Alright, I don't have anything funny to say here today, so let's just jump right into this.

We're still in conveyor-belt land, but now there's a new challenge. Instead of just jumping around between belts, we've only got two conveyor belts here.

They're headed in the same direction, and they kinda wrap around each other like a double helix. There are also a number of force fields on each one that you have to hit a trigger in order to turn off to get by- otherwise, you'll be crushed between the force field and the boxes moving on the conveyor.

Oh, yeah, and you're being swarmed by controllers the entire time.

The good news?

More infinite gluon gun ammo!

So this section is kinda challenging, but it actually ends up being pretty fun. At least, I think so, anyway. It took me quite a few tries to get by, but it's kinda one of those moments that's intensely satisfying once you do it.

And at the other end of these double conveyors,

Another control room we can't do anything in! Honestly, it makes up for it though with how cool the room looks.

There's also a window in here though, where you can see into the next room, and,

It's. It's really tall. Really tall. Good thing we don't take fall damage anymore!

I also saw this as I reached the next checkpoint-

The vortigaunts use the healing showers too! I think that's a neat detail, since, they're meant for them, after all. Though, I'm not sure, but I think they did this in HL, too, so it might not be so new a detail.

Moving on, we get introduced to a new mechanic, too.

This controller has a shield.

And he's completely invincible until you take it out. Luckily, it's not hard to find the shield source,

You just have to follow the glowy blue laser to find the glowy blue crystal. And once that's destroyed, you can take out the controller!

A narrow corridor with easily closed doors, lined with boxes all containing genetically modified soldiers with a predisposition to kick my rear? This doesn't seem like a trap at all.

(It was a trap.)

Eventually, we get to this sort of... hub room, with three doors. Each of these doors leads to a switch controlling a different force field, all of which we need to turn off to progress. And in order to access the switches, you first need to battle some shielded controllers in order to make sure you understand this new mechanic.

There were three different variations of the battle- one room had a handful of controllers each shielded by a single crystal, and they just shot fireballs at you. One room had just a couple of controllers, but a lot of vortigaunts for them to control. And this room,

One controller, shielded by three sources, who telekinetically chucks boulders at you.

I wanted to talk about this one specifically to bring up how much I appreciate Black Mesa using the shielding mechanic and teaching it to players early- because this is a mechanic that comes into play in the final battle, and Half-Life didn't bring anything like this up until the final battle. So you're just running around Xen, shooting normal controllers, and then you get to the final boss, never once thinking about destroying those crystals on the wall because things like that have had no significance thus far, so why would they be important now? But no, suddenly you've wasted ALL your ammo without seeming to have done any damage, and the final boss is beating the snot out of you.

But with Black Mesa, they go out of their way to make sure you understand that this blue aura means the enemy is shielded, and you have to destroy the shield generator before you can hurt the enemy- and, there can be multiple generator sources you might have to take out.

(Admittedly, I don't think HL's final boss actually had a shield, just crystals that regenerated its health, but still. They didn't explain the mechanic anywhere beforehand, and, at least for me, it led to a long and frustrating battle.)

But, mechanic learned, it's time to move on, and we come to this room

With a lot of these bouncy things,

Launching these boxes up this super long tunnel! Clearly, that means we have to go up.

But to no avail; they were ready for me again, and caught me in a forcefield bubble. Gordon is completely trapped, entirely at their mercy. He fell into their trap, and has nowhere to go. They could do anything to him now, and he would have no escape. So what do they decide to do?

Just toss us into another reject corpse pile.

Like, guys, I escaped one of these before. You really think I won't be able to get out of this one, too? You should've killed me while you had the chance, because you won't get the opportunity again.

Escaping the second reject corpse pile, we find this tall structure...

And I think that this is my favorite part of the entirety of Black Mesa. Because this is the final climb to the final boss, where they're throwing everything they've got at you, everything they could possibly do to try to slow you down, and nothing works. They cannot stop you. This is that moment where it feels like the hero just kinda goes wild, and doesn't just clear every obstacle in his path, but totally obliterates it

In my opinion, this is honestly a little bit more climactic than the final battle, and the boss is just kinda. Finishing the cleanup.

At any rate, I got far, far into this battle to take any screenshots, so here's a video instead.

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And here's the incredibly epic music that plays during the fight. It's titled "Ascension"

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But, long and epic elevator ride taken care of,

It's time to proceed to the final boss...