Half-Life remake ‘Black Mesa’ releases Xen Chapters

This has been an exciting year for Half-Life fans, not just because of Valve’s return to the series with Half-Life: Alyx, but also thanks to Black Mesa, which officially began wrapping up content development over the summer. The full version of Black Mesa’s ‘Xen Chapters’ went into public beta just two weeks ago and now, the full, polished version is rolling out to all owners, not just those who have opted in to the beta.

In an announcement today, the Crowbar Collective revealed that the “polished and tested version of all Black Mesa” is now rolling out on Steam ‘mainline’, meaning you don’t have to opt-in to the Public Beta build to play all of the content. As the developers put it, “if you have been holding out for Xen, this is what you have been waiting for”.

With this update, the full version of Black Mesa is now available outside of the beta channel. This update also implements feedback to improve the game’s difficulty, increase player guidance, fix bugs and increase performance in some areas that were proving troublesome before.

Black Mesa is still technically in Early Access and this latest build is listed as version 0.9. Over the next little while, the developers will continue collecting feedback and squashing any remaining bugs. By the time the 1.0 ‘release’ version rolls around, the Crowbar Collective hopes to implement the groundwork for a future multiplayer mode, make any necessary improvements to alien AI, implement Steam Workshop support and add in additional refinements and fixes throughout the entire game.

You can read the full update and see the development roadmap on Black Mesa’s latest Steam Community Update, HERE.

KitGuru Says: Black Mesa is wrapping up content development at the perfect time, leaving a nice window to get through Gordon’s original 15-hour journey ahead of Half-Life: Alyx, which takes place between Half-Life 1 and Half-Life 2. Are many of you planning on jumping back into Black Mesa now that it is content complete, or will you be waiting for the 1.0 release in the near future?

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