Milk Me Baby, One More Time
Sierra continues to flog the Half-Life horse
Half-Life has proven to be one of the most successful first person shooters of recent years, clocking up massive sales and receiving countless awards from magazines who obviously never got as far as the hideous teleporter lab and alien levels at the end of the game. Preferring to repeatedly flog a gift horse rather than look it in the mouth, Sierra have cashed in on the game's success with a seemingly endless parade of add-ons, re-releases, console ports and spin-offs - Game of the Year Edition, Platinum Edition, Opposing Force, Counter-Strike, Gunman Chronicles...
Now Sierra have announced that Blue Shift, which was originally going to be an exclusive episode for the Dreamcast port of the game, will be released on PC in June as a new stand-alone game. This new adventure in the Half-Life universe puts you in control of one of the security guards in the Black Mesa research facility, and features a number of new sections of the sprawling secret laboratory which Gordon Freeman didn't have access to, as well as full multiplayer support. American players will also get the Opposing Force add-on pack with it, although for some reason the rest of the world won't. Which is disappointing.
Regardless of which side of the pond you live on though, Blue Shift will also include something called the Half-Life HD Pack, which "automatically upgrades the weapons and characters of all the games in the Half-Life saga with new high definition content", giving the series a much needed make-over in the visuals department. "Blue Shift was created for Half-Life fans everywhere and we're very pleased to be able to bring it to the PC", Gearbox's Randy Pitchford pontificated. Quite what this means for the Dreamcast version of the game, which is still listed as "Available Soon" on the Sierra website, isn't yet clear.