Short, grounded, and with regular beer-owing guy Barney as its hero, Blue Shift could be my favorite Half-Life game. Half-Life 1 gets points for originality. Half-Life 2 has excellent set pieces in the form of City 17, the coastal road trip, and Ravenholm. But Blue Shift – like Opposing Force – is so tight and focused, and rounds out the resonance cascade story so well, that I think it takes the metaphorical crowbar. As HL2 gets closer to its 20th anniversary, the idea of a Half-Life 3 feels both closer and further away than ever. Valve might be keeping quiet about the future of its FPS, but modders are hard at work. The unofficial Half-Life Blue Shift remake, built using the fan-made masterpiece Black Mesa, is finally coming back.
Black Mesa: Blue Shift is a complete top-to-bottom remake of Gearbox’s 2001 shooter, built using assets and systems from 2012’s Black Mesa – itself a remake of Half-Life 1. The entire story of Barney Calhoun’s escape from the underground facility is reimagined and retold, and you can actually play the first four chapters of the FPS game mod right now. It’s Half-Life: Blue Shift, but remade for the modern era.
Created by HECU Collective (in tribute to both the army clean-up unit in Opposing Force and Crowbar Collective, maker of Black Mesa), the last major update for Black Mesa: Blue Shift was back in April 2023, when those first four chapters were compiled into a single mod. Now, the team is back, and the fifth chapter, Focal Point, will be available to play on Sunday November 17.
I’d imagine Focal Point is a tough section to remake. It’s the one moment in Blue Shift when Barney travels to Xen, the low-gravity alien world maligned by players of the original Half-Life owing to its confusing geometry, fussy platforming sections, and annoying, flying enemies. Black Mesa redesigned Xen almost entirely. We’ll have to see how much Focal Point changes things. Until then, you can play the mod’s first four chapters right here.
There are also rumblings of something special for Half-Life 2’s 20th anniversary. Valve hosted a big blowout for Half-Life 1’s 25th last year – maybe we can expect something similar.
In the meantime, check out some of the other best old games that you can still run today, or maybe the best horror games, if you miss the claustrophobic confines of the Black Mesa lab.
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