Recent reviews by JS21O3

Black Mesa is a great re-imagining of the original Half-Life. It builds upon the foundations laid by the original game to create a more believable yet still recognizable world. It also streamlines a few areas and improves the cohesion between the different locations.

The Xen levels (still in beta as of writing this review) are almost entirely different from the ones found in the original Half-Life. They look a lot more like an alien world than in the original and have had their length in regards to playtime greatly increased. The Xen levels also introduce new enemy variants and adds a bunch of interesting details.

Gameplay wise it remains mostly true to the original game but also takes its fair share of gameplay elements from Half-Life 2. This is quite noticable in the behaviour of certain enemies. The Crowbar Collective also seems fond of HL2's cable puzzles as those feature a prominent role in the new Xen levels.

Combat against the Xenian aliens is fun and similar to Half-Life 1, but combat against the human soldiers can be a bit of a chore at times due to their high damage, accuracy, and mobility. This often forced me to move carefully and take shots from a distance whilst peeking from cover like in Counter-Strike. Luring enemy soldiers into mines, explosive barrels, and turrets became a staple move during my playthrough.

The combat against the human soldiers suits what the game is going for in terms of being more believable than the original game, but I much preferred the running-and-gunning in the original Half-Life as that allowed me to use more of the weapons and playable space in a creative way.

Still, I recommend Black Mesa to any fan of the original Half-Life and its sequels.

UT99 is a classic multiplayer Arena Shooter that is a must-play for fans of the FPS genre. It features good bot support for offline play and the behaviour of individual bots is customizable. The gameplay has a high emphasis on mobility as you traverse the maps to pick up health, weapons, ammo, and power-ups whilst dodging incoming fire.

UT99 has a good roster of interesting weapons to choose from which are all distinct from eachother. Most weapons except for your starting weapons spawn in pre-defined locations around the maps for you or your opponents to pick up. The roster contains a mix of hitscan, projectile, and utility weapons each with multiple fire modes.

There is a diverse selection of maps to choose from all of which vary greatly in size, complexity, and theme. This is combined with a great and memorable soundtrack that helps set the tone for each map.

A note of caution however: This game requires a community made fix in order to run properly on modern systems. This can be found online (Search for "ut99 modern systems" or "ut99 updated renderer") alongside guides on how to install them.