In January 2025, we informed you about Black Mesa: Military. This is a mod that lets you experience the events of Half-Life from the point of view of a marine. And a couple of days ago, its creator released its first 2026 version.
In this mod, you and your squad have to secure the Black Mesa Research Facility and eliminate any hostile forces. You’ll see the whole disaster from the villains’ side and even come face-to-face with Gordon Freeman himself.
In a way, this project is similar to Half-Life: Opposing Force. Opposing Force portrayed the events of Half-Life from the perspective of a U.S. Marine, one of the enemy characters in the original game. Of course, you don’t control the same marine. Still, both this mod and Opposing Force share the same concept.
This first 2026 version comes with a total major overhaul and remaster of chapter 4 “Escalation”. Chapters 5-8 have also been remastered. Black Mesa: Military 2026 brings new weapons, more dialogues for earlier chapters, AI improvements for the marines, and a number of bug fixes.
If you are a fan of the Half-Life universe, you should definitely check it out. You can go ahead and download the mod from this link. Sadly, the modder has not released any new trailer for it. Thus, I’ve decided to include below its old 2024 trailer.
Speaking of the first Half-Life game, there are some other cool mods that you can download for it. For instance, you can download Brutal Half-Life. Then we have a mod that adds Full Ray Tracing/Path Tracing to it. This is a must for everyone who wants to re-experience the main game, so be sure to download it.
Now, if you don’t want Path Tracing, you can use this AI-enhanced HD Texture Pack. This pack will overhaul all of the game’s textures. However, its lighting won’t change in any way. Thus, you’ll get an experience closer to the vanilla game.
Halo: GoldSource is a fan-made game that brings Halo’s gameplay into the Half-Life engine. It has two main modes: Slayer and Firefight. You’ll find lots of classic Halo maps and some new ones made just for Firefight. Plus, you can use many cool Halo weapons.
Finally, we have Half-Life: Delta. Half-Life: Delta is a Total Conversion Mod, featuring 4 chapters and 31 gameplay maps. Oh, and there is a new Aliens-based TC Mod, called Solitary Echoes.
Have fun!
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
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