fine

Loved this spin-off, of the original half life title!
im looking forward on completing opposing force

Recomendation: 10/10

It seems that no matter how good a game series is, it's always destined to have a black sheep, so to speak. Sometimes the game isn't even bad, just not as solid as the rest and people act like by proxy it's the worst thing ever. It happened with Fallout 4 compared to Fallout 3 and New Vegas, and I feel like it happened with Half-Life: Blue Shift.

Half-Life is the second and final expansion pack that Gearbox developed for the original Half-Life, and much like Opposing Force, Blue Shift puts you behind the perspective of another Character during the Black Mesa incident. In Blue Shift, you play as Barney Calhoun, a security guard and familiar face to those who've played Half-Life 2. Much like in Half-Life, Barney is starting his day of work at Black Mesa by commuting via tram, and after arriving at his scattered workplace, he gets his gun and presses a button for some rude as hell scientists in an elevator before everything goes FUBAR. As aliens begin teleporting in from Xen, Barney's elevator crashes into the ground, killing every occupant other than himself. Upon regaining conciousness, Barney sets off on a mission to escape Black Mesa, eventually meeting up with a Dr. Rosenberg, and the two partner up to escape the facility.

One of the greatest criticisms leveled against Blue Shift is that unlike it's sister expansion, Blue Shift does not add in any new weapons or enemies, without even recycling the ones in Opposing Force. Barney also does not gain access to any of the neater weapons that Gordon Freeman was able to get his hands on like the Tau Cannon or the Hive-Hand, the biggest gun Barney is able to weild outside of console commands being the RPG. While these criticisms are certainly valid, it's not fair to say it doesn't bring anything new to the table. Blue Shift is decidedly much more story driven than Opposing Force, as Dr. Rosenberg is a very important character to Blue Shift's story and is one of the few persistant NPC's in the original trilogy. Dr. Rosenberg explains alot of exposition about his old lab in the facility wile also serving as one of the few charaters with the knowledge and equipment to actually escape the facility.

As such, the latter half of the game consists of Barney doing various errands for Rosenberg to help calibrate his antiquated teleportation machines, such as going to set up a machine in the border world and restoring the backup power deep below the lab. Even though this may not seem all that important, it really does help Blue Shift feel like it's own experience, which is also accompanied by the game's unique handling of Armor. Barney is the only protagonist of the GoldSrc games who lacks a form of powered armor, so he must use the armor of his fallen comrades to protect himself. This can make the game feel really tense as armor becomes less of a second health bar and more of a finite resource which is found few and far between the last.

That aside, I feel like the strongest point of Blue Shift is it's level design. The enemy placement and the size of the levels is pretty great, and the Xen levels are honestly really well made compared to the ones in Half-Life. While I'd say Opposing Force has the better gameplay of the two, I feel like Blue Shift's level design is much more consistant than OpFor's. Despite this, the other grave flaw with Blue Shift is it's shortness. Blue Shift seems to end just when it's beginning to get really good, and there's some puzzles in the game that don't make alot of sense initially, like the barrel and TNT puzzle.

At the end of the day, Blue Shift may not be the best Half-Life game and may arguably be the weakest of the expansions, but it's still a Half-Life game, and it's still just a solid shooter in general. The persistant NPC's in the game as well as the level design and the armor tweaks make Blue Shift still a very positive experience overall, and if you liked Opposing Force or just Half-Life in general, you really should play Blue Shift. While less isn't necessarily more here, you can't really go wrong with a bite sized Half-Life.

Half-Life:Blue Shift, the more...disliked expansion to Half-Life.

With all other games I review I will give a pro/con section then finish it off with a summary of what I think of it.

PROS:
+Great addition to the Half Life Series
+More Headcrabs
+No Ichthyosaurs
+Another great plot

CONS:
-Rather short
-No additional weapons or enemys (I don't really care)

SUMMARY:

Pretty much, same with my Opposing Force review, buy this game if you want more out of the Half Life Universe, just don't expect alot of new things from it.

OVERALL RATING: 8.5/10

We made it Mister Calhoun, we made it.

This game is pretty good . 9/10

great game for an expansion ;)

8.5/10

half life blue shift is by no means a bad game.... just short. what i mean is that for the same price of this game, you can go and by half life opposing force, which i highly recomend, its longer, has more weapons, better story, and also has multiplayer. again, blue shift isn't bad, its just considering that opposing force is the same price and far bigger and better, go buy opposing force. if you have maybe 2-3 hours to kill and you already have opposing force, then get this.

Worth a play-through; it's a nice parallel chapter to the original Half-Life storyline.

Made with quality (though modifications were created by enthusiasts who like to compete or exceeded Blue Shift), study of the levels is good, even better than the original, but it was too small plot duration. I liked that everywhere met and charging the battery for the costume, but the armor is replenished only picking up body armor and helmets. Unfortunately, Barney's not long been in the center of his life was filled with such adventures, which fell on the head of Adrian and Gordon, but, however, only in Blue Shift normally ends happy ending and without autonomous non profit organizations, and Rescue on jeep with 3 nerds.