November 24th 2025
It does hold up well, it's very tightly designed although it really does start going downhill as the end of the game approaches, bit by bit and then of course once you get to alien land they dark souls 1 it up and the level design is no longer sleek and well designed. In the rest of the game the levels are designed so nicely, introducing something new, expanding on it in some fun ways, it's not quite to the level they had going in portal, but it's harder to design precisely in a shooter than in a straight puzzle game. Speaking of puzzles, the puzzles did their job of breaking up the shooting sections very well but they didn't do too much else for me, they were engaging and there was a decent variety but they didn't wow me too much. I think what this game really excels at is the atmosphere, especially in the escape sequence, somehow I was tense pretty much the whole way through, they struck a great balance between disempowerment and letting the guns feel good, apart from the shotgun, wet fart most of the time, you going down so quickly makes it really feel like you're being hunted and in danger all the time. Final area especially that one penultimate boss guy who shits out 15 tiny little guys the same colour as the floor was awful awful and the level design was mostly ass, apart from a few rooms in the factory area. There's a very thin coating of jank over the whole game, thinner than you'd expect from a game of its time but since the rest of the game is so tight it sticks out more. Black mesa probably fixes all these issues and maybe when I'm 32 and I'm no longer trying new things I'll play it but for now there's games to play