Valve Needs to Endorse Black Mesa Source

Valve is well known for taking the ideas of its modding community and fostering them into full fledged releases. Portal, Team Fortress, Left 4 Dead and Counter-Strike are the most well known examples. Now, a group of fans at Valvetime.net has released some footage of their project that aims to recreate the original Half-Life with updated HD graphics and a few minor tweaks to the gameplay. It looks incredible. So incredible in fact, that Valve and Gabe Newell should bring these guys in-house to make this dream a full retail (or digital) reality.

As seen in the video below, the lighting and amount of detail is much improved from the original. The sound effects and character animation are very well done and along with the level design, make this a highly accurate representation of the 1998 classic. Even the ability to aim down the sights of the weapons is a welcome addition to the formula that doesn't seem to break the game or change it at all.

The group has been working on this project for a long time and the dedication shows in the video. It almost seems like too much work for them to handle. With support from Valve, this could be finished by next year, which would certainly help to alleviate the pain of waiting for Half-Life 3. While they're at it, maybe Valve could fix up the voice acting as well. Just a thought. What else does Valve have going on anyway? Dota 2? That's pretty much making itself by now.