It's really good.
What made me write the Half-Life 2 review was the fact that so much of what I was enjoying about Opposing Force while playing it were things that Half-Life 2 did not have.
Opposing Force has much more enemy variety than HL1 and HL2. It has more weapons. It is a short game and it feels shorter because it's so fun.
It solves all of the main problems I have with the other games. Opposing Force is proof that someone understood what the best elements of HL1 were and knew it was a good idea to put only that and nothing more into a sequel. That someone wasn't Valve, but Gearbox. I wish Valve had learned something from this game before making HL2.
Pretty much all enemies from the previous game return with a handful of new enemies. They knew it was cool to make security guards and soldiers into Zombies. You are never fighting the same enemies over and over. And they made the black ops less obnoxious.
The weapons weren't just varied but exciting. Particularly the alien weapons, which are creative and surprising. The sniper rifle is the most satisfying of any game I've played. There are so many weapons, you have to reach over to 7 on the keyboard to switch between them all. This can be cumbersome and should have been streamlined.
The feel of the gameplay is somewhat different to HL1 because it keeps each gun fairly low on ammo, causing you to have to switch weapons often to use ammo resourcefully. When you find health pickups, you tend to only get your health increased by fifty percent (half of your life). These factors make the game a lot more tense and rewarding and in some ways more difficult but the weapons are more powerful to compensate.
Opposing Force has a lot of the same gameplay set-pieces as HL1 without letting any of them over-stay their welcome. One example of a strict upgrade between the games is the section in each where, unlike the rest of the game, destroying any explosive in the area kills you even if you appear to be a safe distance away. Neither game explains that this will happen, but in Opposing Force you can see that the area is full of explosives when you arrive (instead of later) and it plays a long animation of explosions happening around you (instead of short explosion noises), indicating that you weren't simply mistaken about being at a safe distance. What's worse in HL1 is that when you arrive at this area, an NPC can accidentally trigger an explosion without causing everything to blow, misleading the player.
Getting NPCs to follow you can be quite difficult and is necessary at one point, but it's not enough to kill the enjoyment.
The final boss is dogshit. It looks far too generic compared to the creativity in the design of the other aliens. Fighting it isn't very fun and it's not challenging once you realise what you're supposed to be doing. You know a boss fight is bad when the developers put a permanent health resource in the arena. The Nihilanth in HL1 comes across as an intelligent and powerful being, and its fight has a daunting build-up. It was a true test of the abilities you developed throughout the game. Sadly, the... *internet search* Gene Worm is clearly a dumb creature with easy to avoid attacks. It has no status or significance. As a result I didn't even believe it was the final boss.
Knowledge of Half-Life's plot is pretty essential for understanding what is going on in Opposing Force, which makes it a difficult recommendation as an entry point to the series. The game's difficulty and the speed with which it introduces old enemies suggests that they expect you to know what you're doing with them.
Ultimately this is the Half-Life experience, and if you couldn't stick with the original for too long, this is worth a go. The only thing it's really missing is the feel of HL1's opening chapters and some of the feeling of Xen (specifically the factory and the final boss).
Straight up recommendation to play in the current year /10
Edit: The training course is actually pretty fun and creative. I skipped it on my initial playthrough but it's a good way to get into the shoes of Adrian Shepherd and to learn new mechanics that weren't obvious to me in my playthrough.
What made me write the Half-Life 2 review was the fact that so much of what I was enjoying about Opposing Force while playing it were things that Half-Life 2 did not have.
Opposing Force has much more enemy variety than HL1 and HL2. It has more weapons. It is a short game and it feels shorter because it's so fun.
It solves all of the main problems I have with the other games. Opposing Force is proof that someone understood what the best elements of HL1 were and knew it was a good idea to put only that and nothing more into a sequel. That someone wasn't Valve, but Gearbox. I wish Valve had learned something from this game before making HL2.
Pretty much all enemies from the previous game return with a handful of new enemies. They knew it was cool to make security guards and soldiers into Zombies. You are never fighting the same enemies over and over. And they made the black ops less obnoxious.
The weapons weren't just varied but exciting. Particularly the alien weapons, which are creative and surprising. The sniper rifle is the most satisfying of any game I've played. There are so many weapons, you have to reach over to 7 on the keyboard to switch between them all. This can be cumbersome and should have been streamlined.
The feel of the gameplay is somewhat different to HL1 because it keeps each gun fairly low on ammo, causing you to have to switch weapons often to use ammo resourcefully. When you find health pickups, you tend to only get your health increased by fifty percent (half of your life). These factors make the game a lot more tense and rewarding and in some ways more difficult but the weapons are more powerful to compensate.
Opposing Force has a lot of the same gameplay set-pieces as HL1 without letting any of them over-stay their welcome. One example of a strict upgrade between the games is the section in each where, unlike the rest of the game, destroying any explosive in the area kills you even if you appear to be a safe distance away. Neither game explains that this will happen, but in Opposing Force you can see that the area is full of explosives when you arrive (instead of later) and it plays a long animation of explosions happening around you (instead of short explosion noises), indicating that you weren't simply mistaken about being at a safe distance. What's worse in HL1 is that when you arrive at this area, an NPC can accidentally trigger an explosion without causing everything to blow, misleading the player.
Getting NPCs to follow you can be quite difficult and is necessary at one point, but it's not enough to kill the enjoyment.
The final boss is dogshit. It looks far too generic compared to the creativity in the design of the other aliens. Fighting it isn't very fun and it's not challenging once you realise what you're supposed to be doing. You know a boss fight is bad when the developers put a permanent health resource in the arena. The Nihilanth in HL1 comes across as an intelligent and powerful being, and its fight has a daunting build-up. It was a true test of the abilities you developed throughout the game. Sadly, the... *internet search* Gene Worm is clearly a dumb creature with easy to avoid attacks. It has no status or significance. As a result I didn't even believe it was the final boss.
Knowledge of Half-Life's plot is pretty essential for understanding what is going on in Opposing Force, which makes it a difficult recommendation as an entry point to the series. The game's difficulty and the speed with which it introduces old enemies suggests that they expect you to know what you're doing with them.
Ultimately this is the Half-Life experience, and if you couldn't stick with the original for too long, this is worth a go. The only thing it's really missing is the feel of HL1's opening chapters and some of the feeling of Xen (specifically the factory and the final boss).
Straight up recommendation to play in the current year /10
Edit: The training course is actually pretty fun and creative. I skipped it on my initial playthrough but it's a good way to get into the shoes of Adrian Shepherd and to learn new mechanics that weren't obvious to me in my playthrough.
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