HECU Collective has released the Caretaking Update for its remake of Half-Life: Blue Shift in the Black Mesa Engine, Black Mesa: Blue Shift. This update brings important fixes, tweaks, and changes to this fan remake. So, let’s take a closer look at it.
Half-Life: Blue Shift was an expansion of Half-Life that came out in 2001. Developed by Gearbox, this expansion allowed you to experience the events of Half-Life from the perspective of Barney Calhoun.
In Black Mesa: Blue Shift, players will relive the Black Mesa Incident as Gordon Freeman’s best friend, Barney Calhoun. This fan remake currently has the first five chapters of Blue Shift. These chapters are Living Quarters Outbound, Insecurity, Duty Calls, Captive Freight, and Focal Point.
It’s been almost a year since the release of Chapter 5. During this time, the modding team has been working on completing the next chapter, Power Struggle. Still, they felt the need to also release an update so that they could further enhance Chapter 5.
So, Focal Point will now be filled with various audio recordings left behind by the pioneers of the Borderworld. This will expand the story behind the early Xen expeditions. It will also reveal how everything went terribly wrong.
The team has also added a new scene at the end of Focal Point to smoothly transition into Power Struggle. There are new voice lines, animations, and small details throughout every chapter. HECU Collective has improved the lighting, performance, combat, and overall atmosphere in Focal Point. They also added new background animals, interactive objects, and other small details to make the world feel more alive. On top of that, they made several optimizations to physics, lighting, and general map performance.
You can go ahead and download the latest version of the mod from this link. At the end of the article, you can also find two videos for it. The first video is dedicated to the Caretaking Update. The second video will give you a glimpse at the next chapter, Power Struggle.
Speaking of the first Half-Life game, there are some other cool mods that you can download for it. For instance, you can download Brutal Half-Life. Then we have a mod that adds Full Ray Tracing/Path Tracing to it. This is a must for everyone who wants to re-experience the main game, so be sure to download it.
Now, if you don’t want Path Tracing, you can use this AI-enhanced HD Texture Pack. This pack will overhaul all of the game’s textures. However, its lighting won’t change in any way. Thus, you’ll get an experience closer to the vanilla game.
Halo: GoldSource is a fan-made game that brings Halo’s gameplay into the Half-Life engine. It has two main modes: Slayer and Firefight. You’ll find lots of classic Halo maps and some new ones made just for Firefight. Plus, you can use many cool Halo weapons.
Finally, we have Half-Life: Delta. Half-Life: Delta is a Total Conversion Mod, featuring 4 chapters and 31 gameplay maps. Black Mesa: Military is another cool mod that lets you experience the events of Half-Life from the point of view of a marine. Oh, and there is a new Aliens-based TC Mod, called Solitary Echoes.
Enjoy and stay tuned for more!
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
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