Half-Life? More like half a game. (Half-Life - Blue Shift (PC))

Member Name: The Duke

Product:	Half-Life - Blue Shift (PC)
Date:	13/07/01 (107 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Another Half-Life game, Good storyline

Disadvantages: Far too short, Not difficult enough, Too much time in alien world

Blue Shift is the third (but standalone!) episode set in the Half life universe, with Half-Life being the first, Opposing Force (OpForce) being the second and Blue Shift the third. All the action in these games takes place around the Black Mesa top-secret research facility, hidden deep underground somewhere in New Mexico, America, and in a strange alien world, referred to as Xen. Again, written by Gearbox (who did the excellent OpForce add-on) and produced by Valve (who did the original game) this completes what seems to be a trilogy before they announce Half-Life 2.

In the first game, you played as the main protagonist – Gordon Freeman, a scientist who was directly involved in the “accident”. In Opposing Force, you played as a marine called Adrian Shepard who was called in to bring order to the Black Mesa Facility after “the accident” and in this new episode, you play Barney Calhoun, a security guard at the facility. Like the other two episodes, not only is the game named after a scientific phenomenon or theory, there’s also a rather lengthy, interactive introduction…

You start your day in the Black Mesa, being told to kit up and go and operate the lift for some scientists. So, you get your kit, grab a gun, steal some extra ammo, and off you go. However, your path to the lift is not straightforward as power disruptions throughout the base has delayed the internal rail system, so you make your way there by foot. On arrival at the lift, the two scientists give you grief about being late! Bah! I’m in no mood for this! *shoots angry scientist* Hey! What’s this? Mission failed? Keep the scientists alive? Bah! Ungrateful gits! * RELOAD * On arrival at the lift, the two scientists give you grief about being late! Ah well – you shrug your shoulders, press the button, and the lift descends… All of a sudden, the power cuts out, the two scientists blame some people in the “Anomalous Mate
rials Lab” whatever that may be (see Half-Life for details). All of a sudden, the power cuts totally, and the lift falls. On a brief pause as the lift sops, you see what appear to be strange creatures firing lightning at other security guards. The comfort of your 9mm pistol suddenly shrinks. Again, with no warning, your lift plummets into the darkness, and you lose consciousness as it hits the bottom. When you regain consciousness, you have to find out what happened, and how you can escape, and so you step forward into the unknown…

So far, so good – everything is present and correct in the Half-Life universe. You’re thinking that you should rush out and buy it now, right? Well, read on, because not is all what it seems. First of all, there are no new weapons, or enemies. That includes the new ones created for OpForce – you’ve got the same weapons and enemies as the original Half-Life. So, it’s not really that big a problem, is it? After all, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. That may well be the case, but Half-Life is approaching somewhere near two and a half years in age. In the computer games industry, that’s a heck of a long time.

Another thing you should know is that this episode is short. I mean very short. I bought it online, and had it delivered the day of release. It arrived mid afternoon one Friday, and by tea-time on the Saturday, the thing was completed, and that’s on hard level, and there were two points where I wasted about an hour of game time trying to solve / find out where to go next. I’m not the world’s best games player but I reckon I played it through in about seven hours. This has something to do with the fact that it was originally planned as an add-on to the Dreamcast version, but Valve decided it was unfair to keep it away from the loyal PC fan base, and so converted it for the PC. Now, I don’t mind short games, and to be fair it’s fairl
y cheap as a new release at £14.99, but at the same time, my rule of thumb is this (and this only applies to new releases, not to “full price” titles re-released on budget) good value for money is if you get about an hours worth of play per £1 you pay for a game. In this case, I paid £2 an hour, which, at the end of the day, I’m not too happy about.

Is there anything positive I can say about the game? Well, yes! While you are playing the game, it is quite enjoyable, although not the challenge that the previous two episodes were. You do spend slightly too much time in the alien world, Xen, although this is a bad point that could be levelled at the two previous episodes as well.

The characters you see around the facility seem to be more varied than in previous episodes and you don’t get the same phrases repeated again and again.

Valve have included a new “high definition” pack with HL:BS which basically updates this and any previous HL episode with new, more detailed weapon, player and monster character skins. While it makes no difference to the actual game play of the games, it does set about addressing the problem of running a graphics engine that was already 2 years old when this game was released. There’s also some extra multiplayer stuff – some OpForce multiplayer stuff and the latest patch (1.1.0.6 I think)

As with OpForce, there are times when you come across Gordon Freeeman (from the original episode) on your travels. While you can’t interact with him, it’s a nice touch that at least shows some attention to detail.

So, how highly do I rate Blue Shift? Well, I’ve already said that it’s enjoyable while it lasts (but that’s the problem) and so I would say that if you take the same drop in overall quality that happened from Half-Life to OpForce, and applied it to the OpForce then you would end up with Blue Shift. I don’t think I would bu
y it again for £15 – instead, I would wait for a mate to complete it and then buy it off him for a tenner.

In case I didn’t make it clear at the top of the opinion, you don’t need Half-Life to play this game, it’s “standalone” and playable without any previous episodes.

Summary: