A great companion to the original (Half-Life - Opposing Force (PC))

Member Name: Burning_Darkness

Product:	Half-Life - Opposing Force (PC)
Date:	06/09/09 (37 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: great level design, new characters, guns and enemies, simple and hugely entertaining

Disadvantages: None

Opposing force is an expansion pack for the seminal first person shooter Half Life, once again plunging you into the bowels of the Black Mesa research facility beneath the deserts of Mexico and requiring you to fight your way through hordes of aliens from another dimension, with plenty of frenetic action, interesting puzzles and varied and well-realised locales throughout. Whereas the original game had you playing as one Gordon Freeman, a theoretical physicist turned action hero in a hazard suit, Opposing Force instead has you play as one of the marines sent in to cover up the whole disaster by terminating both the aliens and the complex's research and security staff with extreme prejudice. Inevitably everything goes badly wrong, and after your transport craft crash lands you are forced to make your own way through the facility, even bumping into Freeman on the odd occasion throughout your travels.

The original game made heavy use of NPCs (none player characters) with whom you could interact and, in the case of security guards, fight alongside, and Opposing Force builds on this by requiring you to work as part of a squad alongside medics, grunts and engineers, who allow you to reach new areas by cutting their way through otherwise impenetrable doors and obstacles. This makes the game all the more immersive and engaging, although I found it a bit of a disappointment that you end up work alongside the scientists again, as a story set around mercilessly gunning them down would have been considerably more fun.

Alongside the original game's enemies there are a range of new foes, both alien and human, and the best bits of the game by far are those in which you fight against Black Ops troops, basically ninjas with machineguns that were sent in, to wipe out everybody else including the soldiers after they had failed to get the situation under control, the whole scenario increasingly starting to resemble the old children's rhyme that begins "I knew an old lady who swallowed a fly".

The game feels very polished with an interesting story and varied level design, and there are plenty of new weapons to play around with, including a laser-sighted high calibre pistol, a belt-fed heavy machine gun and a little giger-esque alien that when squeezed emits deadly spores at your foes. The graphics still look great today, and the game also sports an excellent martial industrial soundtrack that kicks in at certain key points when the action heats up. Well made, simple and hugely enjoyable, Opposing Force is an excellent expansion pack that complements the expands the Half Life universe nicely and complements the original game very well. A must for all fans of the original Half Life.

Summary: An excellent expansion pack