Half-Life is the essential PC shooter. Valve’s game is the FPS that launched a thousand imitators, as it blends unique immersive storytelling with some of the tightest weapon controls ever put to screen. After playing Half-Life for myself it’s tempting to say the shooter hasn’t aged a day, but it has. This is why the fan remake, Black Mesa, is such a standout alternative and follow-up to Valve’s original. If you’re yet to play it or think it’s time for a replay then I’ve got good news, as Black Mesa just got a massive update, and the game is currently 80% off too.
Black Mesa might not come from Valve itself, but the team at Crowbar Collective might as well have. The FPS game has over 100,000 Steam reviews, 95% of which are positive, and it’s commonly touted as one of the most faithful remakes you can play today.
More than ten years since Black Mesa first arrived, the new Necro Update is here with some key changes, plenty of rendering improvements, controller support on PC, and UI changes too.
Black Mesa Necro patch key updates
A lot of changes come to Black Mesa as part of this patch from Crowbar Collective, but we’ve listed the big changes below.
- Improved performance of the game (Vulkan, UI optimization, New Renderer/New Post Post Process Optimization)
- Fixed cases where game would crash on startup
- Fixed UI flickering and artifacting
- Fixed crash in the first map of Interloper that players were experiencing
- Improved controller support using Steam Input
- Fixed hitch when weapon decals are first applied to gun
- Re-enabled weapon decals by default
We also got a little update on the Half-Life Blue Shift remake, which has been coming out in parts for some time now, showing us just what the team has been working on with Chapter 5: Focal Point.
The Black Mesa Necro patch is live now, as the Half-Life remake is also 80% off until Monday April 22, so expect to pay $3.99 / £3.35 right here until then.
If you want to try more than just Black Mesa, we’ve also got some of the best old games you can easily play on PC right now, alongside some great zombie games to get stuck into as well.
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