I was planning on doing more comments on my own playthrough of Black Mesa, but then I went and watched the Xen trailer again... and again... and then again a few more times... and I have some stuff to say about it.

[There should be a GIF or video here. Update the app now to see it.]

First of all: LOOK HOW PRETTY IT IS LOOK AT THOSE INCREDIBLE TEXTURES LOOK AT THAT LIGHTING LOOK AT THE GONARCH'S RUNNING SEQUENCE LOOK AT IT ALL JUST LOOK AT IT

And now that we've gotten that out of the way, what I want to point out is mainly just one thing- it looks like they're putting a TON more emphasis on the whole "we sent research scouts there, but they never came back" part of it. I mean, in the original Half-Life, you'd find the occasional corpse in an HEV suit lying around with an ammo container and a medkit or something next to it, but that was about it. Now, it looks like they're adding in WHOLE RESEARCH BASES that got torn apart, AND A FREAKIN HEV ZOMBIE which looks INCREDIBLE and I CANNOT WAIT TO FIGHT IT. BEAT UP MY EXPLORER BROTHER TURNED ZOMBIE WITH MY CROWBAR.

Also, I can't say for certain, but  it looks like they might adding more puzzle aspects to the Xen chapters! I mean, it's really not a puzzle heavy game, but still, I think the Xen chapters in the original were the least puzzle-y of all the chapters. But still! I'm excited!!

I cannot reiterate this enough.

I am so excited.

So you can rest assured that when Xen comes out, I'll be putting a lot of comments here.