Half-Life: Opposing Force

The Good
I'm still bedazzled to see how this game was so spitted upon and said to be like a easy-to-earn on fame of Half-Life crap. This is not true! Not for a second. I stand to the thought that this add-on is equally interested as Half-Life was a year before this mission disc came out.

For those who remember Half-Life (and who doesn't, right? ;) they know that after that lab explosion, strange and unknown portals started to open, and you, as one of renowned scientists, had to find the way out of this hell-bunker better known as Black Mesa government secret facility which was way beneath the surface. The reason I liked this game so much is for the story -- it was the first FPS that actually gave you time for adventuring beside just shooting around (by the time, I didn't play Outlaws which is definitely one of the first shooters with great story, not to mention soundtrack). And eventually, when you finally reached the surface, the fire was open on your fella scientists, guards and you. All points that soldiers for some reason got the orders to shoot at anything that movies, no matter if it's human or not. Now that was a turnover. And now, you're one of those soldiers that you probably kill o'plenty in the original Half-Life.

Time resets, and the game starts as your team of elite soldiers are approaching to the surface of Black Mesa facility. All of a sudden, you see some alien flying 'ship' destroying neighbouring helicopter. Soon after, your own was hit by something unknown and you find yourself on solid ground. That's where you enter the top level of Black Mesa research facility. You see couple of your team members dead, and a scientist trying to revive them... or what's left of them, anyway. Not knowing the surroundings (well, of course that's unfair 'cos you know the whole building inside-out from Half-Life, hehe), your only goal is to stay alive until next orders.

The whole story, which by the way happens same time as the original Half-Life story when you played as Gordon Freeman, is now through the eyes of a soldier, a corporal Sheppard, and no matter how much things can be familiar here, it's a whole new set of everything, and you'll soon discovers that he didn't just see all the same stuff Gordon did. For your fun, only a few basic weapons will be the same as in Half-Life, the basic gun, shotgun, and machine gun, other weapons are all new, with emphasis on many alien weapons that will quite surprise you with their usage. The music is like in a prequel, only a few time appears when it's supposed to be 'suspense' and lasts like 30 secs or so, but with great sound and atmosphere in the game, it looks even more real.

Now, if you're playing a good-guy, and are familiar with the story of the original, you won't have to shoot innocent scientists and/or Black Mesa guards, as some of them will even be more usefully alive, especially for opening some doors and stuff like that. Actually, I think you can even stuck if you kill a guard that needs to open a door for you, so you'll sometimes have to protect him and clean the way to safety for him. But now you'll have much heavier fire support, as soldiers with lower rank can accompany you, and some of them have pretty much great firepower. Also, there are medics that can heal you or the other soldiers, but not with infinite medkits. And engineers can use their blowtorch to cut through some solid metal doors but as medics, they're only armored with a pistol so protecting them can sometimes mean saving your own life.

Most of aliens you encountered in the original are the same, with same way of attacks, but there are some additional that Gordon was lucky to pass them. But additional aliens stand for additional alien weapon arsenal, so now you can find alien ice-gun which will pretty much freeze every foe, or if you remember those tentacles that are hanging from the ceiling waiting to grab on something, you'll have a piece of equipment which you'll be able to use to glue on some harmless alien lifeforms and by that, whip yourself to the other side of the pit or whatever, like we only had the pleasure to encounter in Indiana Jones related games. Also, there will be some heavy automatic weapons and guns, or you can just grab some mounted turret and wipe out the incoming threat on global scale :)

Also, when you played as Gordon Freeman, you fought many enemies that weren't alien lifeforms. Now, you'll see it's not only military that gave you the headache, as those sniper terrorists and unknown soldiers will face you in this game as well. Only now you may be able to find out a bit more about that. Oh, and sweet for the last, as much as it was easy (once you know how to do it) to kill the big bad alien in the Half-Life, the one here is even more dangerous, but can be eliminated in merely few minutes once you figure how :) If there's a thing I like, that's the easy (but hard on first look) end.

The Bad
Let's see, since they managed to make a simple add-on with the quality and playability as the original Half-Life, I think that speaks for itself. Usually, add-ons are something to make money on, and don't have much of a story or new stuff. This game, however, is filled with new stuff, new aspects of playing, new strategies, new foes, new weapons, new tracks and the whole new story. I don't care if they ever make Half-Life 2 or not, but I'm pretty happy to play as many as they make add-ons if they will keep the same quality as this one, or the Blue Shift which I'm looking forward to encounter :)

The Bottom Line
If you liked Half-Life and the story seemed short from that side, try this game and see what was happening for some poor military corporal who got into even nastier positions and traps then our fella scientist. You need original Half-Life game to play this add-on, so it's assumed you already like Half-Life game (as far as I know, whoever played it liked it so far) so this extension will be like extending already short time of the original game, and with more new stuff then you imagined add-on can have. This isn't just a simple extension with kill-all-on-screen strategy, but brings you complete new point of view and complete new story. It's as if this game was the original, and the original Half-Life was an add-on, it wouldn't be much of a difference, so if you like HL, play it, if you weren't too keen on HL world in general, skip this one and try Deus Ex or something else.

The Good
After Half-Life blew PC gamer’s minds an expansion pack was inevitable. The idea of playing as a Marine and seeing the story from the enemies point of view is a cool idea, however this game fails to pay off of this in just about every conceivable way.

You are Adrian Shepard, you lead a squad of marines to Black Mesa to silence all witnesses. You get to see the story of the Black Mesa incident, from Adrian’s eyes. A cool idea, in concept. In execution however it is not so good.

The Graphics are on par with Half-Life’s. That means that they are not that great but get the job done.

The Sounds are good. The music is not as good as the original game.

The Gameplay tries to innovate but also fails. It feels cheap. And lame.

The Bad
The story fails largely because unlike the what the box claims your mission is not to kill Gordon Freeman, you are never even given your orders. Also scenes from the original are scarce, and when you do see them they are not as cool as they could have been. HL:OF, also introduces new weapons and enemies, the new weapons are all good, but the new aliens are crap, they are inconsistent to the plot and are too powerful. And most of the fun of Half-Life was killing marines, in this expansion you are a Marine so therefore you do not fight any. Other plot annoyances, like why would the G-man waste his time on Shepard?

The Music is not as good as Half-Life’s rocking tunes. But I suppose it could have been worse.

The gameplay attempts to innovate, with squad based actions, a medic, and demolitions guy, but in the end this just feels like a cheap Rainbow Six wannabe. Plus your squad is pretty dumb. And when the heat is on the tend to drop like proverbial flies. This game is also brutally hard. It is as if the game developers wanted to punish the player. One of the unique aspects of Half-Life was the fact that you played a scientist, which in the world of video games is the unlikely hero, this expansion places you as a solider which has been done to death in FPS.

The Bottom Line
Unlike what many claim this is no where near as good as the original. I cannot recommend it. You would be better off playing mods like They Hunger, than this crap expansion.

The Good
Anyone who has already played Half-Life and jumped straight to Half-Life 2 probably have no idea that there were two add-on expansion packs. The first one of these add-ons is called Opposing Force, and it is by far the best one that I have played in the old HL era. Before writing up this review, I read two that are already on there and each one recapped what happened in the original game. All of them are summed it up quite nicely, so here is my version of what happened.

Gordon Freeman is a scientist working at Black Mesa Research Facility, and his first task is to get to the Anomalous Materials lab and push a specimen into the scanning beam for analysis. This causes a portal to open between Earth and an alien planet called Xen. After this, Freeman has to defend himself against several types of aliens that randomly teleport in from Xen. Later, he encounters HECU soldiers that have orders to contain the alien threat and silence all witnesses. One of these soldiers is Corp. Adrian Shephard, and it is he who you get to control in this game.

That's right. You become the enemy rather than a good guy, and that means you can shoot any scientists and security guards on sight. You may not be able to get in locked doors that require a retinal scan or a certain code to open, but who needs them anyway when you've got your own team of engineers and medics to get the job done for you?

Shephard has access to weapons a real soldier should have including knife, pistol, machine guns, trip lasers, and grenades. Later, he will be able to use more advanced, alien weaponry. Shepard can carry more in his arsenal than Freeman could. The weapons are divided into seven groups, so there is quite a variety to choose from. The alien weapons are much more interesting than those found in Half-Life, and I enjoyed playing with some of them. I had to use each one sparingly as ammo for these weapons are scarce.

The early chapters have Shephard fighting the same enemies that were present in Half-Life, but it is not until later in the game that you get to meet those dubbed “Race-X”. This alien race are a lot more aggressive than their other counterparts. They look excellent, especially in outside scenes. The only bosses in the game are huge and take more than just bullets to destroy. Like Half-Life, you have to fully explore areas looking for switches to push and valves to turn, that could possibly have an effect on the bosses. But using switches and valves are not just confined to bosses. More often than not, you need to push switches and move valves in order to get some machinery going or take you up to higher places, like you do in Half-Life. What's new in this game is the fact that you can access CB radios that can often be found on crates or on a shelf, and doing this will cause your captain to assign you with new tasks.

The environments in which the character walks through are rather nice. I like the way that you have the opportunity to revisit some of the locations that were in the original game, along with the gadgets that adorn each wall. Some of the hallways you walk through look futuristic, and one could be fooled for thinking that you are actually walking through one on board a space vessel. There are some underwater scenes where you walk through a building surrounded by underwater. There are windows all the way round, and you can see what creatures lurk on the other side, as well as the various debris and seaweed that has found its way there.

The soundtrack is well composed. Most of the tracks in the game have a military theme to them, and some of them reflect the situation that you are in. They are CDDA tracks so you can listen to your favorite ones outside the game

Before I started playing the game, I joined the Boot Camp, to see whether I would pick up some new skills. Most of the skills you learn there were previously taught back in Half-Life's Hazard Course. Some sections, however, have you perform tasks a real soldier accomplishes, including navigating vertical rope ladders and putting your new team to good use. The one thing I like about being in Boot Camp are the instructors themselves. If you go up to them and start hitting your Use key, they will hurl insults at you, calling you dirtbag or maggot in the process. Also, you can get them to take a hike just by having Shephard repeatedly bump into them.

The Bad
There are a few maneuvers that I found difficult performing:

Navigating a rope ladder is somewhat difficult. One section of the Boot Camp has your climbing one, then jumping to another. I tried this, but I kept on falling in brown water about ten times. You have to gather some momentum to perform the jumps properly. Outside Boot Camp, there are sections of the main game where using rope ladders is crucial to reaching a platform above you. I had difficulty in doing this, even if I climbed to the top.

I expected more from the barnacle gun, which is an alien weapon that you pick up later in the game. Unlike the ceiling ones that you frequently encounter in this game and in Half-Life - where the barnacle will suck you up to its jaws when you walk under it – the gun is only good for pulling Shephard to pods attached to a wall, in an attempt to get to a platform nearby. Again, this is difficult to do.

It was easy to get stuck in elevators when they arrive at another floor, and this usually happens if you stand on the edge of the elevator. I could only turn around and not go any further. I believe that this was a bug that has not been address by Gearbox.

In the end, I found that using the noclip cheat helped. I disable the cheat when I'm done with the maneuver.

Initial versions of the game require you to install Half-Life before installing the game, otherwise the installation would fail. Starting with Blue Shift, Sierra removed the requirement of installing original games before installing add-ons, which is quite a good thing.

The Bottom Line
In Opposing Force, you play Corp. Adrian Shephard rather than Gordon Freeman. You do the same tasks that you perform in the original game – killing aliens, flipping switches and turning valves to make things happen, and walking through beautiful locations (both inside and outside). There are a few differences: a) you have a bigger arsenal than Freeman's; b) a new, much stronger, more aggressive race of aliens scatter about the corridors to give Shephard a headache; and c) you can access CB radios sitting on crates or shelves which will give you new objectives. The graphics are beautiful, and the soundtrack is excellent.

Also, you can do anything you like when it comes to dealing with people. An example is where one of your team members hold the scientist at gunpoint. You have two options: do you watch him as he continues to trap the scientist inside a room, or be a traitor to your own team and shoot the soldier, releasing the scientist in the process. The best thing about these options is that you don't get punished for the choices you make. Just don't end up killing either the engineer or the medic.

I played the Steam version of Opposing Force and it works quite well. The soundtracks are comprised of MP3 files rather than CDDA tracks. I believe that a bug allows the game to play CDDA tracks whenever a MP3 is about to play, and I made a mistake of leaving my Grand Theft Auto: London 1969 CD, so instead of hearing the soundtrack, all I could hear was old '60s music. Thankfully, I still have the Opposing Force CD so I don't miss out on anything.

Bottom line: Opposing Force is an excellent add-on from Valve , and an add-on that is worth replaying. I hope that Valve will release a Source version of it, just like they did with the original.