Adaptation Expansion: ...although others (most noticeably the Surface Tension dam and the Questionable Ethics lobby fight) have been significantly expanded, along with extended NPC reactions and why quite a few of them can't come along with you (for example, the first security guard stays to attempt to contact the surface, a scientist in a dumpster shits his pants when he sees a headcrab fly at him, the scientists in Office Complex are either too cowardly, or can't leap across the broken elevator shaft, et cetera, et cetera). There are female scientists this time.
  • Alternate Reality Game: Yes, actually.
  • Artifact Title: For a long time in the development stage, the mod was titled ''Black Mesa: Source". The "Source" part was removed after a request from Valve, but many still refer to it by this name, and the mods official site has remained registered in that name.
  • Artificial Brilliance: The marines. They flank, use teamwork, throw grenades to flush you out, and cover each other just like the marines in the original game. However, unlike those marines, these ones can run and shoot at the same time and are even more accurate with their automatic weapons.
    • Artificial Stupidity: Then again, there are some bits. Similar to a bug found in Half-Life 2, it is possible with proper timing to sneak past the Apache Helicopter by holding an oil barrel in front of you, and, like in the first game, enemies were oblivious to targets that suddenly hid in front of them, and comrades killed behind them with a noisy weapon.
      • This can also apply to the marines at random intervals, as they will sometimes drop all pretenses of intelligence and run around blind corners in single file, right into your line of fire.
  • Ass Shove: How DOES one wield a hivehand, anyway? The world may never know.
  • Awesome, but Impractical: Snarks, even more than the base game. The idea of using little alien bugs to rip your enemies to shreds for you is cool, but the throwing distance is so short that, unless you're doing it from the high ground, they're more likely to attack you than your enemies, and are slower than they were in Half-Life. Worse, one achievement requires killing at least 10 enemies with snarks.
  • Awesome Yet Practical:
    • The revolver, due to the increase in available ammo.
    • There's also the hivehand, which has infinite ammo and does more damage and regenerates faster than it did in the original Half-Life, and also lets you shoot around corners - much more useful than it was in Half-Life. This combination of infinite ammo and homing shots makes it a wonderful weapon to clear out Assassins with.
  • Beauty Is Never Tarnished: The Black Ops Assassins, girls in skin-tight suits, don't gib.
  • Black Comedy: In the form of a Brick Joke; in "We Got Hostiles", one of the VOX announcements calls the Service Team to the elevator in Sector C. As in, the one that just fell hours before.
  • Bland Name Product: Among others, "Tittles" instead of "Skittles" and "Coca-Bola" instead of "Coca-Cola". On the more creative end of the spectrum are "Alpine Hue" (Mountain Dew) and "Rambler's" (Walker's, or Lay's in the US).
    • Not just limited to drinks and snacks: There's a workshop in Black Mesa with a DeWALT chop saw with a "DeWOOT" logo.
  • Body Horror: The headcrab zombies are now very detailed. You'll wish they weren't.
  • Bring My Brown Pants: The scientist you encountered in the dumpster in Half-Life 1 now has a reason for not going with you - he soiled his pants.
  • Call Forward: The dev teams seems to have made an effort to justify Freeman's One-Man Army reputation from Half-Life 2. The scientists in Questionable Ethics are in awe of you surviving a massive Marine ambush, and one of the survivors in the Lambda labs outright calls you a "knight in shining high-impact reactive armour".
    • You even meet Isaac Kleiner and Eli Vance before and after the Cascade.
  • The Can Kicked Him: The scientist having trouble on the toilet in the opening gets turned into a headcrab zombie later on after the cascade.
  • Cherry Tapping: Required in the first level of the area - you don't get a crowbar right off the bat. Instead, you need to chuck flares at the zombies, and let them burn to death.
    • An achievement requires that you get killed by a headcrab. Another requires being ripped to pieces by your own snarks.
  • Classic Video Game Screw Yous: Shortly after getting a crowbar, some dev placed an explosive crate amongst the rubble you have to smash through.
  • The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard/Computers Are Fast: The Marines must be augmented supersoldiers, or were trained by competitive Counter Strike players. Their reaction times are (second-to-bottom post) three tenths of a second to fire when they're idle, and one tenth of a second to fire if they're alert.*
    • The Marines may not always know where you are, but with the aforementioned blindingly-fast reaction times, it really doesn't matter.
  • Darker and Edgier: The original suffered from not having graphics advanced enough to properly portray the horrific events taking place at Black Mesa. Let's just say that this has been... rectified.
  • Development Gag:
    • The security guard who berates the lack of a ponytail on Gordon. This detail was taken out during the mod's development when it became unnecessary for an actual player model, and was part of Gordon's Half-Life 1 model, and was in the original concept of Gordon in the very early stages of Half-Life 1 (a very hairy Viking-like man named Ivan).
    • A scientist argues that repeating an old experiment that inspired his career in science is perfectly worthwhile to show how far the science has progressed with technological advancement, while two others point out that repeating an old work is hardly meaningful. Doubles as a bit of Self-Deprecation.
    • A monitor found in Questionable Ethics displays one of the maps in the Hammer Editor.
  • Development Hell: The game started development in 2004 and was originally set for release in 2009. Instead, it got delayed until late 2012. On top of that, as of now, the last four levels and the multiplayer component still aren't out. This is somewhat justified considering it's made by volunteers in their spare time, and when you do the math, actually took around the same amount of man hours as your average game.◊
  • The Dev Team Thinks of Everything: If you equip a Hivehand for the first time in front of a guard, the guard will comment on the nature of the process.
    "Oh my God! If I find a camera, you are SO doing that again!"
    • It was always a question regarding the original Half-Life as to why Black Mesa's security system would indiscriminately shoot at both the Xen aliens AND the Black Mesa employees. The moderator's answer? The military took control of the system.
    • Not to mention all the new dialogue excuses for why scientists/security guards can no longer follow you such as the security guard calling for help mentioned above.
  • Dummied Out: Code exists in the game that would have forced the player to fight off a headcrab attempting to "couple" with their head. This feature can still be enabled with a console command but lacks the proper textures.
  • Early-Bird Cameo: Barney, Eli Vance and Isaac Kleiner, major characters introduced in Half-Life 2, replace the guard banging on the door (according to Blue Shift) and two of the generic scientists from the original. Eli is the scientist who sends you up to call for help and Kleiner greets you in the Spectrometer control room; their placement was based on comments by the series' writer, Marc Laidlaw, and the fact Eli states that he is the one who sent you to the surface.
  • Fan Remake: Of the original Half-Life.
  • Fan Translation: Some members of the community received the script early to make translations for some languages, and there's a project to provide more.
  • Follow the Leader: Operation: Black Mesa and Guard Duty, Source remakes for Opposing Force and Blue Shift, respectively. Like the original two games, they're being developed by the same studio (though not by the same people as Black Mesa). Unlike the originals, however, they're planning to use completely different art assets. They're similarly in Development Hell, though.
    • There's also the cancelled Hazard Team, which was meant to be a Source remake for the PlayStation 2 version's co-op mode, Decay.
  • Foreshadowing: Multiple added lines make note of the Resonance Cascade, although it's funny to hear "It's going critical!" way too early in the game.
  • Gender Flip: The mod introduces female scientists to help mix up the variety of faces.
  • Interface Screw: A mild example, but you'll notice Gordon's vision becoming slowly filled with static the longer you stay near high levels of radiation.
    • Taking damage causes a brief "chromatic abberation" effect.
    • The Houndeye's attack distorts the screen and causes a tinnitus effect on the audio.
  • Infinite Flashlight: In place of the auto-recharging Ten Second Flashlight in the original.
  • Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Hunter, the security guard with the Lambda Team. He writes you off and insults you when he first speaks to you, but if you follow the scientist's advice and restock at the armory, he wishes you luck on your mission.
  • Lampshade Hanging:
    • The Emergency Shutdown button on the spectrometer control panel used by Gordon is offline, with a post-it note saying "Needs fixing ASAP" next to it.
    • The first (alive) security guard you encounter after the cascade comments about the situation being "out of a sci-fi movie".
    • Sometimes scientists will occasionally snark to other NPCs about their tendency to repeat themselves.
    • One scientist in Sector C bemoans his daily chore of walking back and forth between computer screens and staring at them. Sounds a lot like the plight of any video game NPC controlled by scripted sequences ...
  • Laser Sight: An odd variant - the Black Ops assassins, when cloaked, can be tracked by their mono-optical goggle, which glows red.
    • HECU Snipers are still identified by their laser sights.
  • Leeroy Jenkins: The security guard who rushes the tentacles in Blast Pit, armed with only a pistol. He gets gibbed, for his trouble. Fittingly, his name WAS Leeroy Jenkins.
  • Ludicrous Gibs: While the NPCs and enemies sadly don't burst into chunky, high-flying gibs from falling a great height/repeatedly hammering their corpse with a crowbar/low-level explosions, it's made up for by individual body parts coming off by damage applied... and you can still see flying body parts with liberal application of .50 cal turrets, or direct impacts from a grenade.
  • Mythology Gag: Oh so very much.
    • A security guard mentions that Gordon used to have a pony-tail, as he did in the original Half-Life. He also tells Gordon to say "hi" to Dr. Cross, the HEV suit training instructor and one of the main characters in Half-Life: Decay, from him.
    • After the Resonance Cascade, Kleiner becomes fascinated by a headcrab, referencing him taking a headcrab called Lamarr as a pet in Half-Life 2.
      • For that matter, there is a portrait of Hedy Lamarr (the source of the headcrab Lamarr's name) in one of the offices in "Office Complex".
    • On one of the bulletin boards is a note from Otis that Security Desk B3 needs more donuts, Otis being the fat security guard armed with a Desert Eagle in Opposing Force and Blue Shift. You even find one instance of him holding a donut instead of practicing at the firing range in Blue Shift.
    • Two instances reference brick jokes in Half-Life 2.
      • A guard says that Barney's bar tab is past due and he's dependent on others to buy him drinks. When you first meet him in Half-Life 2, he mentions that he owes you a beer. This in turn was reference to the generic guards' comments in Half-Life 1, pre-disaster, where they'd say "Catch me later, and I'll buy you a beer."
      • After you blow up the casserole in the break room, a scientist mentions that they'll never hear the end of this. In Half-Life 2: Episode 2, you meet Dr. Magnusson, who is still mad at Gordon for this incident.
    • HECU Marines will scream "MY ARM!" or "MY LEG!", as the rebels did in Half-Life 2.
    • In an Easter Egg location, you can find Dr. Breen's poorly spelt plans for world domination, which involves befriending aliens and getting them to build him a huge tower. You also learn that he really, really, really doesn't like Dr. Vance.
      Eli cant come [inside my big tower] cause hes a stupidface.
    • In one of the offices, a sign reads "In Case of Emergency, Use Nearest Crowbar".
    • The scientist in the locker room will talk about the HEV Mark IIIs, which didn't have an optional helmet. One of the big debates about Half-Life was if Gordon was wearing the HEV helmet that you saw on dead Lambda Team members, since he was impervious to getting headcrabbed.
    • The Black Ops assassins have Aperture Science Long Fall Boots, which explains how they can jump around without breaking their legs.
      • Which, in turn, is a recycled prop from What Could Have Been the Black Ops' successor in Half-Life 2, the female Combine Assassin.
    • The Dopefish has an obligatory cameo, this time as a drawing on a white board.
    • On a couple of the computer monitors, an email can be seen with the subject "These Ties", referencing a line from the scientist in the locker room at the beginning of the game.
  • Nerf: A few examples.
    • The MP5 is a mixed case. Unless you're engaging from a distance, it takes a whole magazine to kill most enemies (especially Xen enemies). Its grenades don't do as much damage, and have a smaller blast radius. It also doesn't have its fifty round capacity, like it did in the original, now replaced by an ordinary 30-round mag. On the other hand, it fires faster and is way more accurate.
    • Thankfully, one is to the player's advantage: Black Ops Assassins don't do the insane damage they did, or have their insane firing rate from the first game. They also retreat to hide more often, backing away when too much damage is done, and aren't as fast as they were, despite the higher jumps they can do. Even on Hard mode, they're easier to track down by the lights of their goggles (see Laser Sight above).
    • Another one: HECU Snipers won't kill you in a couple of hits.
    • Alien Grunts appear noticeably less frequently than they did in the original game, and don't do as much damage, either.
    • Snarks don't travel as fast, which works for both the player and enemies - no longer will you get savaged by incredibly fast, hard-to-hit snarks, but neither will Marines.
    • Vortigaunts/Alien Slaves can take more hits and have their attack speed increased, but do less damage.
    • The Icthyosaur succumbs to a mere two crossbow bolts - or, if you're not that sort, less than ONE PISTOL MAGAZINE.
    • The Colt Python, on the other hand, got a significant buff. Ammo for it is far more common than before and its iron sights add a slight zoom effect. The only drawbacks are a slightly longer reload speed and halved ammo capacity, which don't really draw from the improvement of its practicality.
  • Nigh Invulnerable: Gargantuas cannot be harmed at all by your weapons. The only way to kill them is through scripted sequences.
  • Nintendo Hard: This game is considerably more difficult than the original. For starters, the Tentacles in Blast Pit are far more sensitive this time around (because they have an eye on top of their tentacle, according to a research note on one of the boards), the HECU's firing rate is no longer restricted to burst firing, now eating up your health like a cocaine addict and his coke, barnacles can take four crowbar whacks as opposed to the single one in the series' official games, and the Vortigaunts, in addition to using basic squad tactics, charge up their attacks at the speed of the original's hard mode (read: almost instantly), and can actually take a few hits before dropping. Even the headcrabs react a bit faster than average. See also Artificial Brilliance.
  • Non-Standard Game Over: A few of them, most notably when a guard who pops up and yells FREEZE! The game even calls you out on your poor trigger discipline.
    • There's another you can get an achievement for: if you decide not to push in the specimen, and wait long enough, the scientists in the room will go "It's too unstable!"
    • Don't jump into the portal to Xen and it'll also go unstable, before eventually exploding and killing you, as with the original
    • Killing NPCS before they open plot-fowarding locked doors, like the front door of the Questionable Ethic's lab, also causes one.
  • No OSHA Compliance: Played with, averted that while going through the game you can see safety posters and equipment around the environment, but still played straight with the failsafes on the Anti-mass spectrometer.
  • Not His Sled: Some levels are changed, removed, or expanded in this remake, so knowledge of the first game isn't a complete walkthrough of this one.
    • The Shotgun isn't available until the end of "We've Got Hostiles", while the Revolver is available in the Shotgun's place in "Office Complex".
    • Most weapons in general are available later than they would correspond in the original game. The iconic Crowbar doesn't appear until Gordon enters through the vent in the lobby, and the MP5 isn't on the dead soldier's corpse near "We've Got Hostiles"; the first live Soldier Gordon meets carries the first available one. The only weapons that don't follow this example are the Crossbow and all of the weapons in the fourth slot.
    • Thought you were in the clear when you saved all those Scientists in "Questionable Ethics"? You were wrong.
  • Organic Technology: Now more gross than ever. For an example, check out Ass Shove above.
  • Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil: Your first trip to the lobby in "Questionable Ethics" has two HECU guards talk about going to see some of the female scientists, in a creepy manner.
  • Remake Escalation: A memorable scene in Surface Tension is when Gordon crawls out of a drainage pipe to witness fighter jets flying through a vast canyon. In the original game, there was just one. In Source, there were two. In this game, there are three.
  • Saved from Development Hell: The team had gone more than a year without obvious updates on their progress, some assumed the project was dead, until September 2012 when an announcement was made that the first public version of the mod would be released on September 14th.
  • Scenery Porn: The devs really went crazy with the Source engine's considerable capabilities. The facility's large pieces of machinery (like the anti-mass spectrometer and Lambda portal generator) are considerably more detailed and feature complex moving parts. Meanwhile, outdoor areas have been completely redesigned to have a considerable "WOW!" factor. An example would be the scene where the player must fight an Abrams tank and a squad of Marines, while overhead military Ospreys are seen abandoning the facility as Air Force jets engage the aliens' organic flyers, or the scene where the player witnesses Harrier jets screaming past to bomb a distant target, which creates a visible shockwave that rattles the mesa as it hits.
  • Scenic Tour Level: The former Trope Namer returns in even more detail than before. For example, the first scene in the game, which was originally a brief stop, is now a busy transit station with several other people waiting to get on their trams.
  • Script Breaking:
    • One as early as Unforeseen Consequences. At the elevator that plummets to the bottom of the shaft, you can throw a chair through the glass, allowing the player to climb up the emergency ladder a little earlier then the player is suppose to. The elevator would still fall, but the scientists would, for some odd reason, be alive and well at the bottom of the shaft.
    • During Surface Tension, the modders added a cut-scene where you witness a scientist run out of a nearby structure to help a downed security guard that was shot by a HECU sniper in the area. A few moments later, the sniper would then kill the scientist as he tries to help the security guard. If you kill the sniper before he shoots the scientist however, the scientist remains on the field forever kneeling before the now dead security guard; showing that the modders didn't take into account what would happen if the player kills the sniper before the scientist is shot.
  • Shoot the Medic First: You'd better. Like the Medic in Opposing Force, he'll heal allies.
  • Shout Out: A scientist tells another that he'll need to come in this weekend because of the TPS Reports. Red Swingline staplers are present throughout the facility.
    "Look what you did... I can't BELIEVE what you did!"
  • Shown Their Work: The drawing of a brain cell on one of the whiteboards in Questionable Ethics is accurately labelled with the proper names of each part of a brain cell.
  • Smoldering Shoes: The guard who overcharges the Tau Cannon is reduced to this.
  • Spared by the Adaptation: Several NPCs that were normally done for without split-second reaction times are now far easier to save due to equal parts changes in script pacing and muscle memory.
  • Teasing Creator: Since the first release of the game doesn't feature the four Xen levels, everyone is understandably curious as to how the redesigned Border World will look. There are two small previews of the environments in the released chapters. "Eye candy" is one way to describe them...
  • The Stinger: If you successfully complete the Rare Specimen achievement (where you take a purple top hat found at the start of the Lambda Complex chapter and send it through the portal to Xen) and then beat the game, after the credits roll, a short bit plays out where a Vortigaunt finds the hat in question and tries it on.
  • Too Awesome to Use: The Gluon Gun will vaporize anything in its way with ease, but runs through a full ammo supply in less than 10 seconds of continued fire.
  • Too Dumb to Live:
    • One of the guards asks for help from Gordon with one of those critters, who apparently got onto his buddy's head and are making him act all weird. Right on cue, guess who walks out. The guard then proceeds to talk to his "buddy" as if he's all fine and well. You can guess how that ends.note 
    • A security guard, true to the original, rushes the tentacles in Blast Pit with only a pistol. Fittingly, his name was Leeroy Jenkins.
    • Despite a scientist's warnings on the Tau cannon's instability, a careless security guard still manages to overcharge the gun, killing them both. The scientist was reduced to bite-sized chunks, and there was nothing left of the guard but a smouldering pair of boots.note 
  • Took a Level in Badass: Houndeyes. They didn't pose much of a threat in Half Life, but if you're not careful in Black Mesa they'll mess you up.
    • The Gargantuas, they weren't immune to explosion weapons in the first game, but the mod now grants them God Mode to all attacks outside scripted events.
    • The HECU helicopters are a lot more durable. Originally, they would die after being it from just one rocket. Now, they can take up to at least a DOZEN rockets before going down.
  • Took a Level in Jerkass: Some of the scientists and guards in Anomalous Materials are now short-tempered, egotistical, grumpy, or all three. Like the guard who witnesses you blow up Magnusson's casserole.
  • Video Game Caring Potential: Several NPCs that are there to demonstrate threats can be saved, and have lines if such a thing happens. You can even give a scientist stuck in a bathroom stall some toilet paper, making him thank you and granting the achievement "Brownian Motion".
  • Violation of Common Sense: Somewhere in the game, the player finds a busted gas pipe spitting fire down a hallway. Most people's first thoughts would be to turn the valve on that pipe to turn off the gas, but that causes the it to blow up in your face. You're supposed to find a sprinkler valve and turn that on instead.
  • Welcome to Corneria: Some of the friendly NPC dialogue to each other doesn't match up, or turns into unusual cases of Deadpan Snarker: "Do you have any idea what's going on?" "Yes, sir."
  • Wreaking Havok: Though there's no Gravity Gun, the mod adds the ability to pick up small corpses and gibs, meaning you can pick up dead headcrabs and throw them at living headcrabs to kill them. Several sequences seem designed to show off the physics engine.
    • Unforeseen Consequences has you throwing flares at zombies to light them on fire, since you don't have your crowbar at the time.
    • Surface Tension has you pick up and carry missiles to reload a turret.
Banzai PecanDESURABleed
Half-LifeScience Fiction Video GamesHalf-Life 2
Half-LifeFirst-Person ShooterHalf-Life 2
They HungerGame Mod IndexDay Hard
Half-LifeSteamHalf-Life 2
Black DahliaIBM Personal ComputerBleed
alternative title(s): Black Mesa; Black Mesa Source; Black Mesa Source
new edits
workshops
edit page
view source
random
TV Tropes by TV Tropes Foundation, LLC is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available from thestaff@tvtropes.org.
Privacy Policy
54355
37