In support of Crowbar Collective, Valve allowed the game to be sold on Steam. Black Mesa has been accessible in an unfinished early-access version since 2015. After overwhelmingly positive community reviews, the project has evolved into a standalone remake. With an initial release window of 2009, Black Mesa originally debuted in 2012 as a game mod in Half-Life 2. Related: Death Stranding's PC Release Has Bonus Half-Life HeadcrabsĪccording to Steam, Black Mesa has been released in it's completed 1.0 form and is currently available via the Steam client.

In fact, fans were so ecstatic about the newest installment in the series that Valve released the complete Half-Life collection ( Half-Life, Half-Life: 2, Half-Life 2: Episode One, Half-Life 2: Episode 2) free-to-play on steam.

Now that the game is just a few weeks away from launch, excitement is buzzing about the gaming community, and nostalgia for the original series couldn't be higher. Valve's Half-Life: Alyx announcement came as a pleasant surprise, considering fans doubted the community would ever see a 'Half-Life 3'. Volunteer developers banned together to form Crowbar Collective, a small game development team, with the hopes of producing a high-quality remake of the beloved game. The release of Black Mesa couldn't come at a more opportune time. In the words of the Crowbar Collective: “We feel it will take us considerable time to get the last 15% up to our standards, and putting a time estimate on it would be a total guess.After 15 years in the making, a fan-made high-definition remake of Half-Life, Black Mesa, has officially released. Even though there is a clear estimate of how much percentage of the game is done, there is no confirmation on when the product will upgrade to a final version. Why put a remake of a game this old on Early Access? Well, the team plans to make some improvements to the base game and is not yet finished with the final stages, which are incidentally my least favorite parts anyway. It’s great to see the Black Mesa research facility in renewed, graphical splendor and it makes the various zombies and other monsters you will be fighting a lot more threatening than before. The most apparent upgrade this reimagining brings to the table is that the engine has been changed from GoldSrc to the much-newer Source engine, as well as all the visual upgrades one would expect.

One issue I have with it, though, is that Half-Life has become a tad difficult to run on modern systems, so I am quite happy to announce that the fan-remake Black Mesa has just released on Steam Early Access. I have praised the series on this website in the past and the first entry into the franchise still stands as one of my all-time favorite games.

It’s been seventeen years since Valve first rocked the (PC) gaming scene with the release of the beloved first-person shooter Half-Life.

Black mesa steam