Half-Life: Opposing Force

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.

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
One of the great dreams of computer entertainment software was the ability to tell the same story from completely different viewpoints. Few games (or otherwise) have truly attempted such (the interactive fiction piece 'Madness of Roland' is one of the few to come to mind). Half-Life:Opposing Forces (HL:OPFOR) does this very thing - in a first person shooter environment of all things. And it does it well.

In the original Half-Life, you played Gordon Freeman, a scientist caught up in the catastrophe at the Black Mesa research labs. Your first goal was to make it out alive, which was hampered by the introduction of a U.S.M.C. detachment sent in to clean up the mess...including Freeman. In Opposing Forces, you play one of those Marines and get to experience the same timeline all over again, from another point of view. Although you rarely tread the exact same ground, the team did a wonderful job of making you feel like you 'just on the other side of wall' from the previous games events. Freeman even makes a quick visual cameo (he's mentioned a few times as well) and players from the first game almost find yourself rooting for him out of memories. Sympathies develop for the Marines you might have feared/loathed in the original and hatred for the manipulative man in black continues to grow. The experience makes the world of the first game come alive and truly seem three dimensional.

As you play a military man and not a scientist, you would assume that the game would emphasize combat and it does this well. You have squadmates with various skills whom you'll utilize in various situations. Although they don't seem to have the determined team work of the leathernecks you faced as Freeman, your fellow Marines will often play smart (although usually outgunned) and are a little more effective than the 'extra firepower' the guards provided Freeman in the first one. The array of weaponry has been increased as well, although many have subtle differences as opposed to the dramatic variants first person shooter fans may seek. Surprises and trying to gain the tactical high ground make their way into the action.

The emphasis on combat lessens the reliance on jumping puzzles and such. You are required to make some fantastic leaps, but compared to the first game, they're both considerably less and much easier. Your trips to Xan are rare and mostly self-inflicted, so you can avoid the low gravity platform leaps in an alien environment that most people found distateful at the end of the original. It appears that Valve listened to their customers when designing OPFOR.

As in the original, a story carries the carnage as you race about the complex and is on par with Half-Life for its ability to tell the story through both short conversations and visual presentations. Few recent games have done so much with presenting a tale without going into lengthy cut-scenes or long diatribes. In Opposing Forces, Valve proves the talent they showed in Half-Life wasn't a fluke.

Although low in polygon count, the graphics in the game more than do their job in presenting the world around you. Games like Unreal may be prettier, but at times you may find yourself appreciating the way the Valve manages to capture the realism of an area. The base feels real and even though you can't explore the whole thing, between the wonderful architecture and little peaks they give, you get a feeling of there being a complete installation, instead of abstract, connected levels.

The Bad
Even though it's almost as long as the good, non-Xan parts of Half-Life, OPFOR feels much shorter. Granted, the timeline of this game needs to fit within the originals, and you don't arrive in that timeline until a third of the way in, but fans of the original will find themselves wanting more in the end. As OPFOR is an add-on, this is understandable on a logical level, but you can't help feeling like there should have been more.

It's nice to work with fellow Marines, but it's often frustrating that they deliberately force you to move on without them, either because you fall down some hole they can't follow, jump over some obstacle they can't, or they just stop moving up with you. In most cases, I assume the designers figured your buddies would've been killed off by these points, but if you're careful, you can keep them alive. Having them stop and mill around takes away both realism and the feel or truly operating with fellow grunts you want to keep alive. This happened in the original as well, but since your primary goal, as the only one in a suit, was to escape to get help, it made sense that you left people behind temporarily. Here it doesn't work as well.

The emphasis on combat can lead you to 'can't win' scenarios because you wasted ammo early on. While restoring battles isn't as frustrating as for jumping puzzles (and actually can be fun to try to tackle a situation differently, it can get tedious.

The final boss is more interesting than Half-Life's, but the ending is once again unfulfilling and ambiguous. This works for leading into a sequel and fits the mystery and uncertain mood of the tale, but most people like some closure and 'victory dance' for their final win, not an anti-climatic scene.

The Bottom Line
If you enjoyed Half-Life, you'll enjoy this variaton on the tale. See the Black Mesa facility from the viewpoint of the Marines you once feared and try to complete your mission and learn even more of the base's many mysteries. As you'll need Half-Life to play, you may want to play the former all the way through first, as the two games interlock on a grand level and compliment each other. Those who hated the jumping puzzles of the first game will be happy to note that the Corps. apparently doesn't train frogs.