If you played the original Half Life, then you MUST play Black Mesa!!

My Mini-review:

If you were there back in ’98, ’99, then you probably had a similar experience to myself:

I played through the original Half Life in the week leading up to release. I played Half Life for the first time back in 1999. I fell in the love with the game and have played it through probably about twice a year ever since.

Playing through the original last week gave me a chance for a ‘last hurrah’ with a game thats been with me for 13 years.

I play through HL fast, run is always on and its always a kind of speedrun now (esp as the engine is so old and framerates so high)
It was also a chance to just watch all the scripted sequences again in preparation for BM.

Friday 14th – A Red Letter Day.
BM website was taking a battering, the official mirrors werent working, not even the torrent link was working.
Had left my PC on at home so I could RDP into from work at 4pm just to get the download starting so when i got home at 6 I;d hopefully be ready to go.

no joy, had to wait until around 6:45pm for a fast german mirror to pop up and max out my fiber 4.3MB/sec, took about 11 minutes ish

Installation – flawless.

Inbound…..
Utterly gobsmaked, just honestly grinning from ear to ear not only on my face but kind of inside as well, The sheer detail and ‘aliveness’ of the facility was incredible.
I was half tempted to just do the inbound tram journey again when I got to Sector C test labs just because I wanted to see it all again!

The whole of inbound was beautifully ‘alive’
I loved the Barney reference by the guard who meets you at the tram.

I particularly loved the dialogue sequence between Kleiner and Vance just before you head into the test chamber, it made HL1 and HL2 seem so much more homogeneous.

All of the level design, considering this was a volunteer group of basically part time/spare time amateurs is simply staggering.

You are at once ‘at home’ and yet somewhere new and it is a GOOD feeling that brought back so much nostalgia and yet so much desire to ‘explore’ this new, yet familiar environment.

Blast Pit was simply :O

Because of the advances in tech, the whole story was tighter, more fleshed out and fluid, It was a joy sometimes just chatting to the scientists and watching their dialogue with each other.

I was very impressed with the quality of the voice acting, It could have been really bad, but i was very suprised at how good it was and just how much more dialogue had been added to flesh out the facility and make the bond between HL1 and HL2 more solid. It defiantly makes for a better experience.

Some of the levels being tightened up and more focused was great and didn’t detract from the experience (On a Rail is soooo much better now)

Overall, quite possibly the greatest fan made mod ever (single player)
Brought back waves of nostalgia, along with the joy of discovering the new environment/puzzle changes that made it more than just a remake

Cannot wait now for Xen!!!!!!

You were legendary, logical, rational and always incredible to watch in a debate

Thanks for being such fabulous work mates, I’ve never felt more at home. Its been an awesome 7 months i shan’t forget.

All I could think about today was:

If your interested in running one of these events, be sure to stop by the main website PARKRUN WEBSITE

They post full race results and photo’s of every event and monitor personal best times as well as age average % performance monitoring which is outstanding for monitoring your performance and also for comparing against your friends/race buddies.

The Cardiff Parkrun can be found here PARKRUN CARDIFF

Here’s the ‘action’ photo’s of yours truly being mediocre and being overtaken by a guy pushing a pram and various small children! I really do hate running……

It was rubbish!! Ladies and gentlemen, exhibit A:

Many many years later (yesterday to be precise) I was scanning these old photo’s for prosperity and was really a bit bummed that the original was so shockingly bad (I thought it was cool as hell as an 18 yr old obviously!!)

So AutoCAD and Photoshop in hand I decided to re-work it digitally and see if it could look presentable to the modern world of 2010……

Altitude Logo 2010

Much Jaegermeister & Monster was had by all, along with copious amounts of vodka. Along the way we saw a rugby themed hen night (see pics), Gail (hello Gail o/ ) Jane and Lisa Webb and various other people we’d not seen in years.

Ended the night with Stuart and Kellie having a riotous laugh with Queens who are genuinely hilarious and a right good laugh!

Came home very drunk and very chipper at such an excellent night.