Recent reviews by Danny

So I just finished the game.
On "Black Mesa difficulty", what ever that means.
I did it blind-ish, I only played the original Half-Life about 15+ years ago.

And man am I impressed, they did a fantastic job.
Though some points do seem a bit forced and backtracking has been cut down on from the original, that's a bit unfortunate.
For some sections I see why they did it, but I feel they should've kept it more open to backtracking like the original.

Then I got to Xen and my mind was blown!
Such beauty! I could marvel at it for hours and have, as it was also MUCH longer than the original.
The extra lore details from what we now know from Half-Life 2 and episodes, also were beautifully done. You really felt sorry for the Vortigaunts.

The numerous puzzles were a bit questionable in Xen though, I sometimes felt I was just running from puzzle to platforming to puzzle with platforming.
But if you're remaking something so much longer than the original, that can happen.