As Half-Life turns 20, Black Mesa unveils a reimagined Xen

On this day, 20 years ago, Half-Life was released. Makes you feel old, doesn't it? It's because you are old, you wrinkler. November 19th, 1998 - what were you doing then?

Anyway forget that, there's a new Half-Life game in development. No not Half-Life 3, although if Half-Life were 30 years old I could have written "Half-Life 30 today", which for a moment reads as "Half-Life 3", which is really exciting, isn't it?

The new game - or part of a game, really - is Xen, the final piece and pièce de résistance of Half-Life remake Black Mesa. But Black Mesa's Xen is much more than a simple remake of Half-Life's Xen.

Black Mesa's Xen consists of almost entirely new and original content, and lasts six hours rather than about half-an-hour, as in Half-Life 1. It's gorgeous too - looking every bit a 2018 game rather than retro remake.

But it's not quite done. "Our goal is to release Xen on Steam in Q2 2019," wrote developer Crowbar Collective in a Steam update post. "This will allow us to finish Xen to a place where the entire product is stable, smooth, and most importantly... fun!"

You don't have to wait for Xen in order to play Black Mesa - it's on Steam Early Access now, and has been for a few years. It's a project which has been around for yonks, and it occupies a fascinating position as a total remake of a Valve game which Valve said OK, you can sell it as a standalone game (even though it's our game you're effectively reselling).

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