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Hey i'm in blue-shift! Wait, huh? Where did blue-shift go?

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: August 16, 2003
Author: Amazon User

Half-Life(gave it 5 stars) and Opposing Force(gave it 4 stars) were the half-life games that were actually WORTHY. Blue-shift fails, and even more, fails because it's failure is presented so embarrasingly it has to include half-life's high definition pack and opposing force free to isolate it's embarrasement. Blue-shift for one thing is waaay too short, infact, it's soo short, that you can't even tell when it's done. You'll be like: "What, Wait, come back! It's over already?". Second of all, there is uninsipiring game-play and action, absolutely too easy too beat. There are none of those immerse puzzles and realistic situations found in the last game. I never knew barney's experience was soo boring. I feel sorry for him. And single player only? I don't even want to talk about that. 7 short levels that makes you do boring stuff. Although the storyline connects to the original two game's storylines, at least. Go to work. Get prepared. Watch the experiment's distraterous effects. fight boring basic enemies and use boring basic weapons and solve boring basic puzzles. go to xen, for a few minutes. complain about how boring and easy it is. return to the black mesa facility and finnally save these annoying scienstist and escape in a jeep. Not much more. The high defintion pack improves the character models and weapons and are much more realistic, and takes effect for half-life, opposing force, and blue-shift, at least. and at least it patches up your half-life version and freely includes opposing force. That's about it, there's not too much else too it, other than it was a fatal error and a major disapointement. {system boot up] [Incoming message display start] half-life blue-shift core status: failure. [Incoming message display shut-down] [system shut down]

An incremental improvement

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: September 08, 2001
Author: Amazon User

The Half Life story just won't die. Any chance I get to see more of Black Mesa, I'll do it. The following technology that made Half Life and OpFor so novel has reached new peaks. The interactivity between Barney and a certain scientist is nothing short of amazing. At one point, the character leads you!

It was rather short, but the HD pack and a standalone version of Opposing Force, coupled with the new point of view, makes it worthwhile.

rd

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: October 17, 2001
Author: Amazon User

Way too short for the price. I thought I was buying another of the half life series(lots of work and time), but this game was done in 3 hours.

None-too-thrilled

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: December 17, 2001
Author: Amazon User

I was one of HalfLife's biggest fans when it first came out. It ran so poorly on my old P166 that I ran out and upgrade to an AMD K6-2 400 w/ a Voodoo 2 card just to play it. Half Life, I'm sorry to say, almost brought a relationship to ruin before I learned to temper my interest. The plot, the player's involvement in what's going on around you, the attention to detail and your immersion in a world that's just real enough that, when the everything starts hitting the fan, you begin to feel like it's actually happening in your own world.

To say nothing about the multiplayer capabilities. The previously mentioned relationship once again faced abandonment once I got DSL.

"Blue Shift" WANTS to be like Half Life was, and it wants to REALLY HARD. But it fails in so many ways. For one, it's too short. For two, it doesn't feel quite as connected to the first two games in this series (Half Life and the other expansion pack, Opposing Force, another fine example of immersion and plot). If you play Blue Shift to the bitter end, you'll understand what I mean.

There are plenty of scripted sequences, and more interaction with the scientists. Plus, there's the much-vaunted "HiDefinition Pack" with plenty of new textures and skins, so that not EVERY scientist or soldier looks like a clone of the last.

But it ain't enough. Your character just isn't quite as compelling as Adrian the solder from OpFor or Gordan Freeman from Half Life. You jump, you fight, you die, you replay.

Maybe I'm just getting tired of the same old Black Mesa or the world of Xan. Or maybe I was unhappy with the fact that Blue Shift didn't add much by way of multiplayer "stuff".

On the plus side, however, Blue Shift comes with OpFor. So if you've never played OpFor, and you have an old copy of Half Life lounging around, and you've got a hankering to jump around, flip some switches, and hammer on some scientists with a crowbar, buy this game.

Otherwise, go play some "Counterstrike", or purchase "Return to Castle Wolfenstein". You'll spend your money more wisely, then.

Nice Succinct and Original Mission Pack

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: August 14, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Not on the same level as Half-Life (but realistically, what is?) but a worthy entry in the Half-Life universe.

Half-Life was brilliant. It revolutionized the first person shooter, provided hours of entertainment, introduced us to a world of weapons and bizarre creatures, and most importantly- it (unlike most video games) stayed with its plot throughout the game. Then Opposing Force came along- a mission pack that was a game in and of itself, the player now switching sides and playing through the Military (one of the enemies in the original Half-Life). Although less plot-driven than the original (its cheif weakness) it still managed to create a very good gaming atmosphere, even if it didn't quite match up with the first. Then Blue Shift came along.
I (although a huge fan of the first two) was apprehensive; I felt Sierra was trying to capitalize upon the success of the first two and, running out of ideas, was stretching things thin by having the player play as a security guard...Barney Calhoun. I was mistaken- The game is faithful to the first (with none of the weapons from OP4, but most from the original) and adds in some new things....people, locations, plotlines. It was most enjoyable to navigate Barney Calhoun through the waterworks and train depots of the Black Mesa compound, and the ending was significantly different than that of the first two.......I was very impressed by its simplicity and practicality. The game takes everything that was good about the original and compresses it into a smaller package, but also adds several new sights and locations that lend much to the backstory of Half-Life and show even more of the breadth of the Black Mesa compound, things that I appreciated very much.

Although rather short, with no new weapons or aliens, I highly recommend this Mission pack- to the Half-Life devotee or someone new to this family of games. 7/10

A little short...

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: September 09, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Blue Shift takes the player back to the Lambda Complex and retells the story of Half-Life through the eyes of one of the security guards in the research facility.
I highly recommend that you play Half-Life and The Opposing force expansion pack before you pick this one up.

OK Adiition to Half-Life

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 2 / 3
Date: September 02, 2001
Author: Amazon User

I played this a couple days ago at a friend's house. It's the only Half-Life I don't own, so I wanted to see what it was like.
Blue Shift is a good enough game, as are all the HL's, but I did have a few problems with it:
1) No new weapons?
2) Kinda Short
3) The price- thirty bucks is pretty steep for such a short expansion. I would like to buy a copy of this, but I'll wait for the cost to come down, or pick it up used somewhere.
If this game were ten or fifteen dollars cheaper, I would have given in 5 stars.

what's everyone complaining about?

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 2 / 3
Date: April 09, 2002
Author: Amazon User

This game is good. The only complaint i could possibly mention is the length. But, what it lacks in length, it makes up for in difficulty. Anyone who says this game is easy is either a master FPS player, or they're not playing on Difficult level. (why play if you play on medium or easy? you might as well just play a disney game)

In my mind, this is an essential element to the half-life series. Mainly because you finally get that vital piece of plot that explains what was going on in the first two games. If you've never played the first two half-life games (Half-Life, Opposing Force), i'd recommend playing them first, as this game won't make a lot of sense without a knowledge of the events that occur in them.

If, however, you've played them before, and are holding off on this game because of all the negative reviews, i'd say just get it. The price has dropped.. and its certainly worth buying. Buy it for the Hi-Def pack if for nothing else.. you'll get into the game if you try.

Will BS gonna keep this series half alive? Yes.

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 2 / 3
Date: April 09, 2003
Author: Amazon User

Blue Shift, or BS as it is sometimes called (affectionately, I might add,) has remained a pretty controversial move by Valve. Did it pay for itself? Did Valve simply want to keep the fandom salivating? I think the real reason Blue Shift was released was to update the weapon models and keep the game looking halfway decent (spotted a pun? I didn't!)

The game actually does very well for what its objective was. You get your professional quality extra missions, and the idea of revisiting those infamous areas from another angle and time is simply fascinating if you take a moment to look around. The tradition put in place by Gearbox Software (where you see Gordon jump into the portal to the Xen homeworld) is one of the selling points behind this game series. Of course, Blue Shift lets you play as THE Barney, as some people call him. He's not that Barney, or that other one. He's the one in the tram! What tram, you say? Well, it doesn't really matter except to say that he is the one who escapes the disaster of Black Mesa. If OpFor was the depressing chapter, the Empire Strikes Back where we find out that the G-Man is...well, the low point of Half-Life, Blue Shift is the relatively uplifting finale, and the chronicle of one of Half-Life's individual victories.

What you see is mostly new, and the level geometry is vastly improved, though the enemy AI is still that "just post-Metal Gear Solid" scripted stuff, as Valve took pains not to break compatability with old mapping styles, and old maps and mods are still quite playable.

If there is anything that I can say which you won't read anywhere else, it's this: The music isn't anything new. The Opposing Force (OpFor in the jargon of our embedded game reporters) music, though I spent many hours playing it on a regular stereo under headphones, is only suitable . With noise, inappropriate, painfully solid and metallic reverb effects (it's not the base but rather the higher frequencies that are a killer), bizzare and sometimes randomly constructed passages, and generally too predictable advancement from the beginning to the end, it seems at times as if a simple heart beat or Gordon's breathing would have been an appropriate replacement which wouldn't have occupied the larger portion of the disk.

That's not to say some of these sections frankly work: the section where you are trapped inside behind a blast door as an Osprey takes off works pretty well in conjunction with a rapid fire series of staccato drum beat, and the very last section's music sets the melancholy, introspective nature of the soldier's predestined fate in Opposing Force. That said, Blue Shift appropriates this music of questionable aesthetic qualities and does not attempt to improve on it at all. I don't feel it was an appropriate way to constrain the cost of developing this "standalone expansion," and a selection of some of Half-Life's excellent original tracks would have been quite welcome here. After all, one remembers tracks 2,3,10, and many of the others from Half-Life long after the pain and oppresion of the whole post-HL game audio have faded from your mind. Track 15 from the original Half-Life? One of the best game tracks in existance, on any format. Track 15 from Blue Shift? I have no clue what it is anymore, and it may have been one of the better ones (though I think 17 was more promising..)!

That said, you don't have to suffer through that music playing the original Half-Life or any multiplayer mode with the improved weapons models. At this price, you have little to complain about, and another classic Half-Life box design sitting on your shelf, with THE Barney on it, is certainly not embarrasing for a gamer. Give it a try!

Blue Shift

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 2 / 4
Date: June 28, 2001
Author: Amazon User

This game is great, telling from what I see. Either though it is pretty short, it is still fun to run around a couple times killing the scientists for no apparent reason. It adds better graphics and adds DOUBLE the amount of polys. Another thing to do is skip the tram ride and type SV_CHEATS 1 in console then write /noclip in the console. You can go out of the tram and find a lunch area...

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