The blasphemy of playing Half-Life with a gamepad is now easier as Black Mesa gets a sudden weighty update, devs tease 'more dangerous patch' to come

What's the half-life of Half-Life? By my reckoning, it seems we'll stop receiving updates to (one version or another of) Valve's classic roughly around the time Chernobyl becomes habitable again. Not only did the original game get a big ol' update last November, but now Black Mesa—its Valve-endorsed remake—has just put out a meaty list of fixes. It's calling it the «Necro patch» for reasons I'm not entirely clear on but am very enthusiastic about.

Crowbar Collective called this one a "Mini patch" when it was in beta last month, but it sure seems hefty to me. It ports the game to a newer version of the DXVK renderer, tightens up performance, ends crashes, and switches the game over to use Steam Input for its controller support, which has been significantly improved in general.

That last one is interesting. Sacrilegious as it may be, I actually tried to play Black Mesa with a gamepad the first time I picked it up. It went horribly. The game just isn't designed for the treacle-slow aiming of a thumbstick, meaning enemies will chew you up as you laboriously swing your weapons around to point at them. It's a game that's understandably designed for the whip-crack aiming of a mouse.

But now, Crowbar Collective has «massively overhauled our old auto-aim implementation.» That means «Your crosshairs and aiming angles now magnetically attract to enemies you encounter,» rather than the old system, in which bullets themselves magnetised to enemies but your aim wasn't helped at all. In other words, it now works like auto-aim does in every other FPS out there. Oh, and don't worry, it won't work in multiplayer.

All of which sounds like it might make a gamepad playthrough of Black Mesa a proper possibility. Plus, the Steam Input shift means the game now has «partial support» for Xbox, PlayStation, and Switch controllers. You can even use gyro aiming on your Steam Deck if that appeals for some incredible reason.

The update is out now, and you can find the full patch notes below. When