Black Mesa’s Xen Levels have been released – Half-Life has been revived

Black Mesa is the Half-Life remake that fans want, and Valve won’t deliver, and now the project is in a content-complete state, with Crowbar Collective releasing the game’s “Xen Levels” in the early hours of this morning. Now, Black Mesa can be played from start to finish, making the game a few patches away from its final release. 

Instead of simply remaking Half-Life’s original Xen levels, Black Mesa’s developers decided to do something different. These levels are amongst the least popular in the entire Half-Life series, so Crowbar Collective designed to improve them with new level designs, combat encounters and gameplay. The game’s main story beats remain the same, but players should have a lot more fun playing through this late section of the game. 

Today marks the release of Black Mesa version 0.9, with version 0.91 being planned in the near future with bug fixes and new achievements for the game’s Xen levels. Further in the future, version 1.0 will deliver an improved AI, Steam Workshop enhancements, bug fixes for the entire game and a retesting of the game’s multiplayer component. This update will remove Black Mesa from Steam Early Access. 

After Early Access, Crowbar Collective plans to release an “Earthbound” update for the game which will make sure that the early levels of Black Mesa fully utilise the game’s graphical features and improve gameplay where possible. The game’s developers have called this planned update “Black Mesa: Definitive Edition” internally, though the update will be free to users.