I admired Black Mesa Source.

Simply put this is the best mod ever made, and when you add On a Rail Uncut and Surface Tension Uncut you have a complete kick-ass package. For gaming veterans it's a trip down memory lane, for newcomers it's a good way to see how that entire Xen/Combine fuckup happened. It does have its flaws, but it rocks nonetheless. All we need is Opposing Force redone in the same flavor and we can die happy.

The first time I played BMS I was completely surprised at how much emotion and genuine fright it evoked in me. Me, who have played HL, OpFor, BShift and all new Half Lifes to death numerous times. I thought nothing could surprise me - and it stands as a great testament to the skills of the mod team and valve that Black Mesa Incident can still interest you, immerse you in itself and give you lots of fun even after so many years.

And it all ends in Lambda Complex this time.

I know I will get some flak for this, but for me the entire Xen part of the game was a bummer. Lots of Mario-like jumping, fighting a giant testicle on legs (funny thing, Valve designers openly admit that they were at a loss about how should Gonarch look like - and one of them come up with an idea of giant testicle running around), and a great showdown between you and a huge, pissed off psychic fetus that talked in slow motion ,were placated a little by cool ending sequence with Gman hiring you. Still it didn't connect for me.

Take this:
first part of the game is you being involved in a Resonance Cascade and its immediate aftermath. All looks well at the moment. You must escape, you hope to get help from the military and - surprise of surprises - HECU and Black Ops are here to kill you, not save you. You reach surface, are forced underground, you traverse old missile complex on a monorail, you launch a missile in hope to close the dimesnional rift, then you get beaten, left in trash compactor, you reach surface again only to find it to be a warzone. You try to find Lambda Bunker while the HECU begins to evacuate, bombardments tear into facility, and the feeling of being lost intesifies. Lastly, you try to reach Lambda Core in a deserted bowels of the facility infested with aliens in search for the science team that is rumored to have a cure for the alien invasion.

In a way, the game eclipses itself: You begin alone in dark corridors and you end up alone in other dark corridors. Simply put, the storyline, pacing and quality are top notch to this moment. You reach Lambda Core and there you hear that the onlyw ay to stop the invasion is to visit the borderworld Xen and destroy someone-or something- that is holding the dimensional portal open. No shit, it's up to you again. At this point you're considered something of a hero among the science personnel so they decide that you're the man for the job.

And here it goes. The last part of the game. Xen.

As much as I am a fan of HL universe, this was the part that was problematic for me. You enter other world, do a lot of jumping puzzles (ugh) and fight a boss that is weird...but not terrifying at all. Even though the Xen design was interesting, I was in for the survival horror in destroyed secret facility, not another one-man-army assault on alien world. It was the part of the game that stretched for way too long.

Now BMS ends before Xen. And developers say that they're working on Xen part and it will be a "game in its own right". Im curious, how many of you will play it? I probably will just for the old times' sake and to see whether they made it better or not. But that will be it for me. I loved the HL until Xen. Then it was a bland platformer.

So, what's your take on Xen Source?

Bear with me.

1) Automatic bunnyhop. This is so retarded it simply has to be removed. Seriously? We spent months to get movement good and timed. We spent years getting all tricks perfected.
Now the simple basic thing that everybody should be able to perform after some training is AUTOMATIC. Really? Are players that dumb now?

2) LOLadouts. This makes every game with them an easy cake for any veteran. Imagine, you don't have to get across the map to get LG or that overpowered new thingamajig for example(more on that in the next point), you GET IT FOR FREE. What is this shit for, I don't know. It's supposed to make newbies not vulnerable after spawn? If so GJ idiots, because this makes us veterans even MORE able to kill them. I get spawned with LG or HMG, I rack up frags from the start. Because, you see, the player still hast ho have SKILL to use the gun. GJ!

3) Heavy Mental Gun. This weapon looks nt that bad, albeit out of place when compared to other guns in QL. But that's a minor point. The real lol is: Hitscan, long range, 8 dmg. Also, available for loadout. Try to play any space map with it, or better AGAINST it. Just try. Also, in FFA that gun is a total joke, allows for farming everyone around without any special skill. LG required you to be much more precise, and had medium range. Required skill. This pepper gun is just a game-breaker.

4) AMMO PACKS!!!!!!!!!!!!! AGHUEXJFDSAFK!!!! This is where I began to explode. I mean, no more using brains? ammo packs for all of the shit? Holy crapeiro? Yeah, because learning different colors of ammo boxes and memorizing their placement was SO DIFFICULT. Is this game for retarded/disabled people?

5) No team damage? Nowhere? Are you...ahh. My brains topped working. I just hear a howling sound in my head, asking why, why, WHY? TD required you to THINK and AIM well. Because otherwise you killed or damaged your very own teamamtes. Can't have that with no-brain spamming noobs, can we.

6) Reduced ammo respawn. WTF? Let's get better! Let's make ammo NEVER DISAPPEAR! This way we will solve the problem of ammo packs forever! - this is a mental note for monkeys who devised this idea. I bet the next update will make ammo packs never expire. I mean, counting your ammo is for idiots, right? let's spam with neverending stream of ammo, right? RIGHT? Jesus Christ on a very long fucking stick, this is really a brilliant idea. MOAR WEAPON, MOAR AMMO!

7) Powerup POIs/item timers. Oh, here we go. Back in the day you had to know the VERY DIFFICULT and SO MYSTICAL times for all items and PUs. It was so hard some of us died. Really. Not.
Given how anyone past first grades of elementary should count well at the very least up to 100, the issue of these measly seconds was no problem for anyone. It was a matter of learning the times and keeping them. Something akin to taking your dog for a walk periodically.
But no, they had to remove that too. REMOVE THIS SIMPLE THING THAT ANY IDIOT CAN MASTER with a little bit of incentive and will. How's that? Man, now even a very dumb monkey (because even normal monkeys CAN COUNT) can play this game. We are all saved.

8) Icing on the cake: Classic is unranked. NORMAL QUAKE IS UNRANKED. Good, how nice. The noob friendly version that requires a tiny amount of skill needed to master original Quake allows you to hit insane accuracies and get easy wins. The mode that actually requires skill matters not, no stats. What for? Apparently, for the devs, If you play oldschool version you're so well versed in game mechanics that you should count all stats in your head. No hand-holding. REAL DEAL. Lol.

To summarize:

-This update won't bring new players because it allows veterans to be even more deadly. Because it is a lot easier.
-This update is for idiots who can't count, can't move and can't learn anything more than +forward and +fire.
-This update causes players who want to learn and old playerbase to leave in droves because it breaks every aspect of QL.

I TOLD THIS BEFORE, I WILL REPAT IT. What for, I don't know.

You idiots, you broke the game. id Software made Q3A and it was good. Then you started improving it. You ironed out bugs, fine. You added some shit, removed some thit, fine. Changed guns, fucked up but okay let's give you benefit of the doubt. But you started to CHANGE TOO MUCH.

You see, your basic playerbase was people who played Quake in its old iterations. They were used to oldschool mechanics, mainly because they SIMPLY WORKED for over a decade. How's that. I told it so many times that the only way for QL to stay alive is KEEP IT AS AN OLDSCHOOL NICHE FPS. With time, the players would come and the oldschools would stay and be happy. I told you that you should advertise it as a fast-paced, hard game for real men. Take this: If somebody is a fag who cant play, he will be a fag whether he plays DisabledQuake or QL or Q3A or QW. If somebody wants to learn, he will learn. If somebody wants to get better, he will.

But no, you decided to make it nnob friendly. As if such thing was even possible. You decided to make an easy route for you, forgetting that you're no Warsow or other BS. QUAKE is an enterprise and a LABEL that's been onboard the PC gaming bandwagon since 1996. It was a heritage to be proud of and expand upon. It had a huge, loyal playerbase of oldschool Quakers who were more than happy to jump back into the game.

Yet you blew it all away. You overthought it, pals. You overworked it. You overshot the target. Now you will pay. Your target customers are already leaving in droves, and noobs will get bored after few games and quit back to BF or COD.

Good job, please do a standing ovation for id. NOT.