Everyone’s clamouring for Half-Life 3, but there are a fewHalf-Lifegames that a lot of people haven’t even played yet. Back in the late ‘90s, Valve enlisted Gearbox Software (known these days mostly forBorderlands) to develop a handful of spin-offs; Opposing Force, Decay, and Blue Shift.
Built in the original Half-Life engine, these games were designed to let us see the Black Mesa Incident from the vantage points of each faction that Gordon Freeman runs into during his quest to stop the Xen invasion.
Opposing Force put us into the muddy boots of a HECU military grunt called Adrian Shephard, Blue Shift the tight bulletproof vest of security guard Barney Calhoun, and Decay the two missing HEV suits of scientists Gina Cross and Collette Green.
They are amazing games that shed light on just how horrifying and hopeless the incident felt beyond the periphery of Freeman’s unstoppable rampage. However, Blue Shift is often left to the waysidedespite introducing us to Barney, who would later become a fully-fledged fan-favourite character in Half-Life 2 as a member of the core Resistance team. He’s the first friendly face we see after G-Man’s ominous opening, saving us from boarding a train to Nova Prospekt while slapping us on the back and joking about that beer he owes us. A nice moment of levity from the dystopian horrors lurking outside.
Blue Shift is a pivotal part of Half-Life history, introducing us to one of its most iconic characters, but it only has a measly all-time concurrent player peak of 420. For comparison, the original Half-Life is beating that number right now as I write this on a Friday morning at 9am BST.
Opposing Force has a more respectable peak of 5,639, while Decay is a PS2 exclusive only playable on PC thanks to mods.
Half-Life’sall-timeplayer peak, which it reached nine months ago, is a much higher 33,471. That isn’t indicative of how many people have played Blue Shift or Half-Life, the number is no doubt much higher in both cases (especially as their launches predate Steam), but it paints a pretty damning picture of how popular the spin-offs are in comparison—clearly, fewer people have tried them.
Thankfully, the community is rallying together to host an event called #ShiftingTheBar, which aims to break that player peak and bring awareness to the game that birthed Barney “the freakin’ head-humper!” Calhoun. Harry S. Robins, who played the scientists in the original games, even lent his voice to announce the event for Valve social media site LambdaGeneration, and Black Mesa developer Crowbar Collective is putting its weight behind the push. Everyone is coming together to finally give Blue Shift its long-overdue moment.
Fans are also remaking the original Blue Shift in the vein of Black Mesa, which you canread up on here!
I won’t spoil too much of the story, but it’s a quieter journey than Gordon’s, lasting only around three hours. Rather than trying to save the world by putting an end to the Xen invasion, we work tirelessly to save a handful of scientists—much of what we see with Dr. Kleiner, Eli Vance, and Magnusson in the sequels can be traced back to this huddle of eggheads with Dr. Rosenberg and Walter Bennet, finally giving the army of labcoat clones some unique standouts. It’s a breezy little game, but so important to the series’ future.
The event starts at 10am central (4pm BST) on August 24, and the game costs just £4.29, so it’s not ahugecommitment to see what all the fuss is about. If there was ever a time to delve back into Barney’s origins, it would be tomorrow.
