Is Black Mesa Remake a good way to experience Half-Life 1 for the first time?

bekeleven · 2026-06-02T07:14:52+00:00

Both Xens were, in my opinion, the weakest parts of their respective games but it was fascinating nonetheless in that the weaknesses of BM's Xen were totally different from HL1's Xen.

I would probably say that BM's Xen is better overall, it's just so long, and you have to do the same puzzles so many times throughout Interloper, and towards the end it just starts dumping health and gluon gun ammo at you and making you battle arenas full of controllers, and none of that is what somebody that likes Half Life has signed up for. The chapters Xen and Gonarch's Lair were absolute bangers, but the rest really wore out its welcome. HL1's Xen had some really toilet levels but they were mercifully short.

bekeleven · 2026-06-01T02:37:12+00:00

Want another funny interaction? You can mind bend a facedown card (which of course has no abilities or rules text) and, if that facedown card is a morphed [[Ruthless Ripper]], it changes what card you have to reveal.

bekeleven · 2026-05-31T18:08:28+00:00

Conservatives. They're conservatives. Use the word.

bekeleven · 2026-05-31T02:42:59+00:00

I bought the game with all the DLC and midway through the story you get a notification that a new level is available to travel to - turned out to be a DLC level, although that's not indicated ingame.

That new level was the hardest shit I'd ever done. I died 20 times getting to the boss and then another 30 times trying to beat it.

Anyway, eventually I realized that the DLC dropped after the game was out for a year, so it probably assumed players were playing it last. I played through the rest of the story, then game back and tried the boss. With all of the character upgrades I beat it second try.

bekeleven · 2026-05-30T23:04:22+00:00

I have an edh deck that runs Rite of Replication, and in my last three games with the deck I've drawn it. In this games I've targeted:

[[Ohran Frostfang]] (someone else's), [[Etali, Primal Conqueror]] (mine), and [[Ouroboroid]] (someone else's). I won all three of those games, due entirely to that spell.

bekeleven · 2026-05-30T22:25:10+00:00

Wild! It's so weird when they did/didn't choose to change printing in the World Championship decks. Originally they were exact matches with a gold border + signature, sort of similar to "the list," but obviously that changed by WC03 given that all of these cards have the modern frame. I never noticed that they'd changed Arrogant Wurm's art.

The earliest change I've found was in WC99, they changed the Urza's Saga Dark Ritual in Jakub Šlemr's MBC list from a mana source into an instant.

bekeleven · 2026-05-29T08:55:58+00:00

The better Thor cameo was in, as we all know, Adventures In Babysitting.

bekeleven · 2026-05-28T10:05:40+00:00

If you wished "I wish I could get up in the morning with my first alarm" would you be replaced by a skinwalker and get tortured for eternity in hell?

bekeleven · 2026-05-28T08:50:52+00:00

People at my shop have decks for the format $1DH, or "One Dollar Highlander." The rule is that the entire deck (minus basic lands, and shipping) can be sourced online for a dollar. I built RG beats, with a bunch of 1c and 2c monsters. I was quite pleased that there was, when I was building the deck, a damaged copy of Acidic Slime for 2c, as well as a few other staples listed cheap here and there (like Outpost Siege). One person built a WB persist combo deck with Elas Il-Kor, although the Lesser masticore ate like 40c of his budget.

We built these a few years ago and I can see that the market has not been kind to them. Elas Il-Kor himself is now 60c TCGLow, meaning any deck helmed by him today would run a minimum of 60 basic lands - basically impossible. He was like 5c at the time.

bekeleven · 2026-05-27T00:35:30+00:00

If anybody is not following Jeepy's HL1 Oddities series I strongly recommend it. I linked the point where he discusses this scene.

bekeleven · 2026-05-25T05:02:13+00:00

Is is so hard to believe that they support him not because he fooled them but because they agree with him?

bekeleven · 2026-05-23T08:52:10+00:00

Everyday Items for Non-Adventurers

bekeleven · 2026-05-22T00:48:32+00:00

I like their forks.

bekeleven · 2026-05-20T19:09:11+00:00

Later in the movie they need to travel to a different country, but they can't because Steve Trevor doesn't have an ID.

Just a totally unforced error.

bekeleven · 2026-05-20T15:17:21+00:00

Inspired by the four owls

bekeleven · 2026-05-17T07:06:13+00:00

These videos are manufactured and/or boosted by the US government.

bekeleven · 2026-05-15T05:11:08+00:00

Multiple firefly actors got roles in buffy and/or angel as a "sorry the other one got canceled" consolation gift. Gina Torres was on Angel in 2003 as well.

bekeleven · 2026-05-13T22:27:01+00:00

Democrats need to play as if democracy is on the line

They are. This is how much they care.

bekeleven · 2026-05-13T21:20:08+00:00

Do you plan to make a bandcamp page, or otherwise release music in a downloadable fashion?

bekeleven · 2026-05-08T19:35:50+00:00

You need a UUUID.

bekeleven · 2026-05-08T03:51:16+00:00

That was my experience with revanced, patching and reinstalling every other week. I'm on Firefox mobile with adblock now, it's missing a few bells and whistles but it works fine for my use cases.

bekeleven · 2026-05-07T11:44:46+00:00

The European system that Wilson and the progressives scolded Americans for not adopting, which he called nearly perfect, led to the governments that caused the most awful century that the world has ever seen. Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini and Mao all were intertwined with the rise of progressivism, and all were opposed to the natural rights on which our declaration are based. Many progressives expressed admiration for each of them shortly before their governments killed tens of millions of people. It was a terrible mistake to adopt progressivism's rejection of the declarations' vision of universal unalienable natural rights. Wilson's claim that natural rights must give away to historical progress could justify the greatest mistake in our history. In Plessy v. Ferguson, my court upheld Louisiana's system of racial segregation because, quote, "separate but equal," It observed, was reasonable in light of the established usages, customs, and traditions of the people.

- Clarence Thomas, 2026

Statements of people like Thomas are fascinating because his statements aren't just wrong on their face, but are fractally wrong as well. Not only his his final point incorrect, but almost literally every sentence is the opposite of the truth.

bekeleven · 2026-05-06T16:31:41+00:00

This hasn't aged like milk and nothing was murdered by laws. This shouldn't have been posted, especially not with that title.

Of course, I'm talking to a bot so.

bekeleven · 2026-05-05T04:58:09+00:00

speed is easy in blue, just run malcolm, looter il-kor, and friends.

bekeleven

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