[Gaming Experience: Half-Life Blue Shift] The game that led me to Half-life Universe

One of the first FPS games I played on PC was Half-life: Blue Shift. The expansion pack of Half-life with its unique story.

I don't remember much of the game's content, but I do remember how I got the game: My acquaintance gave me a disk with few FPS games, cracked of course, my PC wasn't powerful enough to run any of them except Blue Shift, which ran smoothly. That's understandable for its low-poly models.

I was unfamiliar with Half-Life at the time,
and I thought Blue Shift was a standalone game.

While I don't remember the story, I know that I was stuck fighting the first wave of monsters, so I didn't progress a lot in the game. I spent so much time exploring aimlessly. (It's something I often did when I was younger.)

Blue Shift is the first FPS I played that allows players to explore in a world that didn't feel as "a level of a game." Most of the FPS games I played before (usually on PS1,) were flat go from point A to B levels.

One scene that stuck in my mind since I first played Blue Shift was when the protagonist talks (listens?) to a scientist in an elevator. Moments after the speech ends, an earthquake strikes and the protagonist wakes up to find the lab overrun with monsters. Hope the memory didn't betray me on this one.

Half-Life Blue Shift is a side game to the franchise and explores the same events from the perspective of a different protagonist instead of the scientist Gordon freeman who was directly involved in the accident.

This time, the protagonist is Barney Calhoun, a security guard working near the labs were the accident took place. He was responsible for the welfare of the research personnel, but after the the place was turned into a war-zone, he works with a high-ranked scientist to evacuate the facility.

While I haven't replayed Half-Life Blue Shift since childhood, I bought it in one of 2018 Steam sales. It's often discounted to less than $1. I would love to try it again after finishing the original Half-life.

---

Images are taken from the Black Mesa wiki, and Neoseeker.