With the single-player demo of Crysis freshly out, I couldn’t help but grab it and give it a spin. Now, most people have heard of Crysis; it’s the game that’s meant to redefine how good a game can look, etc. And it’s pretty hard to argue with this hype, because when cranked up onto the highest settings (and even the not-so-highest settings) it really is an incredibly immersive experience. This game represents a generation of graphics beyond the Xbox 360, beyond the PlayStation 3, and beyond any PC games before it; in pictures it looks great, and in motion it looks incredible.

But that’s not what’s prompted me to write this post. Because you see, Crysis is actually really, really fun, too!

Crysis has essentially taken the formula and groundwork that Far Cry set several years ago, and then expanded upon it. You’re on a huge, paradisal island again, and you’re free to tackle the nasties all over it however you want. You’re directed to areas via checkpoints on your map, many of which are quite far away; this means you have to make a choice about how you want to get there, which invariably involves deciding which of many routes through the jungle, beaches, cliffs, and roads you want to take.

Wherever you go though, you’ll encounter enemies. Instead of being placed along a path you’re guaranteed to go down as you’d expect in most first-person shooters, they have encampments and patrol routes all over the place: some are permanently based in camps, some drive around the island, etc. So you’re going to run into some of them.

It sounds very reminiscent of Far Cry of course, but because the enemy AI has been developed so much more and their locations on the island have been well chosen and integrated, each encounter feels a lot more dynamic and exciting; indeed, despite the sandbox nature of the game it feels like every last detail is scripted, even though the reality is that it’s not and it’s entirely unpredictable.

The other major advance from Far Cry is the high-tech suit you’re kitted out with. This is the bread and butter of the game, and allows you to play the game in four completely different ways (or a combination of them all). Your suit has four modes: armour, speed, strength, and cloak. Each mode uses up your suit’s general energy reserve in different ways: armour uses it when you take damage, speed uses it when you move insanely fast, strength uses it when you hit or throw something, and cloak uses it when you’re invisible.

The energy metre fills up again within seconds and you can get a lot of mileage from one metre if you play to each mode’s strengths. For example, if you stay still your cloak can last for over a minute, crawling will make it deplete about twice as fast, and if you run it’ll be gone in less than 10 seconds. Speed mode will bump up your normal running speed a touch without using any energy, but if you go into ‘speed of sound’ mode you’ll be drained within seconds, thus making it ideal for dashing between cover and quickly recharging. Armour mode naturally performs its best when under heavy fire, and strength mode is just begging to be used to throw stuff at people rather than just to punch them.

Cloak mode lets you play the game like a first-person shooter version of Metal Gear Solid, and is my personal favourite. The AI and environment is really geared towards playing the game in a truly stealthy way, so if you’re into that kind of thing like I am you’ll really love it. Playing it in this way becomes even more fun once you realise you can pick up practically anything and use it to beat your enemies to death. You can pick up rocks, turtles (and many other animals), enemies’ helmets, and pretty much anything else you can think of using for a good bludgeoning. Or if you prefer to do it the more traditional way, you can just sneak up behind them, grab them by the neck, and perform a brutal neck snap/throw combo. I hate to say it, but Solid Snake could learn from this guy.

But with all that said, if you don’t like the stealth gameplay so much the other modes will suit you fine. There’s no shortage of bombastic firepower lying around in caches and on corpses, which are an excellent accompaniment for your suit when it’s in armour mode (allowing more damage to be taken as you do your business). If you prefer to be a bit more like Predator or something, speed mode will allow you to dash between trees and other cover at the speed of light, playing a wicked game of psychological torture. Pop up, take an enemy out, and vanish again just as quickly.

And of course, if you’re one of those guys who used the gravity gun in Half-Life 2 all the time, you’ll love the increased power that putting your suit into strength mode brings. It’s no exaggeration to say that in this state you can pick up washing machines, tables, and essentially any reasonably-sized object you can find; then, of course, you throw them at your enemies with all your might, often cracking 90% of their bodies’ bones.

The fact that the game has an excellent soundtrack that crescendos, climaxes, and slows down during tense moments; fantastic sound effects; great enemy AI that makes each encounter dynamic and unpredictable; and a really strong general structure only adds to the quality, truly making Crysis feel more exciting to play than any single-player first-person shooter I’ve tried in a long time.

All-in-all, the gameplay in Crysis is very sandbox-like just like its predecessor’s was, but Crytek have taken the concept a lot further and made each potential encounter with the enemy more interesting, given you more ways of approaching each one, and of course if you want to go around the environment specifically tracking down encampments to commit genocide on then that’s up to you. The longevity value here is incredible, and I myself have gone through the demo a few times now – something I know a lot of other people are doing.

And this is only the demo. The media (and the demo) clearly shows that the enemies you face will change dramatically as the game progresses, and so will the environment. This may be a sandbox-like game, but it’s one fortified with a solid storyline and changes that’ll continually mix your approach to the game up. If the full game manages to keep up the standard of quality set in the demo, I can very easily see Crysis becoming the game that everyone remembers as the highlight of 2007 for the PC, not BioShock or the Orange Box (despite both being superb).

I highly recommend you check the demo out, with the only negative thing I can think of saying about it being the steep hardware requirements. I think it’s safe to say that pretty much nobody can hope to run this game with the ‘Very High’ settings smoothly on a high resolution, and many will be forced to opt for ‘Medium’. Do experiment with the settings, though; go as high as you can, and then try lowering the ‘Post Processing’, ‘Shadows’, and ‘Textures’ settings first. These seem to make the most crippling difference without actually making the visuals that much worse when lowered. I’m sure Tweak Guides will have a great guide up soon, too.

It’s actually Brütal Legend, but that faux ü character is a serious pain to keep typing. Still, the real point here is that the next game from Tim Schafer (Monkey Island, Day of the Tentacle, Full Throttle, Grim Fandango, Psychonauts…) and his buddies at Double Fine has been confirmed, following some rumours and denial a few weeks ago.

The rumours said that Brutal Legend would star Jack Black as roadie Eddie Riggs, presumably the main character of the game; whether this is voice acting or full-blown appearance recreation isn’t clear. It was also said that he “dies and must escape hell to reach rock heaven”, and that the gameplay is based around “puzzles and strategy in controlling multiple characters”

Kind of ambiguous, but I guess the article inside the magazine will reveal more. Puzzles and strategy were the primary element in Schafer’s earlier adventure classics, but in what capacity they’ll feature in Brutal Legend is anyone’s guess.

Whatever the case, I’ve not played a Tim Schafer game yet that I haven’t loved so I’ll keeping my eye squarely set upon this one. If anyone else has juicy tidbits to share, go ahead!

Update: Scans of the magazine have been awesomely posted by 1P Start, which I’ve mirrored just in case anything happens to them:

Page 1, Page 2, Page 3, Page 4, Page 5, Page 6, Page 7, Page 8, Page 9, Page 10

Lots and lots of information is contained, revealing a lot about the game and also the development process behind it. Sounds great!

Update #2: Oh, man! A video of Brutal Legend has been leaked onto YouTube, setting the tone of the game quite nicely. It doesn’t look at the game too deeply and shows off little in the way of characters/etc (apart from the intriguing-looking guy who speaks at the beginning), but the art style looks fantastic and I really look forward to seeing the HD version of this video so the details can really shine. Check it out!

Update #3: Heh.

Update #4: The video has been taken down as per a request by the suits; however, it’s still available on Game Trailers (Sorry Tim!).

Update #5: And at last, Sierra’s official Brutal Legend site is up, officially confirming the game at last (although press releases are apparently yet to circulate). Also includes a high-definition version of the trailer! It looks absolutely stunning. And this guy is already absolutely legendary in my eyes.

Although EA has unsurprisingly refused to comment, Digital Battle has received a tip that is alleged to be a document of planned features for Battlefield 3. The tip is a “three page document” that was “prepared for investors”, and “details basic features of BF3”.

Having been a huge Battlefield fan since the advent of Battlefield 2 in 2005, this is great news. Although I liked Battlefield 2142 a lot and thought it easily surpassed the gameplay of BF2, there’s no doubt in my mind that the world and atmosphere of BF2 was much better. It was kind of disheartening to leave behind the clear blue skies and sandy beaches of BF2 and go to the dreary, cold, frozen world of BF2142.

Fortunately Battlefield 3 is set to take place in the modern day like Battlefield 2, which I’m really looking forward to. Notable things mentioned on the big list o’ features include:

• It’ll run on a developed version of the 360/PS3 Battlefield: Bad Company engine, which has destructible buildings; click the image above for screenshots of it in action
• It’ll have 48 vehicles
• Most maps will be based in the Middle East, including a map called ‘Burning Baghdad’
• There’ll be extensive soldier customisation akin to an RPG
• There’ll be an evolved unlock system which not only includes 22 new weapons, but also camouflage, helmets, etc
• 80 players per server will be entirely possible

A teaser trailer is apparently slated for January 2008, so I guess we’ll see in a few months whether or not this is bogus. It does sound pretty good though, and I’m all for a Battlefield re-interpretation of modern warfare that incorporates the gameplay improvements in BF2142 and more.

Things that might cause some contention are that only NATO and the MEC will feature as playable teams this time around, and that there’re only eight maps. But considering most of the maps are said to be city maps, that this engine supports absolutely huge maps, that the servers could very well be hosting 80 people, and that the maps could be destructible, I reckon it’ll be more than enough. You just have to look at it in context.

As those who I chat to regularly are aware, I’ve just upgraded my computer and for the first time since late 2004 have a machine that is considered quite powerful. As such, I’m doing a hell of a lot of catching up by going through games I’ve had in my sights but’ve been unable to play enjoyably, and also getting into new ones.

At the moment I’m getting through Command & Conquer 3, which is extremely good like I guessed it would be and is definitely going to be reviewed once I thunder through to the very end. I’m going to start reviewing and commenting on newer games a lot more often now, since not being able to play them kind of put a damper on my ability to do so before!

Alongside Command & Conquer 3, I’m also getting back into Battlefield 2 which I played quite intensively in 2005 but soon grew fed up of it running like a dog on the lowest settings; now it runs very smoothly on 1600×1200 (boo to no proper widescreen support) with everything maxed out. I’d give the exact frames per second but I use vsync and it only reports up to 60; all I can say is that it’s always over 60. If you want to hunt me down, the name I play under is RyanJW and I stick to European servers – usually ones in the UK. I play pretty frequently.

Games I’m really looking forward to right now include Quake Wars and Team Fortress 2, both of which I’m almost guaranteed to spend a mountain of hours on. Once I get a new design for this place sorted out I’ll have a proper section on the sidebar which lists my game IDs, since it’s always more fun playing with people you have some kind of link with!

For those who’re interested, the specifications of my new machine are:

• Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 2.4ghz Socket 775 FSB1066 4MB Cache
• Corsair 2GB DDR2 XMS2-6400C4 TwinX 2×1GB
• Asus P5B Deluxe WIFI Socket 775 Core 2 Duo P965 FSB1066 DDR2 SATA Audio ATX
• BFG GeForce 8800 GTX OverClocked (600MHz) 768MB GDDR3 HDTV/Dual DVI PCI-Express
• 300GB 7200rpm PATA Samsung hard drive

The newest game I’ve actually ran on this new PC is Colin Mcrae: Dirt, which is incredibly beautiful and also has the usual solid, authentic-feeling Colin Mcrae gameplay. As always I initially did nothing but smash into things, compounded by the fact I was playing with a keyboard. It’s really satisfying once you get the hang of it though, and you realise that a racing game doesn’t always have to be about pure speed. Or even tipped in that direction whatsoever, for that matter.I couldn’t resist taking some screenshots of myself going mental and smashing my car into a thousand pieces, so look below for a tasty selection; click them for larger versions.

All screenshots were taken ingame with everything set to ultra. Running like this at 1920×1200 takes me down to 25 fps, although I could easily bump that up by running a few things on high instead of ultra. In all honesty, when I closed the game down to change the settings to high and then went back in I didn’t notice a difference at all; I think I only would if I literally took the same screenshot in both modes and compared directly.

More screenshots are available: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9

You might notice that some very fancy-looking blurring has been applied to the video, making it look very film-like. This isn’t a side effect of the fact that the screenshots are derived from a video I recorded, but is actually a real-time effect used throughout the game. The result is a game that looks a lot smoother than if it were running at the same frames per second without it as the elaborate blurring fools the eye in the same way that makes films and television programmes look totally smooth despite only running at 30 fps (amongst other things). In other words, running at 25 fps in this game doesn’t feel like running at 25 fps in, say, Counter-Strike: Source.

There’s a mildly insane deal going on at Savapoint at the moment, a shop I’d never heard until today but nonetheless seems legitimate going off a quick bit of Google research. Basically, you can get a bunch of games for free with the £2.99 postage being the only cost. I have no idea what their motive is here (other than that the games are obviously a bit old), but a partial list of games on offer is below the beautiful Beyond Good and Evil image below:

• Beyond Good and Evil
• Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory
• Brothers in Arms: Road To Hill 30
• Deus Ex
• Empire Earth
• Tron 2.0
• Rainbow Six
• Civilization: Call to Power II
• Starsky & Hutch

Now, as anyone who knows me is aware, I think Beyond Good and Evil is an absolutely fantastic game, and most who’ve played it reckon it’s amongst the best games ever made. I personally rank it alongside super-classics like Grim Fandango and Monkey Island, which should be an indication of how much I think of it – unless you’re an uncultured swine.

I seriously can’t recommend enough that you pick up this game. If it takes a free offer tempt you, so be it. Just play the damned thing, preferably on a console with as old-style television (it hides any graphical inadequacies better), but really anything will do. It was released on the Xbox, PlayStation 2, GameCube and PC so there’s not much excuse for not picking it up for one of them. Even if you went into a shop it’d probably cost you about £5.

Check out the free stuff page (includes non-game items), or ideally skip right to the Beyond Good and Evil page. You may also want to read my older post about Beyond Good and Evil.

A pre-emptive warning: This is a really long post. I feel I may just be talking to myself as I really have gone overboard, but hey, it’s my first proper post in ages – I might as well restart with a bang. If you’re only interested in the Twilight Princess pros/cons section, skip down to the bullet points.

As those who read my last post will be aware, I’ve finally started making some headway last week into the latest Zelda, Twilight Princess. It’s been a long road to get this far. The game arrived through my letterbox in early December and should have been accompanied by a Wii; unfortunately, stocks were way too thin for this to become a reality so it sat on my shelf for months. Then at the beginning of March, I walked into a Nottingham game shop and they’d just by chance had a delivery. People were already grabbing them and walking out the door, so I immediately pounced and asked them to save me one while I ran across to the bank. They obliged, and I had myself a Wii. Yay!

Sadly I realised I had no working TV in my room beyond a terrible 14-inch portable, so for a further month the Wii sat in the lounge being largely unplayed by myself due to being at work all day and having a family more interested in watching Sky TV all evening than watching me play Zelda. Weirdos. But then, a couple of weeks ago I saw that Samsung were offering a new range of CRT televisions (the ones with the fat backs) called “SlimFits”, which knock a third off the depth and thus make them easier to fit into fairly confined areas. Like my room, for example. So I grabbed myself a 21-inch one and set everything up.

Now, at first I was excited about Twilight Princess. But like many others, the opening turned me off quite a bit. Although the opening to Twilight Princess isn’t unexciting or lacking substance per se, it just doesn’t seem to draw you in that effectively. It takes a good while to get to the first dungeon, and everything before then is more based around setting up what is quite a complex storyline concept to understand – even by Zelda standards.

However, now that I’ve stuck with it and logged around 12 hours of (leisurely) play, I feel confident enough to write a fairly detailed round-up of my thoughts and make some comments on what’s right and wrong about it.

There’s one thing I want to address from the outset. Despite Twilight Princess’ sweeping excellent reviews, and despite it being a Zelda game, a lot of people seem kind of indifferent about the game – especially if they’ve only played a bit of the introductory sequence (which actually lasts a few hours). I was the same. But let me just assert this point: if you think this game isn’t going to be at least as good as Ocarina of Time and Wind Waker, you’re wrong. Okay? Wrong.

This is a true Zelda game. It includes everything that’s always been loved in the series, yet does it better. A lot of reviews obsess over the fact that it doesn’t do much beyond perfect what’s been done before, and that’s an understandable criticism. But make no mistake, it really does perfect the mechanics. This is Zelda at its absolute best, regardless of whether or not it’s only fine-tuning past gameplay styles (which Wind Waker also did, incidentally). Don’t let the introduction put you off – play the game. Once you get out of that pleasant but decidedly boring opening area and hit the Hyrule Fields you’ll start to get excited. Unless you have no soul.

With that said, let me go into the details. As I haven’t played enough of the game to give a full-blown review but have played enough to make a lot of strong observations, I’ll structure it as a list. I’ve also taken care not to really spoil anything, which I’m sure you’ll appreciate.

What’s good about Twilight Princess:

• It feels a lot like Ocarina of Time, yet crafts its own atmosphere which seems to reside somewhere between Ocarina-esque fantasy magic and a Wild West tone. Whatever influenced it, it works well.
• Nostalgic locations such as Kakariko Village make their return, complete with Death Mountain and Gorons. Places that aren’t the same by name also look and are geographically familiar.
• Despite some criticism for not having a live orchestral soundtrack, the music does sound great nonetheless and while there aren’t too many hugely memorable melodies to hum, when playing the music fits in beautifully – arguably more so than ever before. It also makes plentiful use of blending between tracks (people familiar with iMuse know the score), which is something that’d be harder to do as gracefully with live performances.
• Classic elements are back, ranging from the obvious ones such as Epona (who now rides way better than before) and your items, although they pretty much all have their own unique twists that differentiate them from previous games’ renditions.
• Cinematic presentation is frequent, with cut-scenes that seem much better than they have often been in the past. There’re also good, brief ‘setting’ camera pans when you walk into many areas. The whole game just generally seems a little less awkward than its predecessors when presenting story elements and puzzles.
• The game world is incredibly vast. At first I was a little worried that Hyrule Fields seemed to be split into areas rather than being wide open (a much celebrated feature of Ocarina of Time), but it seems that was just for storytelling purposes. Once you do a certain thing which I can’t reveal without spoiling, Hyrule Fields is an absolutely gigantic area that is presumably stitched together in a streamed fashion much like the world in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. While I can’t confirm this, taking half an hour as rumoured last year to get from one absolute end of the world to the other seems kind of believable.
• You often step into a world that is very much unlike the normal world. It’s interesting to see the contrast between areas in the two worlds, showing what the main game world would be like after evil has prevailed. It’s worth noting that both Ocarina of Time and Wind Waker did this same trick in their own ways, the former with time travel and the latter with an undersea adventure. Great stuff.
• There is a lot of world interaction and it changes quite frequently, so if walking around and talking to characters in villages and such is your thing you’re in for a great time. Similarly, there’re loads of little secrets and nuggets to stumble across.
• The dungeons are damned good. New themes seem to be in store such as snow, but the ones I’ve seen so far are the classic Forest Temple and a very hot volcanic place. The Forest Temple was a fantastic choice as it has a quirky tone to it that the past games have featured, is full of some refreshingly unique puzzle action, and of course has that nice forest atmosphere (which the music does a typically good job of conveying). In short, places that’re nice and interesting to explore, which is just as well as the puzzles here are downright fiendish.
• You don’t always play as a human, and in these instances the feel of the character is done particularly well. The set of moves you use as a human remain intact, but they’re converted to the animal’s physical capabilities. While it’d be easy to make playing as an animal feel like a sub-game and a bit shit, it’s been managed really well here and you’re unlikely to be unhappy about the times in the game when you’re forced into being that animal for whatever reason.
• An extremely good job has been done of making the controls work with the Wii. This is without a doubt the best game on the Wii I’ve played yet as far as control quality goes, and while the movements you make in combat aren’t necessarily realistic, they feel like it. For those who’ve played Guitar Hero, you probably know what I mean. Once you start learning the advanced fighting moves later into the game, you really get into it. It can’t be as enjoyable trying to remember all those moves on the GameCube controller (a good example being the “shove Nunchuk forward to hit enemy with shield” move).
• Interesting references to past games are all over the place, and they do a really good job of tugging your nostalgia strings. For example, an Ocarina of Time player walking into Goron City will immediately notice that the music has both the same style as the aforementioned game’s version and indeed works parts of the original’s melody into the performance. Likewise, those who fondly remember slicing up the chickens in Ocarina of Time and the pigs in Wind Waker will get a pleasant surprise (emphasis on surprise) when they persistently try to do the same in Twilight Princess.
• It looks like it’s going to be a bloody long game. Ocarina of Time and Wind Waker were long, but the meat of the game was over quite quickly and it was largely padding like traipsing over massive stretches of sea after that. At the moment I’ve been playing Twilight Princess for about 12 hours without wasting much time doing needless secondary tasks, and I’m still only a small way into the second dungeon. Bearing in mind there’s meant to be nine dungeons, clearly the “70 hours of gameplay” comments before the game was released might hold some weight after all. Especially if you do participate in the traipsing around finding every last secret.
• Your companion in the game isn’t a fairy like in Ocarina of Time, but she is nonetheless a great character to have around and has a degree of attitude that’s made her rather popular with the masses. I agree – she’s fantastic, both devilish yet lovable. Much better than either nothing at all or an excessively pleasant fairy.
• It just feels great. It’s one of those games that you look forward to spending an evening with while you’re sat at work or whatever, as opposed to something for just filling the odd half-hour. You’ll think of the places you’ve been in hindsight and feel a little warm and fuzzy. You’ll just want to get back in there whenever possible, until the game’s over. Not many games consistently manage that with me these days.

What’s bad about Twilight Princess:

• Like in all Zelda games, no voice acting of any kind is on offer here. Although certain key characters have continuous unintelligible noises, even that doesn’t occur for all characters and the vast majority are just silent. I think this is a huge missed opportunity, and while the tone of Zelda tends to favour no language-specific voice acting, there’s no excuse for having no sounds at all. Even applying unintelligible noises to all characters or at the very least races would make a huge difference.
• The Wii controls are great, but one area that’s sorely lacking is the pointer. Although the pointer is used relatively little in comparison to the motion sensitive stuff, it doesn’t feel as seamless. The biggest downside in my opinion is the integration of the Navi-like fairy that sits on your screen at all times when the pointer is enabled. That is, the only way to get rid of it is to disable the pointer functionality altogether, meaning you use the Nunchuk analogue stick to aim crossbows and such instead of the Wiimote pointer. I had to do this as while a fairy being on-screen at all times isn’t a bad thing in itself (it was done very well in Ocarina of Time), the fairy isn’t very good — it never changes size or anything. Instead of looking like it’s in the world with you, it sits in the foreground like a mouse cursor. It would have been infinitely better if they’d figured out a way to make it look like the fairy is flying all over the environment without sacrificing the precision aiming. Sadly, they didn’t.
• As you probably gathered from the first part of this post, I don’t approve of the introductory sequence so much. It’s not bad and actually does a great job of introducing everything in the game, but it somehow manages to introduce everything in a way that’s not wholly exciting – even the enemies. It’s only once you hit the first dungeon, the Forest Temple, that you’ll really start to get a taste for this game. While I have confidence in Zelda fans’ determination to give it a good try, I imagine this’ll turn off a lot of new players.
• Graphically, this is a GameCube game. Make no mistake, the sheer polygonic and textural detail in Twilight Princess isn’t even close to hitting the standard of your Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 games. While a fantastic job has been made of putting the best possible artistic direction and effects into the game, certain areas would be a lot more impressive – especially the ‘epic’ sequences – if the textures weren’t very visibly blurry, or you couldn’t see conspicuous jagged lines on the edges of everything (I’d imagine this is much worse when played through 480p on a HD television). The game may look fine and very nearly stunning on a CRT which is why I bought one, but it won’t age very gracefully at all, just like Ocarina of Time looks visually offensive to most people nowadays. It feels like they could have improved this for the Wii version in the case of anti-aliasing and other such basics.
• Minor graphical glitches seem to affect limited parts of the game, which do become quite conspicuous when you have a sharp eye for detail. For example, the beautiful day/night effects are often hampered by what looks like a restricted colour depth, with the gradients of the sky not being smooth. Make your operating system use a lower colour depth and look at some photographs to see what I mean. Also, flickering caused by the blooming (which otherwise works beautifully) sometimes occurs. Finally, the shadows given off by your character can be a bit queer and project in either unrealistic directions or suddenly change from projecting in one direction to another. These things won’t bother most people, but it gets on my nerves and I’m sure it will for a minority of others too.

I’ll write a proper review eventually, but for the time being that is basically what stands out most to me as good and bad in Twilight Princess; there’re certainly more things I could write for both categories, but that might get a little too detailed for what’s meant to be a summary. I’d really like to discuss the game though so if anyone wants to throw in their thoughts, please leave a comment. Likewise, if you agree or disagree with any of my points, please ask me to elaborate in a comment and/or add your own piece!

As some may be aware, a complete remake of Half-Life 1 for the Source engine has been in development for a couple of years. Although it initially looked really shoddy and I honestly thought the project would collapse like so many others, it looks like they have actually managed to stick through the hard times and the results are splendid, evidenced by a brand new teaser trailer that reeks of quality.

While there’s no real indication of how complete the game actually is, and judging from the lack of gameplay footage there might be some significant way to go, what’s been done so far truly looks amazing. The level production standards are clearly up there with the professionals (Including the trailer itself!), and they’ve seemingly tried hard to retain that Half-Life 1 tone, based in an isolated, prosperous secret facility overrun by invading creatures and soldiers sent in to wipe out everybody, including yourself and the other scientists working there (coolness squared, in other words).

Check out the Flash video, which can be found by scrolling down a little on the linked page and waiting for the short advertisement to play – ideal if you’re in a rush. You can also grab a high-resolution copy from FilePlanet if you feel like logging in and have a bit more time (Comment with a better mirror if you can!).

So yes, Black Mesa: Source has jumped fairly high up my anticipation list. Hopefully the game itself will meet the standards exampled in the trailer, effectively bringing us the Twin Snakes of Half-Life 1 (Twin Snakes being the GameCube remake of Metal Gear Solid 1, with up-to-date Metal Gear Solid 2 standard graphics and cutscenes). And you never know, perhaps the development team will incorporate the improvements in gameplay flow and presentation that Valve demonstrated in Half-Life 2; while I wouldn’t want massive sweeping changes applied to a winning formula, a team who knows what they’re doing could really spice things up by surprising you with things coming from the opposite direction you’re expecting (assuming you played Half-life 1) and such.