What is the half-life of Half-Life? My guess is that Valve's masterpiece (any version of it) will stop updating around the time Chernobyl becomes habitable again. Not only did the original game receive a major update last November, but now Black Mesa (Valve's endorsed remake) has released a meaty list of fixes. Called the "Necro Patch," we're not quite sure why, but we're very excited.

Crowbar Collective called this patch a "mini-patch" during last month's beta, but it certainly feels heavy to me: porting the game to a new version of the DXVK renderer, performance enhancements, no crashes, controller support to use the Steam Input, and overall a significant improvement.

The last one is interesting. At the risk of sounding sacrilegious, I actually tried to play Black Mesa with a gamepad when I first got it. I got terrible results. The game is not designed for thumbstick treasury slow aiming. This means that if you struggle to aim at an enemy and swing your weapon around, the enemy will bite you. In other words, the enemy will have a hard time swinging the weapon around to aim.

Now, however, Crowbar Collective has "significantly overhauled the old auto-aiming implementation." This means that "crosshairs and aiming angles are now magnetically attracted to the enemy encountered. In the previous system, the bullets themselves were magnetically attracted to the enemy, but the sights were not helped at all. In other words, auto-aim now works just like in any other FPS. Oh, and don't worry, it doesn't work in multiplayer.

All of this could make it possible to play Black Mesa with a gamepad. Additionally, the Steam Input shift means that the game "partially supports" Xbox, PlayStation, and Switch controllers; you can also use gyro aiming with the Steam deck.

The update is available now, and the full patch notes can be found below; when the Necro patch hit beta, Crowbar Collective warned of the possibility of a "more dangerous patch" (meaning a save-breaking patch) to follow. Folks, Half-Life may not be over yet.

Key Updates

Rendering/Performance

Controller Support

User Interface

Bug Fixes

Known Issues [23]