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Black Mesa’s Xen delayed to December, but looking gorgeous

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Black Mesa, the fan-made recreation of the original Half-Life, is still missing its climactic final stage: Xen. In a new update, the dev team have shown some stunning new screenshots, but also announced a delay into December. 

Despite being almost 20 years old, Half-Life deservedly remains on our list of the best shooters on PC.

“We are going to need to push back our planned release of Xen to later this year, in December,” the devs say. “After taking a long and hard look at what we want to achieve, we have decided that this is for the best. We do not want to compromise on Xen’s quality in any way. That said, we consider December to be a do-or-die deadline,” so expect no further delays.

In cheerier news, check out these new screens:

As weird as Xen felt in the original Half-Life it’s now looking truly alien with modern technology. The devs also say they’ve taken a colour correction pass across the whole game, and added fully dynamic lighting, which should make a real difference to its atmosphere. So, although the delay is disappointing, it looks as though it’ll be worth it in the end.

Here’s theannouncement on Steam. If you can’t wait, you can play up to Xen right now by heading to Black Mesa’s Early Access page, where the story so far is available for £14.99 ($19.99).

For more on the Black Mesa team’s approach to Xen, check out their announcement.