After beating Half-Life 2, I felt somewhat nostalgic about the first Half-Life, but not enough to replay it, so I decided to finally meet Corporal Shephard, and his infamous standalone DLC, and to my surprise, I actually think this is better than the original game.
Gameplay-wise it is pretty much what I'd expect, but everything now is just so much more creative and intuitive, that I'm led to believe Gearbox actually made a better job than Valve on this one: More weapons, new enemies, better bosses, less Xen, less platforming, and frankly, I'd say the short time it takes to beat it (4.5 hours) made it way more bearable, especially during the final confronts, which are still hard as fuck, but its tolerable now.

Half-Life: Opposing Force is an interesting scenario where you play as... well the opposing force. You play as Adrian Shepard, a US Marine Corporal, who is part of the Black Mesa cleanup project.

It's an interesting game, expanding on the events of Half-Life showing you a different side. There's a time where you get to see Freeman himself! The gameplay is much the same, although you do play around with a bit different set of weapons. It also does feel a bit harder compared to Half-Life, but that might just be on my end.

Overall, a pleasant experience and great addition to the Half-Life series. And remember, Adrian Shepard is still in the floating Osprey in Stasis World

The amount of novel or even fun setpieces in this can be counted with one hand, but something like that is very easy to overlook since you get a handful of fun new guns, like a toy desert eagle (it has soft round edges for a reason) and a hitscan sniper instead of a dull old crossbow. It's almost enough to make up for the fact that the first hour of this two hour expansion pack is mostly comprised of crawling through vents and waiting for doors to open, thank u Cranky Pissford! I can indeed perfectly well understand why this is so beloved while the literal rollercoaster titled "halifetwo episde one" (formerly half-life 2:aftermath) gets labeled as unremarkable, it's cuz they cut the black hole grenade and npc_ministrider (formerly npc_combine_guard), im sure it woulda made all teh difference...in teh world...mistah freeman.-....

ps:sorry to all my patreon subbscribers here is a filler re-view I AM; BUSY

OP is a very good add-on for original Half-Life, and I like it most because of the level-design and new weapons. When it comes to the monsters, I... hate don't like them. These dudes are very annoying ones.

Also, we have an interesting plot here... Playing as a HECU soldier, fighting with Race X, a brand new one... Too sad we'll probably never see neither Shephard or Race X again.

(And holy moly, Shephard was only 22 during the events of the game...)

More Half-Life.

I think this one conceptually is really cool. You take control of Adrian Shephard, a corporal in the marines. You get to see Half-Life from a different perspective which I find very cool. Events in this align with the original game such as the military pulling out or Gordon going to xen.

On top of this there are several new weapons which I think are all hits. I love the displacer canon and sniper rifile.

For the levels themselves, I find them to be more consistent than the original. Theres nothing as bad as interloper or on a rail here but the game does not hit the same highs as the original.

Overall, if you love Half-Life you'll love this game.

An expansion of one of the greatest FPS games ever made. Opposing force tells the story of the game from the perspective of the enemy with a whole lot of new original weapons for the game. The only problem this game suffers from is the plot is nonexistent.

The game has the same fast paced action as the original, so the gameplay is high quality. The new weapons are a welcome addition too, especially the portal gun which can be used to recharge health and ammo by going to a different place. The new rope and crew mechanics are there but are hardly used in actual gameplay.

The bad part of the game is definitely the lack of a central plot. Shepard wants to get out of Black Mesa but is he even doing something about? It seems like he is wandering aimlessly around Black Mesa. Even Blue Shift had a better sense of plot progression like how we hear about Rosenberg, find him, do what he tells us to do. The second thing is probably Race X. I wish they just added more Xen lifeforms, instead of a completely new race that hasn't been explained enough through the side lore material.

Overall, a decent expansion.

a perfectly fun add-on to HL1 that has a motley bundle of minor issues that add-up

OpFor saws-off most of the original Half-Life's calmer and more puzzle-focused elements, leaving it feeling like a roadtrip through combat encounters big and small with little to break up the pace.

The new additions to the arsenal range from being kinda over-powered to being kinda whatever. The crossbow's been replaced with a #Tacticool #Realistic #Epic sniper rifle, the revolver is now a desert eagle that can be spammed, the Spore Launcher is essentially an infinite-ammo grenade launcher, and there's the Barnacle, which sounds cool in concept but completely impractical and is delegated to being a grappling hook.

The new enemies are neat lookin, but are just glorified reskins of ones from HL1. (Pit Drone is the Bullsquid, Shock Trooper is a reskinned HECU etc.)

There's probably a lot more I could say about this expansion :P

also i always deck that one guy you see kill that one scientist in that storage closet thingy. I ain't gonna sugarcoat it, SPAS-12 + MOUSE2.

A short and solid fun little romp through the Half-Life universe, also taking place parallel to Half-Life 1 much akin to Half-Life: Blue Shift, with some notable callbacks as well. Gearbox puts out a much better showing here than they did with Blue Shift. There's more enemy diversity, more weapon diversity, and the flow/pacing of the game is much better. Not only that, but it doesn't feel like the level design is working against me at times, unlike Blue Shift and parts of Half-Life 1. In that way, it feels like a mix of Half-Life and a more modern linear FPS. Which is fitting, seeing that you're a soldier. If you're a Half-Life fan, give this one a spin if you haven't already. It's definitely worth a play and will respect your time too.

Score: 82

More Half-Life. More Half-Life is good.

It's cool seeing everything from the perspective of the soldiers and how they also got screwed over. Although, it seems kinda pointless because I don't think Valve has done anything with the main character in this game since this thing came out? (I know it's not so much a Valve game but a Gearbox game. But still, Barney is still around).

I will say tho. At times this one felt a bit more bullshit than Half-Life, that last portion of the game can be a real pain in the ass, and it didn't help that I was trying to beat the whole thing in one sitting...Which took longer than I was hoping.

Anyway, it's still a fun time and I'm glad I finally got to play it.

P.S: Play the training mode. I picked it just for the lols and I ended up learning a few things that saved me from getting stuck in a few areas. It is also really fun and immersive!