Black Mesa: Source - Please tell me you've heard of this!

If you are a PC gamer and you have never heard of "Black Mesa: Source" then you should be ashamed of yourself! In a nutshell, BMS is a complete rebuild of the original Half Life utilizing the Source engine. I don't know about you, but I was seriously disappointed when I bought Half Life 2 and we were presented with that crappy Source based version of Half Life 1. Yes, the game used the Source engine to an extent, but none of the textures or models were rebuilt, so the game still looked just like it did when it was released back in '98. Don't get me wrong, Half Life is still a great game, but I don't load it up and play it on a regular basis because it looks so archaic by todays standards. What the BMS team is doing is building Half Life 1 Source the way Valve should have done it to begin with, and they are doing a great job I must say! Crappy mods come and go, but this mod is the real deal! Just a few screen shots and I think you will agree as well. In fact, the BMS team won the upcoming Mod of the Year award from ModDb two years in a row! Just after they won the award this year they released a teaser video of BMS in action, and it looks fantastic. I would also like to mention that the BMS team has developed an all new soundtrack to the game as well, which further proves that they are putting in the effort that a full Half Life rebuild deserves. Samples of the soundtrack are also available on their site.

Now for all the gaming "purists" out there I want to say that I know great graphics don't make a game great, but what is happening here is an update for an already great game. No matter how great a game is I just have a hard time getting into it if the textures and models look dated. For example, does watching TRON in any way compare to watching 300? The bottom line is you can become much more engrossed in a game when what you are seeing looks realistic. If I load up a game like the original Unreal (which is one of my all-time favs) I can't get into it anymore, simply because I find myself constantly making fun of the graphics I thought were mind blowing just 8 or 9 years ago. In fact, what I have discovered is the same people who claim that gaming has suffered because of the concentration on better graphics are the same people who for one reason or another don't have a video card capable of playing modern games. Listen, don't rag on modern games just because you are still running a Pentium II with a Voodoo graphics card. But I digress....

Do yourself a favor and head over to: http://blackmesasource.com/ Check out the screen shots, soundtrack and download the teaser trailer HERE for your own review and dissemination. This game has been in development for a LONG time, and I am hoping to see a release very soon.