Welcome to the second to last Black Mesa commentary chapter! And here we are,

In the final battle against the the Nihilanth! And boy, it's gotten a huge makeover since Half-Life.

The Half-Life Nihilanth battle was fairly simple (once you knew how to actually do damage, anyway.) there were three orange crystals way up high in the cavern that restored the Nihilanth's health. You had to destroy them in order to do damage. Meanwhile, the Nihilanth only had three attacks: he could shoot balls of electricity at you, spawn in controllers or vortigaunts to attack you, and he could shoot a teleport ball at you. If it hit you, you would be teleported to one of three other rooms, each with its own set of enemies, but after you cleared the enemies out the first time, they didn't respawn, so those rooms were safe.

Black Mesa Nihilanth doesn't have any of those attacks, they're all new. The arena is a lot simpler, too- HL's arena had all these jagged spikes sticking out of the ground you could take cover behind, as well as a number of bounce pads you could use to get to higher ledges on the walls of the arena. It also had shallow water for the entire floor, presumably to reduce fall damage, as HL's long jump module didn't do that automatically.

BM's arena is basically just a large, flat open expanse with a handful of rocks and crystals dotted around. It's a lot easier to navigate, but. Well. A little less... alien? And the lack of the bounce pads and ledges actually removes one of the most iconic parts of the battle, I think. But we'll get to that later.

Like I mentioned, the Nihilanth's attacks in BM are all new. He doesn't go all out at first, though, they come in phases.

The first thing he does is this sort of. Falling star type attack? These streaks of light that come down from above and explode. It's pretty easy to avoid.

As for our first plan of attack,

The Nihilanth's got that shield (that he didn't have in HL), and we've been taught that in order to deal damage,

You first need to take out the shield generators!

This doesn't actually get rid of the shield, though, like it did for the controllers. It just makes it so that you can damage the shield and take out chunks of it to hit the Nihilanth. (You can see in the picture above it's got that sparkly blue aura, while in the picture below, it just looks like glass or something.)

Right around now, the Nihilanth starts its next phase of attack: teleporting stuff in to throw at us. And this is all stuff from Black Mesa that it's teleporting in! Most of it despawns/gets teleported out pretty quick, but a few things stick around, like

This big chunk of a building with ammo, health, and batteries in it! Thanks for giving me more ammo to fight you with, idiot.

It's kinda hard to see what's going on here; I didn't take a very good picture. But the Nihilanth also starts like. Pulling up chunks of the ground to limit your ability to avoid attacks.

Finally after dealing enough damage,

The Nihilanth pulls up these three yellow crystals, and starts using them to heal. So clearly, that means we need to destroy them!

There's one!

There's two!

There's me getting hit in the face with a forklift the Nihilanth threw at me while I was trying to take a screenshot!

And there's three!

Now, all his defenses taken out, the Nihilanth whips up this windstorm, making this dark vortex...

And just sort of goes all out.

This attack just keeps repeating until you can do enough damage to him, but he calls down these explosions at the center of the room, then they sort of radiate outward in these fiery waves.

If you look closely at those pictures, you can also see his head is sort of... peeled open, like a flower or something. And this was the iconic part of the battle I miss. In HL, at this stage, you could actually use the bounce pads to jump into the Nihilanth's head, and attack it's brain with your crowbar. But you can't do that in BM, and it makes me sad. It feels like I can't get in that movie worthy dramatic final strike on it. This is like. The one area where Black Mesa falls just a little bit short.

Instead, I guess.

Well, I guess I'll just have to use my laser cannon to kill it.

And that is the Nihilanth battle! Next up, the final Black Mesa chapter, "Endgame"!