Summary
- If you thought the gnome Achievement was bad, you ain’t seen nothing yet.
- Black Mesa has two gnome achievements, a hat and a pizza. And the game is way, way longer.
- That’s not to mention the portals, a vehicle section that makes the jalopy look easy, and the weird Xen jumps.
Half-Life 2 works like this. You pop the gnome in the jalopy, you drive the jalopy, the gnome falls out. You pop the gnome in the jalopy, you drive the jalopy, the gnome falls out. You pop the gnome in the jalopy, you drive the jalopy, the gnome falls out.
Two hours of excruciating torture, watching Alyx’s befuddled face as you stop mid-helicopter chase to grab a garden ornament over and over and over. Just to shove it in a rocket and send it off to die in the middle of an interdimensional portal storm. It’s no wonder that Half-Life 2: Episode Two’s hardest Achievement is so iconic. But it’s not the worst gnome Achievement of the series. That honour goes to Black Mesa.
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Episode Two is a shorter experience, so the gnome is annoying but never overstays its welcome. Black Mesa, on the other hand, is a fan-made remake of the original Half-Life that takes around 18 hours to finish. And one of the Achievements, The Rarest Specimen, asks you to carry a purple hat from the third chapter all the way to the end of the game.
I spent my weekend finally getting this Achievement, and if I ever see a purple hat again, I might dole out some Questionable Ethics of my own.
On A Rail Makes The Jalopy Look Like A Breezy Autumn Drive
For the first chunk of Black Mesa, it’s not so bad. Unlike Half-Life 2: Episode Two, you don’t need to cram the gnome into the back of a car, which with the old ‘00s physics, doesn’t really work. It just flies out onto the road every five seconds, so you’re better off chucking it with the Gravity Gun as far as possible, driving up to it, and repeating.
Those physics might have been revolutionary, but would it have killed you to have given my gnome a little seat, Gabe?
But then Black Mesa reaches the On a Rail chapter, the bane of my purple hat’s existence. If you haven’t played it before, you are… on a rail, controlling a tram-like vehicle through an industrial sector of the facility. There are a few gunfights that put your ride on pause, and a few detour puzzles to get the track working again, but otherwise it’s straightforward.
However, the tram has no barrier, so the hat just flies off. I had to awkwardly wedge it between the lever and the console at the front to keep it steady, which worked a good 40 percent of the time. Trying to pick up the hat while you’re on the tram is also difficult, since the ‘use’ key will interact with the tram and not the hat. I wish I’d just left it in the water.
Portals, Xen, And Everything That Made Me Want To Succumb To The Siren Call Of The Headcrabs
The jalopy segments are the worst that Episode Two ever gets. The gnome is otherwise pretty easy. Even in the antlion tunnels, you can just leave it with the vortigaunts and pick it up later. Black Mesa? No no no. It makes the jalopy look easy.
In the Lambda Core chapter, just before Xen, you have to navigate a series of portals to drop on moving platforms as you climb higher up the facility. The hat never goes through the portals right. Sometimes it flies off and drops to the very bottom and you have to start over. Sometimes it flat out disappears, and on the off chance you get it working, having it land on a moving platform (and stay there) is a nightmare.
When you actually get to Xen, the hat clips through objects and appears to vanish… a lot. I had it fade through rocks, get trapped in fauna, and of course, belted off cliffs by houndeyes. There are also a lot of strange, invisible walls. On the jump pads that fling you up to higher ledges, the hat sometimes refused to follow, and I’d have to time my jump while flinging the hat ahead of me.
The hat also rolls for no apparent reason, so if you leave it unoccupied for too long, it’ll probably wander off. That’s not to mention all of the underwater segments, boss fights, and glitchy elevators. The hat was not made for this world, nevermind Xen.
Two Gnomes!?
After braving the gauntlet that is the gnome Achievement amped up to 11, you’re not done. There’s a second.
In the Questionable Ethics chapter, you have to pick up a box of pizza and, like the god-awful hat, bring it to the end of the game, going through the Lambda Core portals and all of the Xen chapters for a second time. Only now, when you shove the pizza box through a portal, it stops in place and you get stuck inside of it when you follow suit.
To the heroes who did the hat and the pizza at the same time, I salute you.
I get this is a fan-made remake that took over a decade to develop in Crowbar Collective’s spare time, so I don’t want to be mean, but why? The gnome was tough, but it was only a few hours long, and even Alyx’s gnome Achievement was more bearable because, in VR, you can just hold it with your left hand and still use your right, something that the regular games don’t allow for.
Black Mesa is needlessly grueling, taking the gnome Achievement to a place it should have never gone (G-Man’s head, apparently). Truly, I’ve never hated a game I love more. But hey, at least I get to pin the two Achievements to my Steam profile for the bragging rights, eh?
