Black Mesa | Bonus | The Rarest Specimen

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Published on September 20, 2023 12:00:18 PM ● Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n49rxlDx8d4

Game:

Black Mesa (2020)

Duration: 22:59

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The end of a long journey.

I gave my strongest efforts to try and get both the Hat and the Pizza to the end of the game. And let me tell you--it was an UTTER NIGHTMARE. One I could not fully defeat.

Carrying a minimum of two items through the game, extremely cumbersome indeed.
And it all got worse in Xen. The amount of level geometry that is purely for looks and is not solid make a lot of blind spots where it's easy to lose the props, sometimes even in such a way you can't grab them anymore. As well, the water physics in Interloper were /really/ glitchy, and the game kept getting confused about where the buoyancy calculations should have been. In addition, in the latter half of this part of the adventure, I really felt like the Butterfingers-Moments were on the uprise, as Gordon kept dropping the items every other dash, and that was really frustrating.
But the TRUE nightmare was getting them through Gonarch and Gargantua's Lair.
To get them both through both areas, I literally had to exploit gaps in the creature's pathing AI, to where they got stuck on level geometry and rarely forgot I existed temporarily. The last stretch of the run from Gonarch with the collapsing bridge and the exit of Gargantua's Lair were the hardest parts to calculate a path through, and in part were only possible to me due to the aforementioned pathing gaps. And in the end, I also had to resort to another exploit, this one in the map, to which I credit a video by Just Chill from a year ago in teaching me how to do, as I relented and decided to look up strategies while trying to get the props out of there.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mV9O0naf_Ho
(also let it be known that just chill made that return-and-escape look a lot easier than it actually is) (i spent a REALLY long time on that part)

Also crediting this video, for how to get both props up the vents in the citadel;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zhHokgFBHuQ

And of course, saves were loaded many, MANY times. Gaben Bless the F6 Key and the Black Mesa save system.
However, in the end, the 8-Trampoline room defeated me. I was unable to take the pizza to Nihilanth again. Only the hat made it to the ending. And as much as that upsets me, I must accept it.

It should be noted, I did this run over an extended period of time, and not all scrunched together--in the time I've spent on this one run, you could've probably beat this game casually eight times over. It's been a long burn. And the time has finally come to concede defeat.

(At least though, I did the Cyanogen Plan this run and finished all the remaining achievements afterwards)

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