Half-Life: Blue Shift

Half-Life: Blue Shift is the second expansion for the computer game Half-Life and was published by Valve and Gearbox . Although it is referred to as an expansion, it is a full version that does not require you to own the main game.

Originally, Blue Shift was supposed to be the exclusive part of the Half-Life port for SEGA's Dreamcast game console , but the almost completed project was discontinued and Blue Shift was released separately for the PC .

The game hardly differs in type from the original Half-Life and offers no innovations compared to the first expansion Opposing Force . The weapons correspond exactly to those from Half-Life and have only been given new textures as part of an optional upgrade called “High Definition Pack”. In the German version, the opponents are now robots again, and there is no final boss like in the two previous games.
The ambiguous name "Blue Shift", in German about blue shift (because the security forces are dressed in blue) or blue shift , alludes to the physical phenomenon of blue shift .

action

Like Opposing Force, the game plays parallel to the events of Half-Life, with the point in time of the action of Blue Shift being set before Opposing Force. Barney Calhoun, security guard at Black Mesa, was in the research complex when the experiment in which Gordon Freeman was involved in the anomalous matter department went wrong. The plot ends when the soldiers capture Gordon Freeman and drag him to the garbage disposal facility.

Game sections

Insecurity: Barney Calhoun starts his working day in Black Mesa, which begins under bad omen, because the technology of the entire system is only working incorrectly. For example, it happens that Calhoun is not even allowed into the system because the computer does not want to accept his access code. After the door has been opened by a colleague and the error has been corrected, he goes to an elevator, where he goes down with two scientists. In the middle of the journey, however, the experiment goes wrong with Freeman involved, aliens appear in the facility and the elevator crashes. Of the three people, Calhoun was the only one to survive the fall and set off armed with a pistol and protective vest to look for a way out.
Duty Calls: Calhoun fights his way through Black Mesa canals to get to the surface. On the way he sees two soldiers throwing civilians into the sewers and complaining that a certain Shepard and his team are too late. This is Adrian Shepard, the protagonist from Half-Life: Opposing Force .
Captive Freight (keyword freight): Calhoun comes to the surface through the sewer shaft and later through a ventilation shaft into the underground car park. There he learns from a dying scientist that a colleague named Dr. Rosenberg had an escape plan from this and then goes on a search, where he arrives at a train station where equipment, frozen alien corpses and also employees of the facility are loaded onto the trains. In one of the trains he finally finds Dr. Rosenberg, with whom he went to Dr. Walter Klein can reach. There Calhoun learns that experiments have been carried out here with teleporters, which however only lead into the world of Xen, and that the scientists have not yet managed to start constant teleportations from a point A to B on Earth. Therefore Calhoun has to go through the teleporter to Xen in order to start a device there that directs the teleportation back to Earth.
Focal point: After some time in the world of Xen, Calhoun finds a group of dead scientists and the generator, which he activates and can escape back to earth through an open portal.
Power Struggle: Since the energy was only enough to open the portal for Calhoun's return for a few seconds, Calhoun is sent to the lower floors to get a more powerful energy cell from there. They wanted to get some colleagues from Klein and Rosenberg, but have not come back so far. After various obstacles, Calhoun manages to find the cell and, after it has been charged, to send it up to Rosenberg via an elevator. Then he goes back upstairs.
A Leap of Faith (a matter of trust): Once at the top, the transporter is activated; Calhoun has to fix a malfunction of the system. After the system has stabilized, the three scientists disappear one after the other in the teleporter. Before leaving, Rosenberg activates the loading sequence to ensure that Calhoun can return. Shortly before it reaches the apparatus, soldiers appear in the facility, but they can still escape at the last second. The teleportation does not work quite as planned: Calhoun is first teleported briefly to the outdoor area of Black Mesa, where the scientists are already waiting. Shortly afterwards, he comes to an outside area of the Xen world for a few seconds and then into a broom closet. In this there is a ventilation shaft at eye level, through which you can watch two Marines pull Gordon Freeman to the garbage compactor. The transporter finally brings Calhoun back outside to Dr. Rosenberg and his colleagues. The game ends when Calhoun displays “Status: Out of range. No further comments".

Web links

Blue Shift at HL Universe ( Memento from March 5, 2015 in the Internet Archive )
Half Life: Blue Shift at MobyGames (English)