Half-Life: Blue Shift

Short and fun expansion pack for Half-Life. Barney is the best character in the HL universe.

its short, and if you like the og half life this is more of that. that said, rosenbergs ai is ass and there isnt really anything new here.

Short game, but who cares? It’s Barney, and everyone loves Barney.

Buena expansion, agrega mas lore y dura poco, perfecto para complementar el juego base.

It is a great expansion for one of the greatest game ever made although It is shorter than opposing force but is fun to play definitely recommend it

Very good if you have time on your hands its a fun shoot of of the HL games and its good to give it a try but overall great games

This game is very underrated in my opinion; although it is very short (being only around 2 hours long), the gameplay, visuals and environment are all amazing.

First off, the gameplay. Though there are some parts which are a bit unfun at times, like when you are fighting the 5 H.E.C.U soldiers outside a parking lot with 2 dead scientists, there isn't much cover, and is a big open space. This doesn't work for H.E.C.U fights because 1. they are hitscanners, meaning dodging their attacks can be very hard or even impossible at times, and you are basically forced to take cover. However, during the section where you need to retrieve a power cell and the H.E.C.U break through a door with a blowtorch, that section with fighting them is a H.E.C.U soldier battle at its absolute peak. The small, crammed environment makes fighting them way more fun and realistic, and more room to take cover and pull off surprise attacks. And I also love how the Xen segment doesn't last as long as it did in Half-Life 1, instead of being some long, half-assed platformer that overstays its visit, It's just a short and sweet amusement-park type section where you get to experience the pretty visuals while not having to deal with the god-awful platforming for too long.

The environment is not only half-life, but maybe even all of GOLDSRC itself at its absolute PEAK. The bright colours and the way the map tells a story and gives context as to what type of place you are in, is absolutely gorgeous. It really convinces you that you are in an actual research facility, It has a cafeteria during the tram ride, and a place where the scientists can put their uniform in the washing machine. This really fleshes out black mesa, instead of making the map just an endless futuristic building with the same 5 textures, repeated over and over again. It reminds of that of the half life mod, Half-Life: Echoes, which is one of the best mods I've ever seen in half-life. I just cannot get enough of this rendition of the black mesa facility.

Overall, I gotta give this half life expansion an 8/10. Call this opinion controversial, but I might just like this expansion a little bit more than opposing force. I wish this expansion pack as a bit longer though. That is my biggest issue with this game.

Half-Life: Blue Shift is a short but solid expansion to the original Half-Life, putting players in the shoes of security guard Barney Calhoun. While it doesn't introduce groundbreaking gameplay changes, it offers a fresh perspective on the Black Mesa incident. The improved character models were a nice touch at the time, but its brevity and lack of new weapons or enemies make it feel more like an add-on than a full experience. Great for fans, but not essential for newcomers.

Blue Shift is painfully lacking in originality and fun.

In the original Half-Life, Gordon Freeman’s role as a scientist has a clear thematic influence on the gameplay. He solves logic and physics puzzles through his intelligence, referencing his degree in theoretical physics degree, and operates complex scientific equipment through his role as a Research Associate at Black Mesa. In Opposing Force, Adrian Shephard is a US Marine which translates to a greater familiarity with weaponry, and thus a more varied arsenal to fit the combat-focused gameplay. Blue Shift’s focus on Barney the security guard also shapes the game’s direction, as you spend roughly three hours wandering through empty corridors and supply rooms, while occasionally opening doors.

Gone are the fun test chambers, dams and comically placed shark tanks from the original Half-Life, or the topside war zones of Opposing Force, and instead Blue Shift focuses on the dull procurement and operational backrooms of Black Mesa. No Half-Life player was clammering for more water treatment plants to swim through, and they certainly weren’t asking for more Xen levels. In this sense, Blue Shift doubles down on some of the dullest elements of Half-Life.

It’s not all negative, however. Blue Shift revisits some of the cooler moments of the original Half-Life, including reprising the signature opening tram segment. Yet, there’s a feeling that it’s more of an anxious retread rather than a genuine nod. Barney isn’t a scientist, and so when he begins dimension-hopping like Gordon, it feels less thematically relevant and almost ham-fisted. Blue Shift does have a few ideas up its sleeve, such as a horror-inspired elevator malfunction (complete with lights flickering on and off) as each Black Mesa member is picked off by the aliens. Yet, the setpiece feels hastily put together; NPCs clip through the floor during the descent, and the views outside the lift feature a few other security guards running down corridors in an otherwise empty room.

Blue Shift also clocks in at a much shorter three hours, compared to Opposing Force’s eight. This should be an opportunity to cram as many ideas as possible into a short space of time, cutting all the fat. Except the game struggles to fill out even that reduced run-time. The HD models that come with the package provide a fresh coat of paint to the original game’s assets, as if trying to sweeten the deal, but the focus on more realistic models has inevitably aged worse over time than the original interpretations.

Blue Shift is worth the pennies that Steam asks for, but whether it’s worth your time is another question. If you’re looking to experience the Half-Life story in its entirety, sure. However, if your purpose is to tick off classics from an exhaustive list of FPS canon, you wouldn’t lose much by skipping this one.

I think that blue shift was very good even duo I did not have the full sandbox of tools I still had fun and I enjoyed the Zen levels more here then the base game. I did feel that this game could be longer but still fun to play

meh game could easily be skipped no new guns boring story and levels

4/10

Played it for many years again and again. it's been a long time favorite.

> be me
> Calhoun
> 2-year community college dropout, majoring in “idk lol”
> get assigned to Black Mesa because I passed a CPR class once
> day one: scientists tell me my safety is a rounding error
> “guard these donuts and shut up”
> jokes on them, I got books on *aliens* and *gov conspiracies* in my closet
> then alien sphaghetti monsters show up and start eating brains
> scientists: "it's theoretical teleportation physics!"
> me: "bro i dropped out of chem 101"
> still end up pushing buttons and doing real-ass teleportation magic
> become interdimensional uber driver
> save everyone
> scientists become my ride-or-die bros
> we go on a cross-dimensional road trip
> 10/10 would get laughed at by PhDs again

👮‍♂️🚀🧠🛸

Good game, but incredibly short. Hopefully you got it for free or for a couple dollars in a Steam sale.

Blue Shift does a great job with giving characters a lot more personality than Half Life.

Its worst aspect is having a couple puzzles that are completely unsolvable without looking them up. It invents mechanics that aren't in Half Life or in the tutorial.

I adore the concept of setting a game's expansion within the perspective of someone who's a side character at best. It's almost kind of fun seeing things from the POV of a lowly guard who's way less equipped than Freeman and Shepard and has to scrounge about by looting from other dead guards, while Barney never even encounters anything really big like any Gonarchs or Gargantuas. It's a bit short but that's understandable from something made as a little extra bit of content for the cancelled Dreamcast port of the original game. Overall I'd say it's a nice little piece of side content, though I prefer Opposing Force for that.

Half-Life: Blue Shift adds another perspective to the Black Mesa disaster, but compared to the other expansions, it feels the least substantial. Playing as security guard Barney Calhoun is a nice change, but the game doesn’t expand the story or gameplay in any meaningful way.

Rather than introducing new weapons, enemies, or mechanics like Opposing Force, Blue Shift sticks to the familiar Half-Life formula. It’s more of a side story than a true expansion, offering a brief but enjoyable revisit to Black Mesa. While it’s a decent addition for fans, it doesn’t bring anything particularly fresh or memorable to the series.

I remember playing Blue Shift back in 2001, it's just more Half-Life really, but I was very disappointed at how short it was for a expansion pack that came in a big box as if it was it's own game. But still a must play for any Half-Life fans.

Compared to the Opposing Force and the main game is quite a let down downgrade but still it has it vibe

I had a great time playing! Took about 4.5 hours to complete and the story was neat; I also liked that the scientists did more than be keys on legs. Whereas half-life makes you feel like a delinquent vigilante, blue-shift makes you feel like you're actually cooperating with characters in the world.
it's also a good time to shift blues, and to blue the shifts. quite fulfilling. Careful not to get shifted though, or you may end up blue.

If you are ready to face the following issues and get the game on discount, I recommend it!
----
-> You may get stuck, and you may be subject to questions like "am I supposed to do something with this?" or "OK, what now?". Funny that the guard has to think more than Gordon Freeman to pass through, but such is life. Intent isn't always as clear in older games, so you'll have to follow a line of creative thinking to get through. There are no dumb questions.

-> it's short! I completed it in a single 4.5 hour session. Good for me because I won't be falling asleep at 6 am again, but some might expect more for their buck

Not as long as Opposing Force, but I'd argue that Blue Shift is a bit better because it has an actual objective the whole time; that being to escape. In Opposing force, you are also trying to escape but that's {spoilers} only at the start and is fucked once G-man stops you. After that you're just sort of wandering around. Decent expansion, would recommend.

it was my first time playing blueshift.
for the nostalgia of half life 1. i recommend it but its disappointing how small it is. in 2hours and half i managed to finished the game

8/10 i wish they could saying calhoun

A fun, short and sweet side story in the HL story. Beat in just under 2.5 hours, only had to look up one puzzle because it wasn't clear. Otherwise nothing to complain about. 8/10

The shortest of the standalone expansions provided for Half-Life where you play as Barney Calhoun (yup, the same guy that owes you a beer in Half-Life 2).

It doesn't introduce anything new like in Opposing Force (despite being released after), and the campaign is about 3 hours in length. Just feels like more of the same of what we got in the base game.
This can be considered underwhelming to some, or a fun little extra foray into OG Half-Life for others. It's only $6.50 CAD on Steam, so the price tag does reflect the amount of content you could reasonably expect.

I did enjoy what it had to offer, so I would expect other dedicated Half-Life fans will too!

4.6 hrs - the shortest and the weakest part of Half-Life 1 'trilogy' but still super worth playing to have a full experience. I would still love to have the 4th version where you get to play as Spec-Ops soldier/ Hell... It would be even better if you could play as one of the first aliens that get through the portals. There's still some room for more games ;p I have binged for a few days with Half-Life, Opposing Force and Blue Shift. Classics for a reason/ Still played it on the max. difficulty = HARD, but it was still very fair, fun and enjoyable = perfect setting/

Хорошее дополнение к халфе!
Играем мы за барни-охранника а Блек Мезе.

O jogo é curto e o final não é lá essas coisas, mas é divertidinho.

+ A couple of good puzzles
- Short, and not as memorable as HL1

It's £1 in the sale right now though. Worth it for a couple of hours of enjoyment.

lovely expansion to the original half life world, very fun running through as barney and seeing a different perspective on how things were going down

Blue Shift is a brief little 3 hour romp in the original Half Life engine. It's worth a single play through for fans, but don't expect anything new. No fresh enemies, weapons or tech appear, and the different perspective doesn't shed much light on the overall Half Life story. That said, since I somehow missed Blue Shift a quarter of a century ago, I completed this in 2025 and it was an enjoyable evening.

Fun Side Game to Half Life. It's pretty fun, if you played the main game, you might like this side story.

Cool POV of Barney. I just wished that it also (kind of) showed glimpses of how he's able to join the resistance too after the combine took over the world

I really don't have too much to say about this game. It's an expansion to Half Life 1, which you should play before this game if you want to understand anything at all. It doesn't differ significantly from the original game in terms of gameplay or level design. I probably wouldn't recommend it for the full price of 5 bucks, since it is only about 2-3 hours long, but it is fun and absolutely worth the 1.25€ it costs on sale. Some of the puzzles are hard and sometimes even counterintuitive due to the age of the game, but nothing that ruins the fun. There are also loads of walkthroughs online in case you do get stuck somewhere. The Linuix native version ran fine but had minor audio issues, Proton ran flawless with only 1 minor crash.

Really good side story to Half-Life. Though it is rather short (it took me 6 hours on hard for my first play through), it is a really good game and I highly recommend so you can see what Barney Calhoun was up to during Gordon Freeman's adventures through Black Mesa.

Blue Shift finishes the trifecta of three different perspectives on the same event in a short but well executed second expansion pack to the 1998 masterpiece Half-Life.

Finally after playing a glasses-wearing nerd and a trained killer we get the perspective of a regular blue collar everyman, Barney Calhoun, regular dude who's having a regular day at work at a regular trillion dollar research facility until things go real bad.

There's nothing majorly new about this in terms of enemies weapons or environments but its still very fun half-life gameplay, and seeing yet another angle on the events of May 16th 200-and-something is really cool.

The game isn't too long, maybe 4 hours on a first play through on medium difficulty if you are nothing special at shooters (im certainly not). I played it like 7 or 8 times and got my time down to i think 59 minutes. I just liked replaying it and improving my time because it was short and manageable, however in order to get much faster id have to learn to b-hop and that didn't interest me. This game was never expensive even when it came out so the length wasn't a huge criticism.

It might be the least talked about of the 7 half-life games but don't think that means you should overlook it.

When i think of Half-Life, i think of ADHD endusing action and shooting. Not, actual maps that make me look around and appriciate them instead of just bhopping thru it. Its really short, almost as short as Portal 1. But not that short. What makes HLBS so unforgiving is the horrible xen level design.

During the point where you align the huge orange meth crystal, you need to go to the cave where that one vort gets killed and GO UP that boulder. In no way does the game tell you to go up there, so in typical half life fashion. I grenade hopped up to the enterance bolder, got stuck, waited for 20 minutes, until i went up the boulder to complete the level. Overall, not the greatest half life game. But with this, my boy Barry would never make it to HL2.

quick and easy expansion, takes maybe three hours and is a cool introduction to Barry

beat the game alr, and i loved it. the trainyard combat scenes were perfection. 10/10 would play again.

Nice little expansion to Half Life from one of the security guard's point of view. If you liked Half Life then you should enjoy this expansion.

This expansion is awesome for people with no that much time, is enjoyable and I can recommend it if you previously enjoyed half life

Imo ta gra jest zbyt overhated. Powinno się w nią zagrać jak inne gry, tylko rosenberg jest zepsuty. Polecam, half life opposing force lepszy i tak

Despite the criticism many fans had for Blue Shift, I actually liked it quite a bit. It's much shorter than Half-Life or Opposing Force, but I consider this game as kind of a bonus campaign that I welcome with open hands. I'll be honest, if the main character wasn't Barney I don't think I would have cared that much, to see him again in Half-Life 2 and its episodes I felt a deeper connection because I played with him in Blue Shift.

This game is probably my least favourite game in the series, it doesnt hit hard as well as the other ones, if your looking for a half life game i'd recommend opposing force and not this

The best thing about this dlc is how short it is. It reuses assets from the original with none of the charm, there is nothing unique about the level design, and no new lore is revealed from playing it. One of the puzzles is so harebrained and frustrating that I had to look it up online, which was not the case for anything in the original. At least the UI is blue tho.

Great game. We basically look on the same story from original Half-Life, but form the eyes of a different character. A mustplay, if you love Half-Life!

short but sweet little expansion.
would play again 9.5/10
however there were some points where it took me way too long to figure out

Similarly to Half-Life 1, Blue Shift offers a classic yet quite dated experience. Unfortunately, Black Mesa: Blue Shift is not fully finished, so without a sprinkle of modernity, I enjoyed this one much less than Black Mesa, the remake of the original HL1.

Is it a good add-on? It was for its time. But that time is now gone, and if we set nostalgia aside, there are hundreds of better games to play. If you're really into retro games or just want to re-experience games from your childhood, I'd recommend it. For all the others, probably not.

If you do decide to give Blue Shift a go, note that it doesn’t have any subtitles available, so you better be fluent in English. And it has a cap of 72 fps. In order to remove it, you need to:
- open "Steam\steamapps\common\Half-Life\bshift"
- create a new file called "userconfig.cfg"
- add in the following lines:
     fps_max ""
     fps_override 1

Gives another point of view on the events of half-life. Kinda short and none of the cool guns or new enemies of opposing force but still worthwhile to play if you get it on a sale.

Unlike the opposing Force, the Blue Shift campaign gives a feeling that is too short, but it's fun and you playing like Barney, Black Mesa security and Gordon Freeman's right -hand man!
What is negative unfortunately ... is nothing new and the online is not even present in the game

But if you are a person who just wants to play and zero ... Enjoy and recommend Blue Shift

This game... is amazing. I restart the game numerous times just to live a security guard. I LOVE IT!

I'm surprised by how this game is actually good!
I was going into it with the mentality of that this game was just more HL, but it wasn't, people put that in my head and now I just feel dumb for not playing it sooner.
The story is quite nice and the pace of the game, alongside with the puzzles makes it a fresh experience. This paired with having played HL: Decay recently made me see again how much the Half-Life universe is rich and engaging, how passion was put into making this, even tho it was made by Gearbox.
But, yeah man, Half-Life Blue Shift, very good game, recommend, looking forward now into playing Opposing Force and other fan made projects, like the recent Delta Particles.