In this article we give a more detailed comparison and go over what’s new.

Earlier in the week, we gave an exclusive sneak peek at Black Mesa’s new ‘ Crossfire Update ‘, which rolled out officially on Steam today, just in time for the Steam Winter Sales.

What Are the Main New Features?

So apart from the big and obvious addition of the classic Half-Life Deathmatch map Crossfire, the new update to Black Mesa contains a ton of new features, improvements and bug fixes.

The update changelog, available on the official Black Mesa Forums, gives a full rundown.

Here’s a little snippet of the main new features:

- Added Crossfire! - Added 'God Rays' - Multiplayer animation system has been overhauled and rebuilt. - New multiplayer animations. - Weapon Bob and Weapon Drag Added - Score Persist on Leaving and Rejoining a Multiplayer Match - Steam controller configuration - Servers now track stats for players and rank them on that server - New Gluon Gun model - New Crossbow model - New RPG model - New Shotgun model - Shogun will now gibb characters if damage is high enough - Added third person shell ejects from NPCs - Added Tau Wallshotting in Multiplayer - All workshop submissions have no filesize limit anymore.

Half-Life vs Black Mesa: Crossfire Comparison

Black Mesa’s version re-imagines the original Crossfire map in Source, adding a ton of new visuals and details, complete with the same infamous nuclear bunker.

The map architecture stays pretty much the same, there’s the big courtyard space full of balconies and weapons, and the open helipad space in-front of the bunker, with the iconic mounted guard towers backing it.

What we liked was the fact that Black Mesa’s version gives an entirely new context and feel to the map by adding an abandoned/decaying facility theme, it’s a lot darker too.

Images

Here’s some images, from our previous exclusive first look article. (Click for full-size)

Half-Life vs Black Mesa: Weapons Comparison

As you can see, there’s a bunch of new weapon models, giving the Gluon Gun, RPG, Crossbow and Shotgun a new look and feel.

Images

Some screenshots of the new weapon models. (Click for full-size)

Other New Features

The Tau Cannon can also do ‘wallshotting’, which allows you to overcharge and fire the beam through walls in the map. For anyone who remembers the original Half-Life Deathmatch, a match of Crossfire wouldn’t be complete without seeing someone get totally zapped out of the blue by it.

There’s also been a overhaul of the multiplayer player animations and certain characters like the G-Man have proper view models.

Improvements are not just visual. Multiplayer server features got upgraded too. Score is now saved for when a player leaves and then rejoins a match. Teams can also be locked for competitive sessions.

The Black Mesa Steam Workshop got upgraded too, so community content creators will no longer have a mod size limit, opening up a ton of new possibilities.

The update also adds three previously released maps, Chopper, Rail, and Power to the official map list. Stalkyard got a minor facelift too, with more detailing added.

Surface Tension Uncut?

Shortly after the update going live, it was reported on r/HalfLife that a few maps from the yet-to-be finished Surface Tension chapter can be found in the game files.

We have some more exclusive content to share about the future of Surface Tension in the coming weeks, so stay tuned!

LambdaGeneration Black Mesa Giveaway!

Also, we have 10 copies of Black Mesa to giveaway. We’ll be doing a livestream with the developers at the end of next week.

Follow Follow @LambdaGen on Twitter and Subscribe to our YouTube Channel for info.

Watch the Stream Recording Below:

What are your thought’s on the update? Let us know in the comments below or on our social media.