Post your questions, comments, and suggestions on the Half-Life: Blue Shift review.

Link: http://www.systemlogic.net/reviews/...ierra/blueshift

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ActiveTuning - Partner & Director Of Sales & Marketing

It should probably be clarified that the Blue Shift port to the PC was planned a good year or so prior to the cancellation of the Dreamcast port of Half-Life. HL for the Dreamcast was just cancelled last month, even though it was all but complete. With Wal-Mart and other distributors clearing out all their Dreamcast inventory, Sierra knew that very few were going to sign contracts to carry the title, so they didn't even go through with manufacturing.

But the point remains - While Blue Shift was originally supposed to be Dreamcast-only, they did change their tune on that issue a while before the Dreamcast (And it's corresponding version of Half-Life) got cancelled.

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We'll be seeing a whole bunch more repacks of Half-Life...should Valve decide to port Decay (The PS2 extra missions) to the PC. Maybe they'll enhance the textures so that the high-rez model pack isn't so bad, eh?

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I'm kinda in favor of PC Gamers review on Blue Shift, but still I found it worth it that I got Blue Shift (even though I have Op4). The good news is that they buy back the old Op4 CD, so I guess that makes up for it. Any news on Half Life 2? I would really like it if they used the GeoMod Tech (like the one on Red Faction) in the HL2, and maybe a few more things. The only thing is, who else are players going to play as, the G-man?

Well...if rumors seem to keep up, apparently "Decay" will be coming to the PC...and I think you play as a scientist in Decay (That's just my guess).

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Hey Cutriss...

To keep you informed... :-)

Half-Life: Decay will put you in the shoes (well, I guess they don't HAVE shoes) of an Alien Slave. Y'know, the green shocking fellows.

Hmm.

Is it just me, or is Half-Life kinda like Tomb Raider? I don't mean in gameplay, but in the sense that they just keep using the same, old, now-decrepit 3d engine. I've seen (and played a little) Half-Life, and seen a couple expansions. The expansions are certainly interesting, but only marginally better than a "new version" of Tomb Raider....

Of course, Tomb Raider doesn't have any new game engines in the works (I think they're done with the series?), whilst there is a new version of 2.0?

You know your comparison of Half-Life to Tomb Raider is dead on. They keep reusing the same 2 year old engine to power now, what, 4 games! OpFor was ok and after reading this review, i'm glad I didn't pick it up.

Hmmm. I live in the UK and our version of Blue Shift doesn't come with the full version of Opposing Force. Instead we have something called Opposing Force CTF, which seems to be a multiplayer only mod. Either that or I've installed it wrong, or I have a duff CD.

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"Y'know you guys are so unhip it's a wonder your bums don't fall off." ~Zaphod Beeblebrox

Aw...cool. So then when they inevitably port to the XBox, then they'll introduce their latest expansion pack, called "White Collar". What is this anyway? Sierra's bid to introduce a whole bunch of factions where you can pick and choose what side you want to be on? What next? Is Half-Life 2 going to be a squad-based RTS or something? Heh...have a 25-player game going where the Barneys face off against the Marines against the aliens against the scientists against HEV warriors (e.g. Gordon)...

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Ok forget about all of the H-L mutations and just give me TFC2 already.

Price per gameplay wise this must be one of the most expensive games I have ever played. It took about 6 hours to get through the damn game, and 30 dollars is a bit too much for 6 hours of crap. After graduating and getting a job I had promised myself that I would not download ISOz, but games like this makes me want to sail the high seas of piracy again.

Regarding your review...I don't understand why you end up giving Blue Shift such a high score. For instance, in the review, you state that Blue Shift uses the same sound, same music, same characters, same graphics (even on high res, these graphics look like crap), same engine, same weapons, is over within 6 hours and even ends with a lame and lazy credit roll as soon as you complete your last task. After all this, you still give it a 8 out of 10? Then you conclude that ANY Half-Life game is de facto great? You are supposed to be reviewing this game, which means that you should be objective and critical, not just giving the developer's of this title a blank cheque to release whatever crap they want to under the Half-Life name. I am actually pretty disinterested in Half-Life itself, as I have never played it. However, reviews such as yours make me kind of angry because of the lack of any critical judgement. It seems obvious to me that the developer's, in this case, were presumptuously counting on support from the Half-Life community upon the release of Blue Shift, and so felt comfortable releasing a game with really no positive qualities. I would think that as a fan of Half-Life, you would be a little more critical of a release that was clearly uninspired and so derivitive of previous titles. Instead, you encourage it. I personally feel that the job of the game reviewer/critic is to try and encourage creativity and originality on the part of game developers by writing objective and insightful reviews. Your review struck me as being totally unconcerned with the actually quality of the game--it gives the impression of someone who is happy with anything, no matter how poorly executed, simply to have a Half-Life game. Sorry if this post is bit over the top, but I am getting really sick and tired of reading reviews for games which seem so obviously biased towards the industry.

Tactitus,
As one of this site's game reviewers, I'm inclined to agree with you. I felt the same way after reading the review. Stan lodged quite a few complaints against Blue Shift, yet gave it a pretty high score. I did something similar to Battle for Naboo, but Battle for Naboo had potential that could've been corrected by a few patches, but also had some design flaws.

Blue Shift, on the other hand, suffers mostly from marketing and design flaws, stuff that couldn't really be corrected in a patch. I mean, you can't really patch in a whole 6 more hours of gameplay... :-( And it did seem overpriced to me too, except that I don't own OpForce, so it would be reasonably worth it to me.

Did OpFor come in its own jewel case, or were the CDs just sleeved?

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Oh...and don't worry about that. You're entitled. Feel free to stick around and give us more feedback too. We need that feedback to help make things better. Glad to have you on board, Tacitus.

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