Listen, I don't know what to say here anymore beyond that it's more Black Mesa. So without further ado, some incredible scenery screenshots!!

Like, seriously, look at all this!! It looks like something out of Avatar! And all of this is new, too! HL Xen didn't really have all this foliage and stuff. It was just the greyish rock and maybe a few lightstalk plants here and there. But BM has these lush jungles alien flora- and fauna! The place was packed with bullsquids, houndeyes, headcrabs, and barnacles!

...Now that I think about it, though, there were no vortigaunts, which is a little strange, considering this is supposed to be their home. Maybe it's just an uninhabited area?

I'm sure they'll show up eventually...

But anyway.

Something about this HEV zombie feels terribly out of place. All the others were back at the research station, but this one's just kinda... way out there. Nothing nearby suggests they were trying to set up a temporary site here, either, and there's not really any equipment or anything nearby. It's just... this one zombie. I would suggest that it wandered out there, but... the zombies don't exactly have great autonomy, and I doubt it could've gotten here from the research base. Maybe it was one of the very first scouts, and they got jumped? Or something carried it out there? I dunno, it's just weird.

Yes, I know you're all sick of me saying it, but look at that lighting!

This guy kinda made me laugh. It looks like he died trying to protect his research.

Giant tree with tunnels through the trunk? HECK YEAH! And it's even the main hub of a mini puzzle!

This is the path along one of the tree's branches.

Alright, see this dead guy? I think he probably starved to death. Why? Because he's at the very end of a very long tunnel...

...that's absolutely packed...

...with tripmines and explosive gourds...

...Where one wrong move means instant death.

Seriously, this was worse than that roomful of explosives back in the "Surface Tension" chapter! How did the guy even get back there without setting the mines off??

And to top it all off, they stuck a bunch of sleeping houndeyes in the tunnel, so if you woke one of them up, they'd use their soundwave attack and set it all off anyway! This bit was hard!

Alright, now here's this tunnel that was really cool, it was like a lattice of tree branches suspended over a pit.

Oh! Sometimes there are also these little ammo canisters near the bodies. They're basically random grab-bags of whatever types of ammo you need!

That looks like some sort of hidden tropical paradise cove over there!

Shoot, a tunnel full of stabby tentacle plants. These things suck.

And just a cool couple of floating islands!

And there's the picture limit! And we're still on the first Xen chapter! I've got a long way to go lol.