An update of the Half Life remake known as Black Mesa, brings us one step closer to getting the final Xen levels which would complete the experience that has been in development for well over a decade. It doesn't actually add anything new to the game, but it does update the engine so that it better supports modern graphics cards and new effects.
For those who don't know, Black Mesa is a faithful recreation of the original Half Life, but using a modern game engine that improves upon the original game's visuals dramatically. With new physics features and similar, it also expands on the original experience, adding additional puzzles and larger levels. The only thing that's missing though, are the final Xen levels. The rest of the game was released two years ago to much acclaim, but the Xen levels are needed to finish up the game properly.
We're not quite there yet, but this patch will help. It focuses on fixing crashes and freezes that were noted by gamers running Radeon 300, 400 and 500 series graphics cards. This won't be the last patch like this though.
"We will probably do one more 'Engine' release just before we drop Xen, in order to make sure that everything is running smoothly on everyone's machines," developer Crowbar Collective wrote (via PCGamer). "We want the Xen release to be as close to a simple content release as possible."
This could mean that we shouldn't expect Xen to arrive this year -- it wouldn't be a surprise, considering it's already been pushed several times -- but we are still inching closer and closer to a complete Black Mesa experience.
