 Legend has it that after
witnessing a performance of Henry IV, Part One, Queen Elizabeth requested that
Shakespeare write a play showing the character of Falstaff in love. It wasn’t a great idea. The resulting play
was The Merry Wives of Windsor, and there’s a reason you don’t remember
reading it in high school: it’s not all that great. I mean, it’s Shakespeare,
but it’s not really good Shakespeare. That’s sort of how I feel about Half-Life:
Opposing Force. It’s Half-Life, but it’s not really good Half-Life. That being said, even average Half-Life--like
average Shakespeare--still beats the competition stupid.
 In Half-Life: Opposing Force you take the role
of Adrian Shepherd, a young Special Forces-trained Marine. Along with a squad of your
buds, you begin the game by chopping into Black Mesa Research Facility, where, unbeknownst
to you, a bunch of aliens have taken up residence. Of course, things start to go bad wrong
even before you land, and you eventually awaken abandoned, unarmed, betrayed, and
surrounded by aliens. As in Half-Life, it’s up to you to find your way out.
 If the set-up sounds a lot like
Half-Life, only from a Marine’s point of view, that’s because it is a lot
like Half-Life. This has its ups and downs. On the one hand, it’s a hoot to
occasionally revisit some of the places you played through in the original, and the best
gameplay in Opposing Force occasionally equals the some of best moments in Half-Life. But
mostly the way Opposing Force constantly calls Half-Life into remembrance just causes it
suffer in comparison to the first game. For instance, remember the Pit Worms from
Half-Life? It took a long time to figure out
exactly how to defeat those suckers: you had to slowly piece each part of an involving and
action-packed puzzle together until you lit the fuse, fried ‘em up, and moved on to
the next level. Opposing Force has an episode much like this one—veterans of
Half-Life will recognize it immediately—and it’s not nearly as complicated,
interesting, or fun as the first one. The game’s plot isn’t nearly as engaging,
either; after playing Half-Life, you’ll have a pretty good grip on most of Black Mesa’s
secrets, so much of Opposing Force seems a rehash. You’re never thrown the sort of
curves that made Half-Life such a tense experience.
 Opposing Force does add some new gameplay
twists, however, mostly in the form of new weapons and monsters. And I gotta admit, the
weapons are pretty sweet. New conventional weapons include a Desert Eagle pistol with
laser sighting, a sniper rifle, and my favorite, a M-249 light machine gun that gives Team
Fortress types the heavy weapon they’ve craved. All of these weapons are
well-conceived and useful and provide very welcome solutions to tricky situations. Even
more fun are the new alien and prototype weapons, including one that warps your target to
Xan. My favorites are the spore launcher, which looks more or less like an iguana that
fits on your hand and spits acid (you even get to pet it), and the barnacle, a
domesticated version of the deadly ceiling-hangers—you use it to shoot long lines
across chasms, and it allows you to swing across, swashbuckler-like. New monsters include the Shock Trooper, a tough
grunt-like opponent, and the pit drone, the most interesting of the new monsters. They’re
quick little devils that shoot deadly spines and are armed with nasty claws for
devastating close-combat attacks. You’ll
also run across some new human foes, including a great number of Black Operations
soldiers. But mostly Black Mesa and its denizens look much the same as they did in
Half-Life. A little more variation would have been welcome.
 Opposing
Force also introduces team play to the single-player game. You’ll be able to command
up to eight squadmates at the same time. Soldiers come in three varieties; your
garden-variety grunt, a medic and an engineer. Medics will heal wounded soldiers,
including you, and engineers are used to cut passages through sealed doors. The command
interface, though simple to use, is also a little limited. Essentially you just press the
“use” button on your squadmates, and they’ll either hold their position or
follow you. If you press “use” when you’re wounded or need a door opened,
medics and engineers will perform their special tasks. But friendly AI does leave a bit to
be desired. Though not nearly as dumb as Kingpin’s thugs, Opposing Force soldiers do
require a good bit of babysitting. They’re also not very well integrated into the
game. You will need an engineer to cut through a few doors for you, but other than that
you can easily complete the game without any help from your fellow soldiers. They seem
more like a shiny but frivolous accessory than a necessary part of the game.
Opposing Force also comes with some very nice multiplayer maps. assembled by a team of
“all-stars”, and they’re fun and miles better than the original Half-Life
maps, but with the release of Unreal Tournament and Quake III and the impending release of
Team Fortress II, they’re not exactly state of the art.
 Opposing Force also doesn’t seem nearly as
“finished” as Half-Life. Load
times are longer, and a I got “stuck” a few times, especially when using
elevators or ropes to change levels. The game’s ending also seems tacked on; the only
reason the final boss fight is difficult is because it’s inscrutable and illogical,
and the ending is an unimaginative let-down. As in Half-Life, it seems to promise a sequel—but
after two of these, we wonder if these are truly set-ups for the further adventures of
Gordon and Adrian, or just easy ways out for folks who can’t be bothered to think up
a decent ending.
I know I’ve been a little rough on Opposing Force, and I know it’s an add-on
pack, but Sierra is charging the price of a full game for this sucker, so maybe we should
expect a little more than the usual re-warmed stuff, eh? This leads me to my last quibble
with Opposing Force: it’s way short. Half-Life took me forever to finish; I dispensed
with Opposing Force in two long nights of gameplay.
But it’s still Half-Life, and it
has enough moments of sheer exhilarating fun for me to recommend it. It’s the second-best single player first
person shooter game ever; unfortunately, the best ever shares the same name and was
released over a year ago.
--Rick
Fehrenbacher |
