The Best Game to Play Before Half-Life 3 Isn’t Made By Valve at All

Half-Life 3 is easily one of the most frustrating game projects of the modern age. The first two Half-Life games were revolutionary, with the second game in particular redefining what a single-player FPS could be. But despite this, and despite Valve’s considerable resources, Half-Life 3 remains nowhere to be seen.

That doesn’t mean that fans have given up hope, though. Indeed, much like GTA 6 before its first trailer, gamers have a tendency to put on their conspiracy caps when it comes to Half-Life 3 announcements, teasers, and the like. The most recent, substantive example of this unfolded around the 2025 Game Awards, when industry insiders insinuated that the game would be revealed at Keighley’s annual event. Naturally, this didn’t come to fruition, and HL3 is still in the wind. If you’re one of many disappointed gamers waiting on Valve’s enigmatic threequel, there’s still at least one modern title worth your time: Black Mesa, a remake of the original game made by a team of fans called Crowbar Collective.

Black Mesa Is an Ambitious Recreation of Half-Life 1

The original Half-Life was released in 1998, and while its level design, narrative emphasis, and environmental puzzle integration were groundbreaking for the time, the game is quite dated by 2020 standards. Visually, it’s what you might expect from a 1998 game: textures are basic and often muddy, character models are stiff and unrealistic, and interiors are samey and claustrophobic. Mechanically, it pales in comparison to just about every game Valve released in its wake, especially Half-Life 2.

Valve would purport to improve the original Half-Life experience through Half-Life: Source, a port of the 1998 title to the new, more capable Source engine. However, this version was a little too similar to the original 1998 game, lacking significant improvements or upgrades. This was the impetus for the formation of Crowbar Collective, a studio formed with the intention of recreating Half-Life from scratch within the Source engine.

Crowbar Collective set about enhancing and modernizing the original Half-Life experience, making such notable changes as:

• All-new textures
• New character models
• Reworked puzzles and encounters
• More advanced enemy AI

Black Mesa’s Expanded Xen Levels

One of the more disappointing aspects of the first Half-Life game was its depiction of Xen, an interstitial plane of existence called the Borderworld due to its nature as an intergalactic crossroads. It’s the most abjectly sci-fi beat in the original Half-Life, but it was also decidedly underwhelming for a large part of the player base. The complaints raised against the Xen levels are myriad, but most center on cohesion and content richness. Put plainly, many players rejected Xen’s stark shift in puzzle presentation, platforming, and enemy behavior, and others felt that this slice of the game lacked the narrative depth and internal logic of earlier chapters.

Thus, Crowbar Collective embarked on perhaps the most ambitious leg of the Black Mesa journey: recreating, expanding, and upgrading the Xen levels. In the original Half-Life, the Xen chapter only accounts for about an hour of gameplay; in Black Mesa, it lasts roughly four hours. Crowbar Collective also reworked the pacing of earlier chapters to be more efficient, prioritizing the ambitious and lore-significant Xen over other, slower parts of the game. The team also changed bosses and puzzles in Xen to be more consistent with the rest of the game, and less frustrating. The end result, in the eyes of many fans, is a Xen that is far more enjoyable, alluring, and mechanically sound than in the 1998 Half-Life.

Black Mesa Offers a Fresh Take On Half-Life’s Multiplayer

Crowbar Collective also remade the multiplayer mode of the original Half-Life—something that’s often overlooked when discussing Black Mesa. Mechanically, shooting and movement are improved, though Black Mesa remains faithful to the original Half-Life by keeping multiplayer focused only on deathmatch and team deathmatch. In addition to the enhanced controls, the following Half-Life maps were recreated with enhanced visuals consistent with the rest of the remake:

• Bounce
• Gasworks
• Lambdabunker
• Stalkyard
• Subtransit
• Undertow

Black Mesa Isn’t Half-Life 3, But It’s a Perfect Entry to the Half-Life Franchise

While it’s no substitute for a proper continuation of Gordon Freeman’s adventure, Black Mesa is a worthwhile starting point for new Half-Life players. Its greatest strength is how it takes the archaic gameplay and visuals of the original Half-Life and makes them more palatable for modern audiences. In this way, Black Mesa is a much more appealing rendition of the Half-Life experience, making it a better starting point than Half-Life 2, which is how many contemporary gamers have first engaged with the IP, historically.

And if you’ve already played the first Half-Life, Black Mesa offers an expanded and enhanced experience. Not only does it look, play, and run better than the original game, but it also adds valuable gameplay and story content courtesy of the Xen chapters and other meaningful improvements, such as reworked enemy AI. No, it’s not Half-Life 3, but it just might scratch that itch while you continue to wait for Valve to draw back the curtain.