I agree with you. I’m a huge fan of the series, and I love them all, but I also think my favourite will always be the first one. I honestly think there are many parts of its design that are just impressive, but also subtle enough that they are rarely recognised.
It does of course also have its weak points, that can be critiqued, but I would be boring you with a nitpicky critique, in a long form format, outside the scope of what anyone would want from a Lemmy comment, if I started on that, I think.
I do think Half-Life qualifies as a masterpiece, though. That’s why I am always sad to see when it is recommended to newcomers to the series as the way to experience original, you know? Hell no. It’s an inferior game in many ways.
Black Mesa was a really fun fan homage to Half-Life. I played it several times, and I’m glad that it exists. I think it’s great that it sometimes put its own spin on things, instead of trying to be a 1:1 recreation (because, then, what would be the point, when Half-Life already exists?), but there were some of its design choices that seemed kinda not thought through, and randomly contrarian to its source (pun not intended, hah) material. Its soundtrack was also stupefying… Not only was it bad, in terms of quality, but it seemed like an antithesis to Half-Life’s soundtrack, which was very head-scratching, considering that the game seemed to try to aim at capturing the spirit and essence of Half-Life.
No, that’s not it. It’s a little “trick” that’s becoming popular with European politicians from the right, all the way to the centre-left.
According to international law, those asylum seekers have a right to have their request for asylum processed, by the country they’re in when they make that request. Processing someone’s request for asylum is something that can sometimes take a long time, and if their request is denied, it can still be very difficult to deport them - which is why you also see some countries giving denied asylum seekers a monetary reward for going back.
Hosting asylum seekers, especially a lot of them, can become quite unpopular, both locally, and in the population in general. The reasons for this is usually that it costs money to host and process asylum seekers, which some people feel is an undue burden put on their country, especially if they have a perception of the asylum seekers not seeking asylum in good faith, but are rather just economic migrants.
Additionally, it would be a terrible disregard of human rights to lock up these asylum seekers, as if they were criminals, and the asylum centre a prison. That means that they of course need to be able to go outside, and live as normal lives as possible, while their request is being processed, and their children will have to go to the local schools, etc.
In addition, I believe there are often put restrictions on their ability to work, as a measure against economic immigration - but the side effect of that is that they are much more likely to be seen as an undue drain by the general population. Countries are often loathe to start integrating people, when they expect to reject the vast majority of them. The consequence of that is that these people end up being very poorly integrated.
Besides that, there also tends to be a higher average crime rate among asylum seekers. The local communities that host the asylum centres of course reacts to that, and some people will start to feel unsafe, whether due to prejudice, or due to incidents of crime relating to some of the asylum seekers.
So, the clever “trick” that is becoming popular among politicians is to pay a foreign country to have their asylum centres built there, send all of their asylum seekers off to those centres, and often to staff those centres largely or partly with nationals of this foreign nation. From the point of view of these politicians, it solves a lot of the problems, and it lets them look “tough on immigrants”.
The legality of all of this is still being hashed out, and courts are sometimes foiling those plans entirely. Whether this trick is or can be technically legal or not, and even if this method could be used in a fair and reasonable manner, it seems to always be bereft with very questionable practices or methods, as in this case, or when a European country tries to set up asylum centres in an African country that has a long track record of human rights abuses against - whaddya know - asylum seekers.