Hmmm, so....if you have been PC gaming a while you might remember a little gem from Violation called Freespace: The Great War followed by the even better Freespace 2. If you found those games enjoyable, you will enjoy this game...the space combat is fantastic and its pretty fun. I admit, it IS repetitive and kind of drags out, the ability to just explore the sectors would be more fun than a FTL style march to the last sector.

Overall, it was fun and well worth the price.

GPU beware: this is Unreal's engine, its great to look at, but your beloved 1060 6GB will struggle...hey, it was time to upgrade anyway.

So you think, I want a newer rollercoaster tycoon game.

You buy this.

You're barely able to figure out how to build. You keep googling things to ensure your not an idiot. It quickly becomes a chore...you uninstall it and realize how far ahead RCT was and just play that instead.

The time and energy that went into Black Mesa by the Crowbar team definitely showed a strong desire to keep the game close to the original. Although, picking up a game with a source engine in 2023 made it seem already dated, but compared to the original source it looked drastically better.

The game was a joy until Xen. The artistic choices on the level design made the ending of the game extremely long in comparison to the original. While the original game was unfinished, I'd argue the old team at Valve would of made different choices for designing the end of their game. I found myself extremely frustrated with the complexity of the levels and it took several runs to get through it.

I do recommend it, but if you uninstall it after exploring Xen for a hour...I wouldn't blame you.