If you have read our previous review of the current Black Mesa build on Linux, you probably know it’s a very good take on the original Half Life game. The only thing that was missing from the whole package was the Xen levels of the latter part of the game. While the team was supposed to deliver the expected update by this summer, their latest announcement on Steam makes it clear they won’t be ready anytime soon. More precisely, December this year.

Crowbar Interactive: We know that this is not what anyone would want to hear, but after taking a long and hard look at what we want to achieve, we have decided that this is for the best. We do not want to compromise on Xen’s quality in any way. That said, we consider December to be a do-or-die deadline.

It’s unfortunate if you were waiting for such an update like we did, but in the meantime here’s some cool screenshots of what to expect from the Xen areas.

Note that this is not just the Xen levels getting an update next, but the base game will also benefit from additional lighting effects in certain areas, as you can see below.

As for now the game is still in early access, and while the Linux version works well enough, there are still some bugs and glitches on certain configurations (I still experience a crash in the very beginning during Gordon’s quantum experiment).