your dumb ass:
randy pitchford is covered in a thin slimy film! he's a greasy pervert! he's a little creep!
reality:
the year is 1999 — randy "anti US hegemony" pitchford directs the first expansion to half-life. you play as adrian shephard, a villain sent by the USMC to assassinate all witnesses to the black mesa incident, including gordon freeman. but before you can be briefed your helicopter is shot down and you're left stranded without heads or tails of your sinister purpose
knowing you play half-life like everyone else under the sun and that you'll gun down civilians without care, pitchford creates a ludonarratively consonant scenario that incorporates known player behaviours into narrative conceits with trademark grace; one where the participant likely fulfills much of adrian's goal before they're told what it is. pitchford provides commentary on the military's success with breeding more aggressive, violent soldiers, understanding that in WWII only 15-20% of polled soldiers reported firing their weapons, whereas this number raised to 55% in korea and 90-95% in vietnam due to manufactured contempt. blending these two ideas he bridges the gap between player and character and entwines the two in an inseparable double helix mirroring both participants; nature born of accursed nurture
you and shephard are funneled along a narrower path; shuttled from combat encounter to combat encounter, and granted "tacticool" tools to make the violence more thrilling than the previous game while puzzles and horror elements are sanded down extensively. you command other soldiers who speak in garish barks and exist solely as expendable resources, the setting is treated with a heightened parodic touch, and gordon himself is depicted as "employee of the month" despite it being his first day, lampooning his impossibly grotesque ubermench status
eventually your arsenal is overtaken by alien alternatives, more explicitly showing shephard as being more monster than man, the futility of his battle, and the lack of freedom he has by design. he's then left detained where he can do no harm nor receive it, and g man closes out the game by saying "I'm sure you can imagine worse alternatives" — an acknowledgement of the struggle many veterans experience upon returning home, and the lack of support they're given from their government once they've outworn their intended function
randy, I kneel
randy pitchford is covered in a thin slimy film! he's a greasy pervert! he's a little creep!
reality:
the year is 1999 — randy "anti US hegemony" pitchford directs the first expansion to half-life. you play as adrian shephard, a villain sent by the USMC to assassinate all witnesses to the black mesa incident, including gordon freeman. but before you can be briefed your helicopter is shot down and you're left stranded without heads or tails of your sinister purpose
knowing you play half-life like everyone else under the sun and that you'll gun down civilians without care, pitchford creates a ludonarratively consonant scenario that incorporates known player behaviours into narrative conceits with trademark grace; one where the participant likely fulfills much of adrian's goal before they're told what it is. pitchford provides commentary on the military's success with breeding more aggressive, violent soldiers, understanding that in WWII only 15-20% of polled soldiers reported firing their weapons, whereas this number raised to 55% in korea and 90-95% in vietnam due to manufactured contempt. blending these two ideas he bridges the gap between player and character and entwines the two in an inseparable double helix mirroring both participants; nature born of accursed nurture
you and shephard are funneled along a narrower path; shuttled from combat encounter to combat encounter, and granted "tacticool" tools to make the violence more thrilling than the previous game while puzzles and horror elements are sanded down extensively. you command other soldiers who speak in garish barks and exist solely as expendable resources, the setting is treated with a heightened parodic touch, and gordon himself is depicted as "employee of the month" despite it being his first day, lampooning his impossibly grotesque ubermench status
eventually your arsenal is overtaken by alien alternatives, more explicitly showing shephard as being more monster than man, the futility of his battle, and the lack of freedom he has by design. he's then left detained where he can do no harm nor receive it, and g man closes out the game by saying "I'm sure you can imagine worse alternatives" — an acknowledgement of the struggle many veterans experience upon returning home, and the lack of support they're given from their government once they've outworn their intended function
randy, I kneel
On the scale of Video Game Shephards, Adrian Shephard is pretty alright.
Better than General Shepard of Modern Warfare 2, but not as good as Commander Shephard of Mass Effect.
Better than General Shepard of Modern Warfare 2, but not as good as Commander Shephard of Mass Effect.
DUDE I FUCKING LOVE THE US ARMY
A great expansion of Half-Life that uses lots of new assets and ideas without straying too far from what makes the original game so great. The new weapons are fun to use and the puzzles are well-crafted as well. The ending got pretty annoying however, as the same two enemies with tons of health are fought often without many healing items, which ended up being extremely frustrating. I definitely prefer this expansion over Blue Shift because of how much new stuff there is.
GEARBOX ROLLS WORST BOSS EVER
ASKED TO STOP MAKING HALF-LIFE
ASKED TO STOP MAKING HALF-LIFE
I think it's entirely fair to say that this game kind of gives you a larger arsenal than you'd ever need and feels a little bloated as a result but god damn the moment-to-moment gameplay just feels great
Pretty cool and fun because Half-Life is cool and fun. I know this is an expansion but everything I liked about this I also like about the base game? I didn't really like any of the stuff unique to Opposing Force like the enemy types or level design. I don't think Black Mesa feels as real in terms of layout as the base game, I really like how it feels like you're travelling through the whole facility in that but here it just kind of felt like I was wandering randomly.
idk i'm being really picky cause this is basically more Half-Life and I can't complain about that. Half-Life is cool, love you Half-Life xo
idk i'm being really picky cause this is basically more Half-Life and I can't complain about that. Half-Life is cool, love you Half-Life xo
sick new weapons and enemies. Love the aesthetic and cool military tacticool stuff like replacing flashlight with night vision and having squad members with different roles like a medic or a blowtorch guy. Overall not quite as good as half life 1 but many nautical miles ahead of blue shift or as i call it poo shit
More stuff doesn’t equal a better game. Play Blue Shift instead.
Doesn't quite have the vision of the original. The campaign loses focus halfway through and the final boss is kind of weird and abrupt. It's too bad, because the military stuff is quite fun and if it carried the quality of its strong opening chapters all the way through, I probably would have ended up putting it above the base game. Still a very worthy expansion. Doing the different perspective was an inspired idea.
Gaming's best expansion. Genuinely rivals the original in quality with it's original weapons, enemies, locations, content. This is half the length but packs the same punch as HL1. Even when Adrian Shepard is teamed up with his brothers in arms this game still reaches similar levels to isolation, desperation, and eeriness when going through Black Mesa. The idea of having a side game take place within the same moment as the main game from a different protagonist's perspective is top 3, sickest ideas ever that I'm surprised hasn't been done a whole lot. A different perspective to Gordon Freeman, in this case Adrian Shepard, shows how one of your main enemies in the game, in this case the military, handle this game's deplorable situations when compared to a lone brave scientist. Seeing all the scientists fear for their lives when they cross paths with you creates a different sense of dread when compared to the relief when they see Gordon Freeman, since they know they are prime victims for the military. The new weapons are amazing to use, the new locations are so dense, and the new enemies are genuinely terrifying. I love this game, this idea, everything. It's just a shorter Half-Life 1 that improves on the original in multiple areas. Ironically enough though the weakest aspects of this game are around the end game as well. The final boss is a confusing mess that over stays it's welcome, and some of the final areas are just ok. Not anything to the degree of Xen though. Is it better overall? Shit I don't know or care they're both peak. You're in and you're out in 5 hours or less and it's nothing but high action. Beautiful.
I've never really understood all the reverence this expansion gets and while I used to have at least a decent opinion of Opposing Force, I just really don't think I liked it on this replay? It's less any one major fault and more like a lot of little issues that pile up on top of each other that just makes for an experience that I don't care much for. There's a lot of ambition here and Gearbox does deserve credit for this being their first major release (!); Gearbox definitely seemed to have some level of understanding of what made the original Half-Life work as well as it did, but I think the issue here is that a lot of the new concepts they brought to the table sound cool on paper but just don't work in execution.
Climbable ropes don't really add much that a ladder or convenient stairway/ramp out of other objects wouldn't do better, especially with how ridiculously janky they are. Marine grunts that you can command to follow you around and having unique traits is a really cool idea that would expand further on what HL1 was already doing (and I wouldn't be surprised if Valve took notes from this considering how the squad system in Half-Life 2 functions), but in execution Opposing Force pushes the already barely functional friendly AI past their limit. It's a coin flip on how much they'll actually follow the player around and even if you can manage to get them to stay behind you, the level design itself just barely accounts for their existence. It made sense for Gordon to leave behind scientists and guards in the moment because their weaknesses and limited usage compared to the ridiculous stuff you do can be understood from the get-go, whereas being a military corporal commanding his troops just suddenly abandoning them makes far less believable sense. It doesn't help either that Opposing Force doesn't do anything actually new with the friendly grunts, not when their only real required use still amounts to opening doors that you otherwise can't unlock yourself.
The bigger issue here is that I just don't find Opposing Force very memorable, and the few things that do stick out in my mind are the times when the game becomes frustrating at its worst towards the end. There's a lack of major set piece moments or distinct locales like HL1 had as you spend most of your time running through samey dark rundown interiors as the destruction has already long passed by the time Shephard is there. The new weapons barely register in my mind when several of them are basically just equivalent replacements for weapons in the original game (the deagle is just the revolver with more ammo and a weird laser sight that you will never turn off, the sniper is the crossbow, etc), and the others are gimmicky and are annoyingly assigned to keys 6 and 7 which are hard to reach for in a heated fight. That sounds like a bizarre nitpick but it's even that small detail that HL1 understood and was careful about with how its weapons were assigned, never making them far from reach and inaccessible. The new enemies either make me feel nothing or annoyed with how bullet spongey they are and how fast they can wipe you from full health; the military grunts in HL1 already rode a fine line between engaging and annoying with their fast hitscanning damage, I have no clue who at Gearbox thought that making them faster and adding more of them with the black ops units were a good idea but good lord it wasn't.
And on top of all of that, it really doesn't help Opposing Force's case either that Valve themselves haven't done a particularly good job of preserving the experience as well as it should've. I have no idea how many of these things actually might have been better back in its original release because the Steam version noticeably breaks several things like music cutting off on any load screen including map transitions and loading your saves. Some of the music I got to hear I kind of liked! I wish I could actually hear them in full! Certain AI functions and responsiveness seem to be partially tied to the framerate too, and the FPS limit doesn't actually work properly out of the box; the console command fps_max seems to be locked at 72 by default but it's not actually enabled with fps_override. It's frustrating because these issues were fixed for the original Half-Life since 2019 (which is still a ridiculously egregious amount of time it took for Valve to finally fix these issues) but they were never carried over to the two expansions.
Altogether I just kind of don't care much for Opposing Force. A lot of it sounds cool on paper and I can absolutely see the ambition but in practice I just don't think it's very fun to play. It's not bad and every couple of years I will sit there and wonder "why haven't I played this more times", only to actually start replaying it and realize very quickly why it leaves my memory every time.
Climbable ropes don't really add much that a ladder or convenient stairway/ramp out of other objects wouldn't do better, especially with how ridiculously janky they are. Marine grunts that you can command to follow you around and having unique traits is a really cool idea that would expand further on what HL1 was already doing (and I wouldn't be surprised if Valve took notes from this considering how the squad system in Half-Life 2 functions), but in execution Opposing Force pushes the already barely functional friendly AI past their limit. It's a coin flip on how much they'll actually follow the player around and even if you can manage to get them to stay behind you, the level design itself just barely accounts for their existence. It made sense for Gordon to leave behind scientists and guards in the moment because their weaknesses and limited usage compared to the ridiculous stuff you do can be understood from the get-go, whereas being a military corporal commanding his troops just suddenly abandoning them makes far less believable sense. It doesn't help either that Opposing Force doesn't do anything actually new with the friendly grunts, not when their only real required use still amounts to opening doors that you otherwise can't unlock yourself.
The bigger issue here is that I just don't find Opposing Force very memorable, and the few things that do stick out in my mind are the times when the game becomes frustrating at its worst towards the end. There's a lack of major set piece moments or distinct locales like HL1 had as you spend most of your time running through samey dark rundown interiors as the destruction has already long passed by the time Shephard is there. The new weapons barely register in my mind when several of them are basically just equivalent replacements for weapons in the original game (the deagle is just the revolver with more ammo and a weird laser sight that you will never turn off, the sniper is the crossbow, etc), and the others are gimmicky and are annoyingly assigned to keys 6 and 7 which are hard to reach for in a heated fight. That sounds like a bizarre nitpick but it's even that small detail that HL1 understood and was careful about with how its weapons were assigned, never making them far from reach and inaccessible. The new enemies either make me feel nothing or annoyed with how bullet spongey they are and how fast they can wipe you from full health; the military grunts in HL1 already rode a fine line between engaging and annoying with their fast hitscanning damage, I have no clue who at Gearbox thought that making them faster and adding more of them with the black ops units were a good idea but good lord it wasn't.
And on top of all of that, it really doesn't help Opposing Force's case either that Valve themselves haven't done a particularly good job of preserving the experience as well as it should've. I have no idea how many of these things actually might have been better back in its original release because the Steam version noticeably breaks several things like music cutting off on any load screen including map transitions and loading your saves. Some of the music I got to hear I kind of liked! I wish I could actually hear them in full! Certain AI functions and responsiveness seem to be partially tied to the framerate too, and the FPS limit doesn't actually work properly out of the box; the console command fps_max seems to be locked at 72 by default but it's not actually enabled with fps_override. It's frustrating because these issues were fixed for the original Half-Life since 2019 (which is still a ridiculously egregious amount of time it took for Valve to finally fix these issues) but they were never carried over to the two expansions.
Altogether I just kind of don't care much for Opposing Force. A lot of it sounds cool on paper and I can absolutely see the ambition but in practice I just don't think it's very fun to play. It's not bad and every couple of years I will sit there and wonder "why haven't I played this more times", only to actually start replaying it and realize very quickly why it leaves my memory every time.
opposing force does a lot to distance itself from its parent game through new weapons, enemy types, mechanics, the works - which is something i can give it that i can't give blue shift. but despite its best efforts at making the most of being an expansion pack, opposing force gets way too annoying consistently over the course of the game for me to really like it much more than i already do
adrian shephard is noticeably lacking in defense compared to gordon freeman's HEV suit and the weapons op-for brings to the table end up taking priority in usefulness over the returning weapons from half-life 1, but the ammo for the new weapons, medkits, and armor batteries feel noticeably scare
this SHOULD, on paper, sound like a fair challenge if the game properly accommodates for shephard's attributes - but it doesn't. you NEED that extra ammo going up against stronger enemies like the black ops and race-x, and good luck counting on your comrades to back you up in a firefight for maybe, at most, 30 seconds, before they're torn through like paper. the black ops and shock troopers are far stronger than their HL1 counterparts in the HECU marines (and I guess the vortigaunts are the closest thing to compare the shock troopers to) and they can absolutely obliterate you in no time flat. it rarely feels like a fair challenge going up against them when i constantly lack health and ammo without really understanding where i went wrong
and it's not like op-for really makes the best use of its new mechanics - nothing interesting is ever really done with the barnacle grappling hook and rope climbing, you need to call on an engineer maybe TWICE across the main game, and in the middle chapters your fellow troops are nowhere to be seen anyway
at least, it's a VERY commendable effort to spice up half-life 1's gameplay and I don't think it's actually that bad - but i've seen more consistently better game design in unofficial half-life mods than in this one. only kind of impressed with this one, and really this game just makes me feel tired more than anything
adrian shephard is noticeably lacking in defense compared to gordon freeman's HEV suit and the weapons op-for brings to the table end up taking priority in usefulness over the returning weapons from half-life 1, but the ammo for the new weapons, medkits, and armor batteries feel noticeably scare
this SHOULD, on paper, sound like a fair challenge if the game properly accommodates for shephard's attributes - but it doesn't. you NEED that extra ammo going up against stronger enemies like the black ops and race-x, and good luck counting on your comrades to back you up in a firefight for maybe, at most, 30 seconds, before they're torn through like paper. the black ops and shock troopers are far stronger than their HL1 counterparts in the HECU marines (and I guess the vortigaunts are the closest thing to compare the shock troopers to) and they can absolutely obliterate you in no time flat. it rarely feels like a fair challenge going up against them when i constantly lack health and ammo without really understanding where i went wrong
and it's not like op-for really makes the best use of its new mechanics - nothing interesting is ever really done with the barnacle grappling hook and rope climbing, you need to call on an engineer maybe TWICE across the main game, and in the middle chapters your fellow troops are nowhere to be seen anyway
at least, it's a VERY commendable effort to spice up half-life 1's gameplay and I don't think it's actually that bad - but i've seen more consistently better game design in unofficial half-life mods than in this one. only kind of impressed with this one, and really this game just makes me feel tired more than anything
Now you are playing as the Black Mesa soldiers who are invading and killing everything they see, however you too get sucked into the strangeness of Half-life. Action packed and filled with fun. If you enjoyed Half-life you'll enjoy this addition too.
its okay
Still feels somewhat novel to experience an expansion that has enough new, original content to be its own standalone package. Does have the rocky sense of being so compressed and distilled in order to meet its smaller state on the half-life totem, and so on. Compare-contrast this to the semi cancelled Counter Strike singleplayer game.
Still feels somewhat novel to experience an expansion that has enough new, original content to be its own standalone package. Does have the rocky sense of being so compressed and distilled in order to meet its smaller state on the half-life totem, and so on. Compare-contrast this to the semi cancelled Counter Strike singleplayer game.
This game was pretty mid but you know, for a studio's first game, it's a fairly impressive effort. Maybe the studio behind it will go on to make better games and maybe if the CEO left a hard drive at a Medieval Times, it wouldn't have anything bad on it.
This infinitely more action-focused spin on HL1 is a good time, being a slightly more traditional shooter experience than the original. It's straightforward and quickly throws a huge arsenal at the player, leaving how to approach combat encounters as the main concern rather than the light puzzling which defined Half-Life, though there is still a bit of that. The last few chapters do start to fall apart a bit with encounters that are too much of a pain in the ass even on Normal, but the overall experience is still pretty satisfying.
I played this with a trackball to try and learn to play games with one while I sit back on the couch, and I'd say it was a good training game and I'd like to continue trying with more shooters in the future.
I played this with a trackball to try and learn to play games with one while I sit back on the couch, and I'd say it was a good training game and I'd like to continue trying with more shooters in the future.
Quando comprei e joguei a saga Half-Life, as suas duas expansões não estavam em promoção e ficaram de fora do pacote. Me tornei fã da franquia, mas essas duas importantes peças ficaram pra trás. Hora de tirar o atraso.
Essa expansão passa 100% daquela sensação de segunda campanha após zerar um jogo, também lembrando algo como a escolha entre heróis e vilões em Sonic Adventure 2.
Mais inimigos, mais armas, história paralela, duração menor e qualidade também. É bem típico desse costume que se perdeu no tempo.
O seu ritmo acelerado mostra que mesmo que seja seu primeiro jogo, a Gearbox percebeu que o clássico tinha uns problemas de ritmo e não deixou a peteca cair em nenhum momento. Só que acabou não sabendo bem quando sacar cada peteca, visto que os elementos novos, apesar de bons, são introduzidos e explorados irregularmente durante a duração da campanha, nunca dando tempo suficiente pra todas as armas e companheiros brilharem com seus novos usos, e metendo inimigos e mais inimigos difíceis sem pausa nas partes finais.
Pior do que ficar sem saber o que aconteceu com Sheppard, só o esquema de mudança de armas dessa franquia.
PS: Ao procurar legendas e perceber a inexistência delas, me deparei com um mod de dublagem que parecia bem competente. Eu nunca baixei esse tipo de coisa mesmo já tendo visto outras vezes, mas pensei "Quer saber? Vamo ver se é bom" e não me arrependo nem um pouco. Parabéns pra esses caras!
Essa expansão passa 100% daquela sensação de segunda campanha após zerar um jogo, também lembrando algo como a escolha entre heróis e vilões em Sonic Adventure 2.
Mais inimigos, mais armas, história paralela, duração menor e qualidade também. É bem típico desse costume que se perdeu no tempo.
O seu ritmo acelerado mostra que mesmo que seja seu primeiro jogo, a Gearbox percebeu que o clássico tinha uns problemas de ritmo e não deixou a peteca cair em nenhum momento. Só que acabou não sabendo bem quando sacar cada peteca, visto que os elementos novos, apesar de bons, são introduzidos e explorados irregularmente durante a duração da campanha, nunca dando tempo suficiente pra todas as armas e companheiros brilharem com seus novos usos, e metendo inimigos e mais inimigos difíceis sem pausa nas partes finais.
Pior do que ficar sem saber o que aconteceu com Sheppard, só o esquema de mudança de armas dessa franquia.
PS: Ao procurar legendas e perceber a inexistência delas, me deparei com um mod de dublagem que parecia bem competente. Eu nunca baixei esse tipo de coisa mesmo já tendo visto outras vezes, mas pensei "Quer saber? Vamo ver se é bom" e não me arrependo nem um pouco. Parabéns pra esses caras!
Gearbox made like... two good games.
This is one of them.
Great expansion of HL1, building off the mechanics of that game and adding a lot of new interesting weapons and enemies. Very fun and well thought out level design throughout the entire thing too.
The only part where I felt the level design started to fall off was around the very end parts where it feels like the game can mindlessly spam you with shock troopers and voltigores with no breathing room.
Also as much as I a like a lot of the new sandbox, some of the new weapons seem kind of odd like the wrench being pretty useless as soon as you get the knife and also the sniper rifle being great but only being able to be used a little bit near the end of the game because of how late you get it and how rare ammo is for it.
Despite some minor flaws, it was still a really fun experience.
This is one of them.
Great expansion of HL1, building off the mechanics of that game and adding a lot of new interesting weapons and enemies. Very fun and well thought out level design throughout the entire thing too.
The only part where I felt the level design started to fall off was around the very end parts where it feels like the game can mindlessly spam you with shock troopers and voltigores with no breathing room.
Also as much as I a like a lot of the new sandbox, some of the new weapons seem kind of odd like the wrench being pretty useless as soon as you get the knife and also the sniper rifle being great but only being able to be used a little bit near the end of the game because of how late you get it and how rare ammo is for it.
Despite some minor flaws, it was still a really fun experience.
im too bad at half life for this tbh!!! got to the third to last chapter tho hehe. not a bad piece of level design, and some p memorable moments, but overall yea the main appeal is just More Half Life and i never rly get the appeal of just having there be More of a thing but ig it makes sense dhjshd
Out of the 2 HL1 expansions, this one is the clear better one. In fact I was actually enjoying this more than the main game... But then the 3rd act came and it was so jam packed full of bullshit moments and enemies, I had to take an entire point off. Get those save/load keys ready, may even have to dabble into Sv_cheats 1 every now and then.
Other than that complaint, I really liked the campaign. I love the new alien weapons included in this expansion and the puzzles are pretty fun too. The weapons in the first 2 acts feel very balanced, and level design is great. A lot of platforming sections here which aren't bad. I just wish the 3rd act was more like the first 2.
Still I highly recommend this if you are a fan of the original HL1.
Other than that complaint, I really liked the campaign. I love the new alien weapons included in this expansion and the puzzles are pretty fun too. The weapons in the first 2 acts feel very balanced, and level design is great. A lot of platforming sections here which aren't bad. I just wish the 3rd act was more like the first 2.
Still I highly recommend this if you are a fan of the original HL1.
I love that these dudes who struggle to follow me down a straight hallway honestly think they could take down Gordon Freeman.
Opposing Force is a good game. I don't think it's as good as Half Life, but I do think it's good. I find the story of the HECU - a bunch of (mostly) young soldiers sent into a hellhole without ever being told what they were getting into, and their struggle to survive the Black Mesa incident. - very compelling. I also liked most of the gameplay. But there are definitely some areas with not-so-obvious solutions, especially compared to Half Life. On my first playthrough I got stuck in a few areas, but I've played the game again since then and comparatively breezed through it since I remembered the solutions I struggled to figure out before. I acknowledge the possibility that I'm just dumb, but at the same time, on my first playthrough of Half Life, I didn't really get lost at all, so I think my getting lost must also be attributed to some difference in game design. Some of the weapons are weird but I still like them, although grappling with the Barnacle Grapple can be somewhat frustrating at times. But overall, I would still say this game is quite fun. Not as good as Half Life, but definitely still a worthy entry in the series I would say. Although apparently Valve would disagree if their ignoring of everything introduced in this game is anything to go by.
Oh, and also, the hard mode in this game is true to its name. At least for me it was.
Oh, and also, the hard mode in this game is true to its name. At least for me it was.
The first official Half-Life expansion.
This time centered on Adam Shephard, a member of the HECU to elminate the Xen and try to stop the invasion, and people to silence everyone that know what happen on Black Mesa. Our main order is to kill Gordon Freeman, the main character of Half-Life. Everything occurs after the events of the "Resonance Cascade" of the first game.
It's basically more Half-Life with a few weapons (and changed) added and a very interesting story on Shephard.
It was made by Gearbox as an official expansion to the Half-Life games meanwhile Valve was working on Source, their next game engine and probably Half-Life 2.
This time centered on Adam Shephard, a member of the HECU to elminate the Xen and try to stop the invasion, and people to silence everyone that know what happen on Black Mesa. Our main order is to kill Gordon Freeman, the main character of Half-Life. Everything occurs after the events of the "Resonance Cascade" of the first game.
It's basically more Half-Life with a few weapons (and changed) added and a very interesting story on Shephard.
It was made by Gearbox as an official expansion to the Half-Life games meanwhile Valve was working on Source, their next game engine and probably Half-Life 2.
"A Worthy Expansion To A Classic FPS"
Half Life: Opposing Force does what many expansion packs fail to do - it provides meaningful and fun content that actually "expands" and pushes forward the original game's experience. By taking control of Adrian Shepard, a member of the military group sent in to kill Gordan Freeman, you get to see the game's original story from a different angle. The level design is improved, the arsenal of weaponry is refined and expanded, and there are new enemies to fight along the way, culminating in a successful expansion of the Half-Life formula!
The levels in Half Life: Opposing Force provide new sections of the Black Mesa research facility to play through. These areas include new tram levels, sewer levels, and even more encounters with the Pit Monster from the original title. The jumps and landscape are smoothed a bit better, leading to less instances of falling to your death or getting caught on the environment and staying stuck (although it still happened multiple times). While buggy, the levels look interesting, and play just as well as the original titles.
There are also new additions to Shepard's arsenal, such as an LMG, Transporter gun, Electric Shock Rifle, Heavy Pistol, and a grappling hook. This adds new ways to approach combat, as well as get around the environment, something that still occurred in the base game but at a much less frequent rate. Enemies also pack these weapons as well, so the ability to take and deal a lot of damage is enticing.
Lastly, new enemy types are introduced. All seem to be dangerous, ranging from Shock Troopers to Voltigores, to even an encounter with a helicopter like in the base game. These enemies introduce a new level of difficulty to the title, and cause the player to have to approach each section with care and awareness. I did feel that some sections of the game where multiple Voltigores would spawn were a too difficult, but I have to give Gearbox credit for adding something different to the Half-Life experience.
All in all, this was a fun expansion to play through, and I Recommend it to any fans of the original game or FPS games in general. There was enough new content, enemies, and locations to run through, despite it still being a retelling of the base game from a different perspective a la Half Life: Blue Shift . Unlike that expansion, Half Life: Opposing Force serves as a fun change of pace for the original game, which is good enough for myself!
Final Verdict: 8/10 (Great)
Half Life: Opposing Force does what many expansion packs fail to do - it provides meaningful and fun content that actually "expands" and pushes forward the original game's experience. By taking control of Adrian Shepard, a member of the military group sent in to kill Gordan Freeman, you get to see the game's original story from a different angle. The level design is improved, the arsenal of weaponry is refined and expanded, and there are new enemies to fight along the way, culminating in a successful expansion of the Half-Life formula!
The levels in Half Life: Opposing Force provide new sections of the Black Mesa research facility to play through. These areas include new tram levels, sewer levels, and even more encounters with the Pit Monster from the original title. The jumps and landscape are smoothed a bit better, leading to less instances of falling to your death or getting caught on the environment and staying stuck (although it still happened multiple times). While buggy, the levels look interesting, and play just as well as the original titles.
There are also new additions to Shepard's arsenal, such as an LMG, Transporter gun, Electric Shock Rifle, Heavy Pistol, and a grappling hook. This adds new ways to approach combat, as well as get around the environment, something that still occurred in the base game but at a much less frequent rate. Enemies also pack these weapons as well, so the ability to take and deal a lot of damage is enticing.
Lastly, new enemy types are introduced. All seem to be dangerous, ranging from Shock Troopers to Voltigores, to even an encounter with a helicopter like in the base game. These enemies introduce a new level of difficulty to the title, and cause the player to have to approach each section with care and awareness. I did feel that some sections of the game where multiple Voltigores would spawn were a too difficult, but I have to give Gearbox credit for adding something different to the Half-Life experience.
All in all, this was a fun expansion to play through, and I Recommend it to any fans of the original game or FPS games in general. There was enough new content, enemies, and locations to run through, despite it still being a retelling of the base game from a different perspective a la Half Life: Blue Shift . Unlike that expansion, Half Life: Opposing Force serves as a fun change of pace for the original game, which is good enough for myself!
Final Verdict: 8/10 (Great)
An experiment in digital maximalism
actually a pretty good expansion pack. while it doesn't compete with Half-Life (then again what can), it serves as a really great companion piece. a shame every element from it is ignored in future Half-Life games.
Opposing Force is the expansion that fans love the most, simply because it brings a lot new to the table, and even creates a whole new race of aliens to fight against, many new weapons are given to the player, and even new mechanics are introduced.
That said, Opposing Force lacks the narrative that I liked about Blue Shift, and felt like the soldiers are just as desperate as the scientists, which really killed the overall theme of the expansion for me. I get that from a narrative standpoint, the game gives you a reason, why this group of soldiers are much more "friendly" than the ones we go against in Blue Shift, or the original. Still, I do not know why they completely changed the fact that you are basically playing as an enemy from the first game. I mean, I get it, players do not want to sympathize with someone who is ordered to shoot down scientists, but come on.
The criticism that Blue Shift faced was that nothing changed compared to the original, which is shockingly false from a narrative standpoint, and it only affects the gameplay side. Opposing Force on the other hand, has many gameplay changes, but I felt like the actual narrative stands much closer to the original experience, than Blue Shift.
Everything aside, Opposing Force is still Half Life, with every problem that the original had, and some new ones. It is still a great experience, and a must play to fully immerse yourself in the world of the first game.
That said, Opposing Force lacks the narrative that I liked about Blue Shift, and felt like the soldiers are just as desperate as the scientists, which really killed the overall theme of the expansion for me. I get that from a narrative standpoint, the game gives you a reason, why this group of soldiers are much more "friendly" than the ones we go against in Blue Shift, or the original. Still, I do not know why they completely changed the fact that you are basically playing as an enemy from the first game. I mean, I get it, players do not want to sympathize with someone who is ordered to shoot down scientists, but come on.
The criticism that Blue Shift faced was that nothing changed compared to the original, which is shockingly false from a narrative standpoint, and it only affects the gameplay side. Opposing Force on the other hand, has many gameplay changes, but I felt like the actual narrative stands much closer to the original experience, than Blue Shift.
Everything aside, Opposing Force is still Half Life, with every problem that the original had, and some new ones. It is still a great experience, and a must play to fully immerse yourself in the world of the first game.
half life: otis would get 5 stars
20 años leyendo a gente decir que es mejor que el original y me topo con el peor diseño de niveles que he jugado en un FPS xd