Play this—Black Mesa: Source (it’s free!)

If you played any PC games at all, you’ve likely heard of Half-Life. It was one of the first games to truly bring a cinematic experience to video games.

Half-Life was released in the late 90s and, if you were to fire it up today, it would surely show its age. However, an intrepid group of people have recreated Half-Life using Valve’s Source game engine, which brings updated graphics, sound and physics to the game. Granted, its intended release date was 2009 but better late than never.

Titled Black Mesa (named after the research facility in the game), you can relive (if you played Half-Life) all of the fun and adventure of this highly original title, or if you’ve never played Half-Life, you get to experience it for the first time with top notch graphics and controls.

The best part? It’s free! It’s also based on a game engine from a few years ago so, unless your computer is ancient, it should run Black Mesa just fine.

First you’ll need to create a Steam account and download the Steam software.

Then, download and install Black Mesa. It’s a big download so it may take awhile.

Once that’s done, you’ll restart Steam and Black Mesa will show up in your Library. Just click, play and enjoy!