Replayed Half-Life: Blue Shift just now
Wow, that was awesome. Last time I played this before was about 8 years ago, things made more sense as I understand the Half-Life lore better by now. You play as Gordon's buddy and one of Black Mesa's security guards as you try to escape the facility during the Resonance Cascade Incident. This game adds previously unseen areas to Half-Life.
Pros:
-Introduction to Barney Calhoun, who would later become a very important Story character in Half-Life 2
-Very cool new areas to explore, especially the last areas have a tense and gripping atmosphere, I liked it alot
-Connections to Half-Life 1, like you get to see that [massive HL1 Spoiler] Barney witnessed unconscious Gordon getting dragged off to the Trash compactor but couldn't help him during that
-Very thrilling Soundtrack with a different feel to them than HL1 OST, it's the same OST from Opposing Force too though
-Very clever puzzles that require quite some thinking
-Very cool new machinery! That battery charger thingy was cool.

Cons:
-Indeed, as you don't have a HEV Suit, you cannot use Charging Stations and have to rely on finding other armor to refresh your armor
-Armor is a bit less to find and you may be running around with like 4 AP for a while sometimes which makes the game a tad harder than Half-Life 1 (may be a good thing to some other players, point of view may vary)
-Enemy encounters are not so great, like:
°HECU encounters are often many of them rushing in on you at once, leaving you with few HP if you survive when you don't know the game too well yet
°Much more cheeky Headcrab placements, very often just around corners so you would often get hit by them if you don't peek & lure them first

I took about 4.2 hours to replay HL: Blue Shift at time of review (Inactive minutes excluded) which is not all that short in my opinion, but it probably is the shortest official full-length HL game.

Replayed Half-Life: Blue Shift just now Wow, that was awesome. Last time I played this before was about 8 years ago, things made more sense as I understand the Half-Life lore better by now. You play as Gordon's buddy and one of Black Mesa's security guards as you try to escape the facility during the Resonance Cascade Incident. This game adds previously unseen areas to Half-Life. [b]Pros:[/b] -Introduction to Barney Calhoun, who would later become a very important Story character in Half-Life 2 -Very cool new areas to explore, especially the last areas have a tense and gripping atmosphere, I liked it alot -Connections to Half-Life 1, like you get to see that [massive HL1 Spoiler] [spoiler]Barney witnessed unconscious Gordon getting dragged off to the Trash compactor but couldn't help him during that[/spoiler] -Very thrilling Soundtrack with a different feel to them than HL1 OST, it's the same OST from Opposing Force too though -Very clever puzzles that require quite some thinking -Very cool new machinery! That battery charger thingy was cool. [b]Cons:[/b] -Indeed, as you don't have a HEV Suit, you cannot use Charging Stations and have to rely on finding other armor to refresh your armor -Armor is a bit less to find and you may be running around with like 4 AP for a while sometimes which makes the game a tad harder than Half-Life 1 (may be a good thing to some other players, point of view may vary) -Enemy encounters are not so great, like: °HECU encounters are often many of them rushing in on you at once, leaving you with few HP if you survive when you don't know the game too well yet °Much more cheeky Headcrab placements, very often just around corners so you would often get hit by them if you don't peek & lure them first I took about 4.2 hours to replay HL: Blue Shift at time of review (Inactive minutes excluded) which is not all [i]that[/i] short in my opinion, but it probably is the shortest official full-length HL game.