The Half-Life remake, Black Mesa, will soon have the option of enjoying a companion game from the original Half-Life: Blue Shift. This expansion game gave gamers the chance to experience the Half-Life story from the perspective of one of the security guards at the Black Mesa research facility, Barney Calhoun. Modding team HECU Collective will reimagine Blue Shift using the Black Mesa foundation.
Blue Shift was originally released three years after Half-Life and introduced not only a new campaign, but an HD texture and model pack, which improved the look of the game considerably. Blue Shift for Black Mesa will do much the same, making it look better in the same way that the original Blue Shift did.
As a shorter game, it won't take over a decade to make, like Black Mesa did, but could leverage the expanded Xen content of Black Mesa to create a broader experience than the original Blue Shift. It's already been under development for years, though, and you can see how the game is coming on at its official ModDB page.
The tone of the game is far different from the original Half-Life, too. Where Gordon Freeman does try to survive, he's also trying to fix the mess he and the others at Black Mesa made. For Barney, it's just about getting out alive.
No word yet about when the full Blue Shift experience will be made available, but a demo is planned for the near future, so watch this space for news in the near future.
