I didn't have a chance to play original half-life, but I knew that the story is great and one day I decided to buy Black Mesa as it was a more modern approach to telling the same story.

While playing the game I couldn't help but noticed lots of tiny details that make experience much better. It was clear to me because of the that developer put lots and lots hours of care, love and hard work. It was much more obvious when, after completing the game, I looked into some compression videos and found out for example how was redesign xen, all the boss fights, lots of single objects and details they had to add to make every single room more believable, more realistic and more live. I respect the original game but after so much time you should agree that there was not much to go off.

Sound design is also great, lots of music turns out I was listening to remixes before knew about the game. Huge rework and redraw of all weapon, characters and locations, while trying to preserve the same feeling and same map as was before.

For me as a guy who didn't play half-life games (just half-life 2 a little, and huge fan of portal played all games and mods) it was so fresh going around
without objective task, minimap, compass or arrow to next task. You always had to figure out yourself, but the clues is always there either it be a green light near the next door or path you should open or go, or red something blocking the way. Overall level design in my opinion was great and I caught myself on an that idea especially in the beginning to middle of the game. (except few minor moments but more on that later)

Crowbar collective did a tremendous work, especially for such a cheap price and this game imo was a great force to invest me into the half-life story.

The game is not all shine and rainbow, but hat's just a few minor hiccups that killed my love to the game a little bit, still game so good I can forget it easily.

As I said game does not always clearly indicate what you have to do.

Firstly there was door in the coolant tank 02 in Lambda core, where you have to find this little door bellow in the corner, I even get there but didn't saw that door was open neither consider it.

Reddit thread proofing I am not the only one having this issue
Video with this in-game moment to get the idea

Second there was an explosive room while making portal in Xen with clever puzzle which I almost figured out but I neither saw nor consider that door in use too and was stuck not understanding why the force field didn't work.

Proof that some youtuber also stuck here

Huge bummer for me was sometime corrupted saves in the beginning of the game, sometimes I just could load and have to use previous save instead of the last one. I didin't care much about it until it climaxed in the explosive room where for some reason every other save become unloadable before and after puzzle, so I have to load the exact level map through developer console. I skipped the part where you stabilize portal and jump into it (not the part fixing all three lasers), so it was not huge miss but it killed immersion for awhile.