Compared to its predecessor in Opposing Force, Blue Shift doesn’t suffer from what I referred to as an “amusement park” aspect in my review of that. In fact, there are no new weapons, or enemies, or game mechanics to learn at all. This is more or less a firmly vanilla expansion for Half Life, the “HD texture pack” aside. While this makes it lose out on the coolness factor, at face, I found that this conservative approach made Blue Shift more palatable in the long run. Especially because it’s not very long to begin with, nor did it tend to overstay its welcome.
However, this is every bit a weakness of the expansion as it is a strength. It is here that I point to Blue Shift’s genesis on the Sega Dreamcast, as part of an ill-fated Half Life port to an ill-fated console ahead of its time. Which is probably why the port was canned in the first place, but not before a PC version of Blue Shift was announced. Saving it and its texture pack from the chopping block, yet ultimately condemning it to be the lesser of Gearbox’s expansions in the eyes of players.
All of this is to say that Blue Shift really feels like it was built for a console. Enemy placements and groups sizes never quite reach the numbers seen in the vanilla game or Opposing Force on PC, which, given the original design target, is to be expected. I wouldn’t say it’s inherently easier because of this, though, as, call me crazy, but Barney the security guard feels a lot flimsier in his body armor compared to Gordon and Shepard in their suits of power armor. Leading to a fair amount of tense moments and loading of saves, but never to the degree that I’d say I wasn’t having fun.
Overall, Blue Shift is perfectly adequate. It feels more competent than Opposing Force in a lot of ways, but continues to lack that old Valve charm of the base game. To say nothing of the general absence of new content to make it memorable to most players, unless you happen to be a fan of the texture pack. Still, if you want more Half Life, you could probably do a lot worse than this.
