Game:

Black Mesa (2020)

Duration: 20:38

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10

Can you beat Black Mesa without a single jump? I set out to find out, and in the end, the answer was a resounding "yes kinda sorta." Enjoy!

Music used:
Emapea - Feels Good
Evil Needle - Cloud Zone
Clem Beat'z - Love
Shag - Cyan
Teddy Roxpin - Oh Let's Ride
Q Funktion - Like I Usually Do
Teddy Roxpin - Keep It Rollin
Emapea - Strictly Wax
Shag - Happiness
Emapea - Outro

STORY:
I played Black Mesa back in the day when it was first released, and famously back then, it was known the game would crash around Surface Tension. Once I reached that point myself, I think in my mind I treated it a bit like the kill screen in Tetris and never went back to it.

Then, quite recently, all these years later, a friend of mine said he was enjoying Black Mesa on his STEAM DECK, and it inspired me to go back and check things out. But, given my propensity for completing games without jumping (Half-Life 2, Master Chief Collection, DOOM 2016 and Doom Eternal), I elected to take the insane approach of attempting Black Mesa without jumping on what was essentially my first go.

I ran into a few interesting areas to be sure throughout the campaign, but ultimately I made it to the end without a single jump. What you're watching is effectively myself making everything up as I go along. Normally, that lack of polish would irk me, but I found this project to be utterly charming to work on. The purest form of problem solving and creativity on display.

NOTES:
- First and most pressingly, the beginning of Residue Processing. I was brimming with confidence up until this point in the project, at which point it took a stark halt when I remembered this area exists. I played around with it a fair bit, but I couldn't see any other way through beyond utilizing God Mode to reach the ladder.

I had mixed feelings about it at first, but I decided to present it honestly, not dwell on it, and imagine a sizeable asterisk next to the main title to make myself feel better.

- The health and ammo count won't always line up harmoniously. I tried to film every obstacle from the start of the game to the end in rapid succession to give the impression of a full playthrough, but some clips needed redoing here and there.

- There may be small obstacles missing here and there. Getting back to pressing the switch on Blast Pit or walking across a pipe in Forget About Freeman or running into the final portal in Lambda Core, for example. There may be some setup clips missing, like the trashcan propping up the pallet on Power Up. Apologies for that. I think eagerness got the better of me at a few points during filming and editing, but nothing crucial is missing.

- Obviously, there's no Border World present! I've played through the Border World and may eventually give it its own video, especially considering I've already conquered Xen without jumping. But I was slightly disenchanted by that section of the game, entirely because I'm so used to the original Half-Life. Black Mesa feels a bit like a game with Half-Life elements, so it wasn't 100% my cup of tea.

Not to mention all the obstacles in Interloper in particular suffer from being a touch lackluster when seen through the no-jumping lens. But if I gather up the proper motivation, I may just finish the entire game one day.

#blackmesa #halflife #nojump

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