[The Reason: Why I did not write an article for these two games is likely the same reason so I will kill two birds with one stone and include The Reason up here at the top. I finished these shortly after I beat Half-Life, but just never got around to writing either article because I felt that all I was doing was comparing these DLC expansions to Half-Life and not on their own merits. In short, I had more fun with these side stories of the incident at the Black Mesa Research Facility than I did with Half-Life and I could not find a way to adequately say that in a way that felt good so soon after playing them. So now here we are.]
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The thing about Half-Life: Blue Shift, and Half-Life: Opposing Force is that they use the same engine, although there are graphical enhancements here compared to the original Half-Life. The games play pretty much the same, in first person, picking up and shooting guns, hitting things with your blunt object of choice, and not knowing how to climb ladders. I do not know how else to describe how frustrating I found it (and still did when I booted up both games) to try to climb down a ladder by holding the W key, but only as long as you are looking down, otherwise you will almost literally fly up the stairs.
Alright, ladders suck. Moving on.
One thing that I forgot that I had to do with both games before I could play, was modify the mouse control/input to enable "Raw mouse input" otherwise there is a glitch of sorts that does not allow you to look around with the mouse beyond what you can currently see.
The two DLC expansions were short by comparison, but after being frustrated and underwhelmed with Half-Life, I was happy to have a shorter and more condensced experience. What I liked about this game and Opposing Force was that I was experiencing the events from Half-Life but from different perspectives. In Blue Shift, Barny Calhoun's story started before Gordon Freeman's story in Half-Life and ended maybe just over half-way through. In Opposing Force, Adrian Shephard's story starts just at about the half-way point and to, maybe, just before Half-Life ends. I love stories that take place opposite of the main characters. In LOST, I actually enjoyed the Nikki and Paulo storylines (don't get me wrong though, their characters were pretty annoying) because we got to see a different side of various significant events in the show. In Star Trek: The Next Generation, one of my favorite episodes was "Lower Decks" because it focused on crew members who were not part of the main character clique.
What I also appreciated about both Calhoun and Shephard's stories, was that it showed how they contributed in putting down the Xen invasion/retaliation, as well as the attempt by Race X. In Half-Life, I was made to feel that everything Gordon Freeman was doing was by himself, that he single-handedly saved the world, but unbeknownst to him (and people playing for the first time), there were multiple storys happening at the same time, who all unknowingly helped each other. I mean, tell me that Black Mesa and the rest of the south western United States would have been fine if Corporal Adrian Shephard had not driven back the Gene Worm, regardless of Gordon Freeman's actions.
My takeaway from these two games is that I enjoyed them both, but only because I played through Half-Life and my enjoyment of Half-Life improved a bit, but only because I played Opposing Force and Blue Shift. Take from that what you will.
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