The Half Life remake, Black Mesa, which weighs in at around 3GB is a visually spruced up version of the original title that makes the most of the enhancements made possible by the Source engine’s inclusion. After seven full years in development, this release has been not just given away for free on its own, but given away with a full soundtrack as well.

In this initial release, the team has decided to remove the heavily-reviled Xen portions of the game, and is working to recreate this section as a much more fleshed-out and worthy ending to the Valve shooter. Let’s hope they remove the downright terrible bounce-jump platforms sections at the very least.

Black Mesa official site

• A copy of any Source Engine game (as seen here).

• Minimum System Requirements
Software : Windows XP, Vista, or 7
Processor : Pentium 4 3.0 GHz, or AMD processor.
RAM : 1GB (1024 MB)
Graphics Card : Shader Model 2.0 capable, ATI 9600, NVidia 6600 or better.
Sound : DirectX 8.1 compatible.
HDD : 8 GB (Not including the Free Source SDK, installed separately)

• Ideal System Requirements
Software : Windows XP, Vista, or 7
Processor : Intel Core 2 Duo 2.4GHz or AMD equivalent.
RAM : 1 GB (1024 MB)
Graphics Card : Shader Model 3.0 capable, ATI X1600, NVidia 7600 or better.
Sound : DirectX 9.0c compatible.
HDD : 8 GB (Not including the Free Source SDK, installed separately)

Fun Fact: the Xbox360 controller is supported for this game – use it!