It was too short and added very little to the Half-Life world, only good for overlap with previous Half-Life games.
Once again I couldn't change the difficulty after starting a game if I had wanted or needed to. Valve/Gearbox may not deem it necessary but I find it to be a vital feature. Video games should be about fun and what fun is it if I get stuck at a point and my only viable option is to either cheat or start over. The game really did not change much at all from the previous titles either. There were few if any new weapons, and only a couple new areas to Black Mesa. This makes the story that much more important as that is a major part of the new content. Sadly there isn't much story here. I beat Blue Shift in under five hours. Compared to the epic adventure of Gordon Freeman and Adrian Sheppard not much happened to Barney. There are no epic boss battles to be had either. Gordon and Adrian both had to fight a few but Barney only has a couple boss battles and both are won pretty easily. Opposing Force was not nearly as difficult as the Original but Blue Shift was even easier. The neatest parts to Blue Shift were the Gordon Freeman sightings. At different points of the game you will see Gordon at different parts of his journey. Opposing Force had a couple of these instances but Blue Shift had a few more and they added more to Blue Shift since it was thin to begin with. There was even a mention of Sheppard from Opposing Force for good measure. The thin story and game play additions were coupled with the aging Half-Life engine.
Blue Shift showed Half-Life's age. There were prettier games out there and Blue Shift looked like old news. There was also the issue of the recycled character models and audio voices. Blue Shift added a couple extra security guards and one new scientist but you only get to see them a few times. It really doesn't help the issue of only having a few scientist and security guard models for the whole game. It just looks tacky. I'm not saying other games of the time didn't have some reused models and voices but by 2000 it wasn't nearly this bad. The characters were also very jumpy at points. By this I mean that the models would look they were having a spasm on the spot for no good reason. It didn't happen often but it shouldn't happen at all. There was also the one time I had to restart a save because of a horrible AI glitch. I had to escort a scientist from point A to point B and he would not move after a certain spot. He would say that eh had to catch his breath but no matter how long I gave him (I waited up to five minutes) and me pressing the "E" key to tell him to get moving he would not budge. I ended up having to load my last save and try it again and luckily it worked.
Overall I would recommend this game to Half-Life fans, but only to see what little happened to Barney. It is a pretty poor expansion pack by most standards. It adds very little in terms of new items and locations and the story can be beat in under five hours for most. Many of the issues I have had with the Half-Life games from the get go are still alive and well and the graphics are showing it's age. The game play is still solid though which is it's real saving grace.
Final Score: 7.5/10