Community fan mod, Black Mesa , has finally shed it’s vapourware status and has released to the general public for free – to bad the download site just got hammered into submission.

In development for the better part of 8 years, Black Mesa  is the handiwork of a 40-man group of Half Life enthusiasts set out to remake the original 1998 adventure of Gordon Freeman on the Source engine powering its sequal years later.

Though the free mod has also been greenlit to appear on Steam, that may not happen for a little while yet while all involved parties go through the process. For now you can go directly to the Black Mesa page and download the mod through a torrent client or, considering the traffic being directed there right now, go here to this handy torrent mirror and shove the supplied trackers into your client to speed things up a bit.

All you need to install Black Mesa is the Source Engine SDK installed on your machine from another Source engine game like Half Life 2, Portal or Team Fortress 2.