in comparison to half-life 1

The visuals are often endlessly praised and as a standalone project I would agree, but half the time it barely looks anything like half-life, I can understand trying to improve on an old game's visuals isn't strictly easy... if you're actually trying to stay true to the source material, what's gained in visual fidelity is unsurprisingly lost in visual clarity, scenes are often cluttered with tons of props making it difficult to study the environment for hostiles. Despite all that visual fidelity, it still comes at a price, some performance issues that were left unresolved.

The enemy ai makes it obvious the developers didn't properly study half-life, if you were to go back to hl1 and study their ai it honestly ends up being way smarter than a game from 1998 has any right to be, many little details went into them that you never notice, while I can understand emulating the ai 1:1 was going to be way more work than it's worth, I fail to be convinced that black mesa did anything short of copy and pasting various NPCs from hl2, with some minor modifications.

Some of the levels felt needlessly extended, with many stop gaps added for questionable reasons, I really enjoy half-life for how it allows you to breeze through the game at any speed you see fit outside of the intro bits and the few interruptions, for black mesa I felt as though I was set on a very tight path.

While the xen levels themselves were nowhere near to uhh... 'great' in half-life, I greatly appreciate its unique organic aesthetic, an unnerving and desolate world, in black mesa they've done away entirely with its original setting, instead opting for a deep sea themed sci-fi world. Xen ends up looking like an alien resort rather than a desolate borderworld that various creatures would desperately cling onto. As for the gameplay itself, I would agree that it's an improvement over half-life with one critique, while half-life's Xen was disappointing for many, I felt that it knew when was the time to wrap it up, in Black Mesa the Xen areas just drag on and on, becoming very tiresome by the end of it.

I have no crafty things to say about the soundtrack, I straight up think it's a major letdown to hl1's, whereas the original had a variety of suspenseful and upbeat music, Black Mesa's soundtrack is incredibly generic, ranging from sad pianos to dull riffs, it's just trying much too hard to be atmospheric rather than unique.

As a Half-Life 2 mod on ModDB this was an amazing accomplishment, as a product proudly calling itself a remake of Half-Life, it has quite a few nuances that never sat well with me.
Don't get me wrong: I absolutely get the appeal of this, don't let my dumbass tell you how to experience hl1's story, if the old school gameplay of the 1998 game doesn't do it for you and Black Mesa does, then more power to you! even the developers of this game believe that the best way to experience the game is to first playthrough hl1 and then Black Mesa.

Peak. I always recommend this to people looking to get into HL for the first time if they don't like the way that GoldSrc has aged. Genuinely one of my favourites of all time.

Great immersion, great gunplay, great soundtrack. My only gripes are with with the audio design (not adapting old HL sfx) and all the scientists looking kinda samey, but these are non-issues for most people. Also, the final chapter of the game runs really long, but that's been said to death.

Worth full price, if you're antsy to play it. You won't get many other AAA experiences like this for under 30 dollars.

Black Mesa (or half life Community) and developer team. I know you won't read this and never will but case you do since it would bé my last time playing games on Steam and focus on irl issues I'll still collect games and badges as an hobby, I have an special messages to say around.

I wish everyone an Happy New Year.