Half-Life: Blue Shift

Valve Software/Sierra Studios

The original Half-Life, released on Halloween of 1998, was an all-absorbing first-person shooter that revolutionized PC gaming. You played a scientist inside a secret underground research facility forced to find his way to safety after an experiment went seriously awry, solving logical puzzles while blasting hostile aliens and platoons of Marines sent in to secure the facility. In an expansion pack released a year later, Opposing Force (included here), you played a Marine. In the just-released Blue Shift, you play one of the facility’s security guards. This game’s a lot shorter than the original. There are still aliens and Marines to neutralize, but the mission here is better defined: Find scientist, lead him to old teleporter, jump to alien world, recalibrate machine, return, recharge battery. Mildly disappointing, but a must-have for H-L junkies.