Half-Life: Blue Shift

                  Reviewed by Nick Edmunds

As I may have mentioned before, I really liked Half-Life me.  I
thought it were grand.  So much so that I felt it necessary to
purchase the add-on pack Opposing Forces (reviewed in SynTax issue
65) upon its release.  I enjoyed that too, but felt it was over a
little too quickly.  Never one to let go of an idea, I've since
bought Gunman chronicles (a game based around the HL engine, but
hardly worthy of mention) and now Blue Shift.

In the original HL you played the scientist Gordon Freeman, in
Opposing Forces you played the soldier Corporal Shepherd and now,
in Blue Shift, you play security guard Barney Calhoun.  The name
is a sort of in joke as Barney was the generic name given to all
Half-Life security guards.

The game opens just as Barney is starting another security shift
at the Black Mesa Research facility.  You take the long train
journey to the centre of the complex, get yourself kitted up and
settle down for an evening of reading the paper and eating
doughnuts.  Before you have a chance to peruse the agony column,
you find yourself in the midst of a government conspiracy and wind
up running around shooting hostile aliens while being hunted by
marines.

Anyone who played the previous HL games may find this situation
vaguely familiar as the plot, much like Opposing Forces, ties in
around the Black Mesa incident of the original game, and indeed
you may even spot Gordon Freeman or the G-man along the way.
However, this Barney isn't involved in the main plot of the day,
but rather is part of a sub plot where miscellaneous Black Mesa
employees caught up in the incident try to escape.

In this respect Barney Calhoun doesn't appear to be your typical
security personnel as he seems a little too well trained and
doesn't have nearly enough beer-belly to do the job properly.  He
is also quite uncharacteristically helpful to the scientists -
offering to retrieve equipment so that they can repair the
teleport device and escape the complex, rather than sucking on his
teeth and saying, "more than my jobs worth mate" like any
self-respecting security guard.

As you may have anticipated from a product boxed in a blue version
of the original Half-Life packaging there are a couple of
similarities with the original game.  You have the same weapons -
albeit an M16 rather than an MP5 and kevlar armour rather than a
HEV suit - and the same monsters: jumpy crabs, crab/zombie
scientists (they always make me laugh), special service military
bods and sawn-off sonic dogs.  BS also uses the same engine as the
previous games and occurs in the same place at the same time, and
even though you play a different bloke, it's not immediately
obvious in the first person perspective so essentially what you've
really got is more Half- Life.

While BS is well laid out with coherent and realistic maps the
plot is a tad linear, there's certainly not much in the way of
puzzles and it doesn't have the wonderful itchy finger atmosphere
of the previous games.  A bit of running and jumping, a spot of
shooting and a brief, if disjointed, visit to Xen (the alien
homeworld) and just when you're getting warmed up, it's all over.
A very sudden and very weak ending.  No end of level bosses, nor a
twist in the tale, not even a desperate last minute flee from a
big ball.  Just a speccy scientist saying "cheers mate".  So
abrupt, in fact, that it feels like the developers got bored and
couldn't be bothered to finish it.  It's practically the
equivalent of "and then I woke up".

Apparently BS was originally designed for the Sega Dreamcast and
later ported to the PC when the console's production was
discontinued.  This may explain why a full copy of HL isn't
required to play BS and it's therefore billed as an official
stand- alone episode.  Stand-alone!  It's hardly even big enough
to sit down unassisted. In total BS didn't take me more than a
couple of hours to complete.  Not exactly what I'd call value for
money.  In an attempt to pad out the purchase the disk also
contains Half-Life Opposing Forces Multiplayer and Half-Life High
Definition Pack. Neither of which are worth writing home about and
it still isn't big enough to be allowed out on its own (US release
was bundled with Opposing Forces which at least provides a few
more bangs for their buck).  Both Gunman and Opposing Forces were
over very quickly, but BS really did take the biscuit with less
than 3 hours of gameplay.  It's enjoyable, because it's Half-Life
and it does exactly what it says on the tin, but it's not
particularly special and there's quite simply not enough of it.

The modified Quake 2 engine is still doing well despite its age
and Half-Life does have a good central plot, so there may be some
mileage left in the old Half-Life dog yet.  However, this sort of
patchy attempt to milk the original isn't doing the brand any
favours.  It may be more than a coincidence that Blue Shift
abbreviates to BS.  Perhaps the conspiracy lies deeper than I
first anticipated and the makers were trying to warn us in
advance.  If so then I'm certainly not looking forward to the Star
Trek Holosuite Interactive Tournament Edition.



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