I mean to say, it all started withBlack
Mesa, the Source Engine reworking
of Half-Life by Crowbar Collective.
When it appeared on my radar back
in 2013 I thought it looked like the
perfect way to experience the game
I’d confidently been calling the best
shooter ever made – having played it
just once, aged 12 – once again. After
15 years of abstinence I’d once more
allow myself to take in the giddy
delights of creeping past the tentacle
beast and watching Barneys plunge
to their doom in broken elevators
through the lens of this Source
Engine remake.I lasted about two minutes. That
was all the time it took to realise that
every slight deviation, every instance
of minor creative licensing, was only
going to wind me up. The Barneys all
had different lines! The posters were
slightly different! Some of the rooms
were bigger/smaller than I
remembered! This wouldn’t do.
No, this wouldn’t do at all. I made
a very serious promise to myself that
day, having closed down the perfectly
good Black Mesa mod. The only way
I’d play my darling Half-Life ever
again was in situ: the original game
disc I’d kept all these years, running
on a Packard Bell Platinum 350. So
began a painstaking and indefensibly
self-indulgent quest to source nearly
worthless PC parts.
The keyboard and mouse were
surprisingly easy to get hold of.
Having set up eBay alerts for every
bit of Packard Bell minutiae I
required, I was directed to the very
same ’board, complete with
redundant multimedia controls, going
for a princely £10. It arrived shortly
afterward, smelling faintly of someone
else’s house and, well, presumably
working. I didn’t have anything toRIGHT: The off-white
box that powered an
all-time classic.
FAR RIGHT: I’m still
searching for the
screen. Can you help?
I
t all started with Black Mesa. Firstly,
because the stars aligned in Christmas
1998 such that my first taste of PC gaming
happened to be Half-Life, the best shooter
ever made. Santa Claus delivered a
personal computer to our home that year – a Packard
Bell Platinum 350, since you ask. A 350MHz Pentium II
lay within it. A 3DFX Voodoo 2 with 8MB onboard
memory. 16MB of RAM and 6GB of hard drive space.
These were formidable gaming specs, and when I was
given the luxury of choosing a new PC game to
accompany it under the tree I relied on the wisdom of
PC Gamer, who sure were keen on this Half-Life game.
That Christmas was magical. But that’s not the point.
Beige is the New Black
FEATURE