Black Mesa, a fan remake of Half-Life that has gotten the official go-ahead from Valve, has finally added the Xen chapters that make up the latter missions of the original game.
Perhaps the most infamous part of the original game, the Xen levels saw Gordon Freeman transported to an alien world where he needs to fight monsters to escape. While the idea was sound, it's often considered the worst part of Half-Life. When it came to remaking it, Black Mesa wanted to be sure that the segments weren't nearly as bad. When the game originally hit Early Access back in 2015, the campaign ended right at the start of the Xen levels. Now you can play through the entire campaign, even though the game is still going to be in Early Access for a little longer while the devs work on final bug fixes and achievements.
As for the roadmap, we got to learn a bit about what's next. The next major update will be to version 0.91, which mostly focuses on two things. The first is making sure the game-breaking bugs are polished, while the second is adding achievements for the Xen portion of the game. There's no timeline on when this will be launched, but the steam update notes it will be "as soon as possible."
The second major update will be to version 1.0, and out of the Early Access phase. Once again, this is mostly just a polish update, making sure various systems, such as the AI and multiplayer, are working as intended. There is also a plan to double-check on the Workshop and make sure mods are working as well. The developers noted that, after the game launches into 1.0, they also plan to go back and touch up the earlier levels and make some graphical improvements to them.
Black Mesa is currently available exclusively on PC for the price of $19.99.
