I just. really love Black Mesa. It's a really good game and you should all go play it. But since no one in my family really has an interest in this sort of video game, I'm gonna ramble on about it here as I play it again. (So you get screenshots, too!)
I think, perhaps, the reason I like the game so much is because despite the fact that Gordon never utters a word, you can still feel so much emotion in the game. You can feel the raw terror as you first see the affects of the resonance cascade in the "Office Complex" chapter, the pride before the fall in "Apprehension," the restored confidence in "Questionable Ethics," and the building sense of finality in "Lambda Core." Best of all is the fact that- at least for me, anyway- this emotion remains, even revisiting the game. I can't tell you how many times I've played it now, but every time, I still get nervous creeping through abandoned cubicles, I still get sad when a wounded ally insists I leave him behind, I still get a rush of furious adrenaline as I wait for my opening to launch a missile at the helicopter firing at me. I get a lot of people frequently telling me that they can reread my books and still be made to laugh or cry at certain points, despite knowing it's coming, and that's the way I feel about Black Mesa, and the Half-Life series in general.
All this said, if I've convinced you to go play the game, you ought to stop reading this now. I'm gonna be sharing a lot of spoiler-y screenshots and talking a lot about plot. Or, if you're still on the fence about it, you're probably safe to read at least a ways in to get a feel for what the game is to make up your mind.
But anyway. I'm gonna get to fangirl gushing now.
Inbound
I didn't really take a whole lot of screenshots for the "Inbound" chapter. You don't really do a lot, just sit in the tram car lol. I still think it's really good worldbuilding, though, just because it really lets you get a feel for what the Black Mesa Research Facility (will be referred to as BMRF in the future, to differentiate between it and when I refer to Black Mesa, the game itself) is, both through what you get to see and what's said over the intercom. I think, personally, my two favorite parts are where the intercom talks about being safe and getting radiation checkups as the tram rides over a big pool of spilled toxic waste (Oh, the irony), and the bit where it mentions the mandatory employee decathlon. The second one I like because it explains why exactly Gordon, some random scientist, is capable of doing some of the things he does- especially because Black Mesa takes a "learning on the job" approach rather than the option to play a tutorial that the original Half-Life offered. (I do miss the tutorial, though. It was set up really cleverly- Gordon at the hazard course, learning to use the HEV suit!)
I did take a couple of screenshots, though:
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A brief shot of Barney Calhoun, Gordon's best friend at the BMRF, who still owes Gordon a beer, and is also just as late to work as Gordon. (Fun fact for you all: in the original game, this wasn't Barney, but just a generic security guard. He was later reconnected into Barney Calhoun with the release of Half-Life: Blue Shift, where you get to play as Barney on his own adventure to escape the BMRF! If, at this point in Blue Shift, you turn around, you can actually see a tramcar go by with (a rather low poly) Gordon Freeman model go by!)
