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Products
The popularity of the Half-Life Series has led way to an array of side products
and collectibles. Valve offers Half-Life-related products such as a plush
vortigaunt, plush headcrab, posters, clothing and mousepads.
Expansions
Two expansion packs by outside developer Gearbox Software have been released for
the PC version: Half-Life: Opposing Force (1999) and Half-Life: Blue Shift
(2001). The former, often shortened to OpFor or OP4, returns the player to Black
Mesa during the events of Half-Life's storyline, but this time from the
perspective of one of the soldiers in the Hazardous Environment Combat Unit sent
to cover up evidence of the incident. It introduced several new weapons (notably
the M249 SAW LMG and a Barnacle grappling gun), new non-player characters, both
friendly and hostile (Otis the security guard and the "Race X" aliens,
respectively) and new, previously unseen areas of the facility. The expansion is
shorter than Half-Life, having 11 chapters to the original's 19.
The player takes control of Barney Calhoun in Blue Shift.Blue Shift returns the
player to HL's Black Mesa timeline once more, this time as one of the facility's
security guards. (This expansion was originally developed as a bonus mission for
the canceled Dreamcast version.) Blue Shift came with an optional High
Definition Pack that could update the look of Half-Life, Opposing Force, and the
new Blue Shift content. In particular, the models' polygon count and texture
resolutions were increased. However, the style of some of the models (most
noticeably the human grunts) was noticeably altered, meaning that whether they
actually look better or not is subject to opinion. Some changes were also made
to the in-game sounds, most notably the shotgun. Blue Shift had relatively
little new content compared to Opposing Force: aside from a few models
(jacket-less scientists and security guards, Otis, and Dr. Rosenberg) all
content was already present in the original Half-Life.
Half-Life: Decay was another expansion by Gearbox, released only as an extra
with the PlayStation 2 version of Half-Life. The add-on featured cooperative
gameplay in which two players could solve puzzles or fight against the many foes
in the Half-Life universe.
In 2000, a compilation pack titled the Half-Life: Platinum Collection was
released, including (with their respective manuals):
Half-Life
Counter-Strike
Team Fortress Classic
Half-Life: Opposing Force
In 2002, the pack was re-released under the new titles Half-Life Platinum Pack
and Half-Life: Generations. These new iterations also included the Half-Life:
Blue Shift expansion pack.
In 2005, Half-Life 1: Anthology was released, containing Steam-only versions of
the following games on a single DVD:
Half-Life
Half-Life: Opposing Force
Half-Life: Blue Shift
Team Fortress Classic
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