![]() ![]() And, by the time you take control, you notice that you're not even being attacked yet. In this remake, you fall from the ceiling in a cutscene, nearly completely unable to even see Nihilanth. The island immediately breaks, leaving you dazed in a freefall, looking around the massive room for a clue as to what you need to do to escape the massive abomination in front of you. You start on a Xen platform looking right at his massive body, already able to control your character, and unsure of what his abilities are. And to make this better, you are spawned in immediately next to him. Deformed and ugly features, no clear emotion, massive size, quiet and eerie whispers, big ass hands, etc., etc. The Nihilanth is an amazing example of an eldritch horror. However, again, the HL1 version DESTROYS this version in atmosphere. So, by all means, the Black Mesa version is an improvement. If you wanted, you could just hide behind a spike and hivehand it until it opened its head, with leftover bombs not used throughout the fight finishing him off for a free win. Like many things in Xen, it's hard to tell what to do immediately), spamming ammo in order of most-to-least powerful at him, and attempting to avoid the hassle that teleporting entailed. All the boss really entailed was shooting the three orange spikes (Which aren't exactly made obviously breakable. The constant teleporting of the original fight, while a unique and interesting concept, was not fun to deal with. Again, gameplay-wise, it appears to be a massive improvement. The atmosphere in that section is just taken away.Īnd then the fight. There is no creepy aura, there is no "unknown" factor, it's just a clear indication that makes the player think "oh, here comes the boss". Loud music, uncharacteristically large red teleporter, overbearing and relatively more natural/intentional appearing spikes surrounding it, and most significantly, a visible sky and set of unreachable islands, and dozens of other creatures present. This iteration of the game takes a much more basic and, well, boring approach. The complete void surrounding you, limited noise, lack of an exit portal, and small, ominous red teleporter to the boss fight is seriously nerve-racking. There are no enemies, obstacles, or significant amounts of health/ammo, which is something that is never happens throughout the entirety of the game post-intro. The portal to the boss fight - unlike the rest of Xen - is pitch black and nearly empty, with abnormal tendril-like spikes around it shooting out flames from seemingly nothing. The HL1 fight is tedious and not very fun, but the atmosphere is completely unbeatable. ![]() I really feel as though the Black Mesa version of the Nihilanth fight falls very short compared to the original in a few ways. ![]() It should also be mentioned that I have not played Black Mesa, and that this analysis is based off of a recording of the beta version of the fight. (Note, this is abridged from a YouTube comment I made on the subject, so apologies if any language isn't as concise as it should be. ![]()
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