Before we get started here, I just wanted to let you all know that, as of posting this, Black Mesa is officially out of early access, meaning not only is the game complete now, but they've finished a bunch of editing and reworking stuff to make it even better!  Here's the new launch trailer:

https://youtu.be/YkBrNGeFwoU

It's cool! You should watch it. And then you should go buy Black Mesa, because it's a great game and the devs deserve more money.

But anyway. Leaving the Vortigaunt village, we see on a high ledge...

Oh. Oh no.

I know what that is...

The last time we saw a gargantua, it chased me through a parking garage, and I had to signal a military air strike to take it out! And we don't have that in Xen!

But it's not exactly like Gordon can give up now, so we'll press on. We've got some interesting new scenery to see, like

A waterfall that would look cool if it weren't gross brown sludgewater,

A pretty awesomely lit canyon as we trek up the sludge river,

That's a bridge of some sort, but I have no idea what it was made of. It looked... Disconcertingly fleshy, and had a somewhat uncomfortable squishy  noise when walked on.

Do these rock spires just. Grow? Naturally? Out here? Are they not actually rock, then? I don't know, man.

And then we come to this wall made of these... Roots?

You can't see it too well in the picture, but there are smaller, darker red strands woven between the big ones and, again, they look... uncomfortably organic. Almost like a network of veins.

But as we start to get closer to it...

Guess who decides to show up! And thus begins one of the coolest chase scenes I've ever played!

For starters, the music that plays,

https://youtu.be/RmyciZVNVJk

Is called "Shadows of Death."

And then I took far too many pictures of this chase to fit in one chapter, so... Have a video of someone doing it!

https://youtu.be/CPahTK4eTaY

For context about how  much this has been revamped, in Half-Life, this chase consisted of just one gargantua that would chase you down one corridor, and then you could just hide in a little cave and wait for it to leave. Altogether, the original sequence lasted... Fifteen seconds, maybe? And certainly didn't have any awesome music.

But anyway, here are some of the screenshots I did take of the chase.

This wall just exploding

The charge across the final large pond. I think the damage distortion makes it look cool. Even if I am getting my rear torched off.

And these two shots of all the gargantuas standing on the cliffside!

And then, a short trek later, we come to the source of this brown sludge water, at the foot of that giant spire, and, uh,

Anyone else think that looks like a face? And the only way to progress...

Is to enter through it's mouth.

Inside, there are all these grates, from which the sludge is draining.

This one's got green glowey things on it! Obviously, that means we shoot it!

Which makes it explode!

And beyond...?

A supply cache with ammo for the three most powerful weapons in the game. Hooo boy.

And finally,

Once again, Freeman resorts to crawling through the air ducts! But this one actually has an exceptionally powerful air flow, and sucks you up as soon as you step in!

And we'll see where it takes us in the next part!