Golly, what a hot take.

Yeah, no, Opposing Force is as good as everyone says. Even though the more military aesthetic didn't really get me excited when I started, I will admit it's charm did start to seep its way into me playing this expansion, to the point where there were moments that wowed me like in the original game. Sure, the original Half Life is nothing to shake a stick at, but this stand-alone expansion does everything right in a DLC; expands the world, adds new ideas and mechanics and improves on the core game in a way an update never would. I adored the sense of stress within these rooms, with a lot of this game being a glorious way to demonstrate that your level design can be simple yet effective. Sure, a lot of these corridors aren't anything to shake titties over, but paired with the fact I have 15% health, I am constatnly questioning if I should break a box or use it as cover with 10 Black Ops soldiers on one side and 4 giant monsters on the other, these corridors are packed with both chaotically challenging yet extremely fun and rewarding sequences. Seriously (outside of that immediately weak final boss), the last hour of this expansion really had me gripped and having a blast.

Speaking of combat, holy shit the weapons in this game are so goddamn good. From the alien superpowers, to the more standard guns, it feels like they took ideas from the first game and expanded on them, with me thinking of dynamic ways to take specific enemies down on the fly. It was really cool moment to see one of those One Eyed Fucks and debate if I should be using the mini-gun, the rocket launcher or even at times the pistol while the army dudes I have surrounding me deal with...everything else.

I should note though that not everything in this game is as could as I think it could have been, including...like, the whole core idea of the game. With the military aesthetic comes the option to have the army be a part of your team, and while that does drive the themes of the game home of isolation and helps with the feeling of unease, a lot of the time these army sections would end up with all of the army men I found dead in literal minutes. At best they took down a couple of enemies, spouted some useful dialogue on where to go next and unlocked doors, at worst they talked to me and then immediately died, which to me made them feel more like beefed up Scientists from the original game and less like extremely helpful companions.

And...yeah, you can REEEEALLY tell this is from 1999. Although the new widescreen really does look great, there are so many frustrating moments where I save, just to be stuck in an elevator, or stuck on a corner, or whatever in the fuck bug is at the start of Pit Worm's Nest which made me debate if my game was unplayable. I get it, it was the 90s, it's not like they had the modern conveniences of these problems being sorted, but it became really apparent that Gearbox had a less strict policy of bugs then Valve did in the original release...something I'm sure wont be a problem later in their career HEHEHE (I genuinely don't know if this is a problem later in their career).

But all in all...yeah, I gotta be honest, this DLC is up there for me. It's able to create something interesting while maintaining everything I loved about the original game. There are flaws, sure, but overal I left this excited about the rest of the expansions in the OG run of Half-Life, a feeling I'm sure will not be displaced!

Ah yes, the joy of playing a whole series 16 years after it's last installment. You might say "heh what about Half Life: Alyx" well unless Gabe Newell wants to generously chuck a VR headset onto my box braided head, I might as well not entertain its existence (in all seriousness it will be the first thing I play whenever I get my hands on one). But to get back on track, I do feel the pain that many others felt in the years following Half Life: Episode 2. To have such great expansions from what was already a Steller sequel is a blast. Both introducing new enemies and mechanics, as well as playing around with the tools we've already seen in new and exciting ways. The final boss in the this game feels like a forest fires worth of problems, and it's thrilling trying to put all of them out in time. So to have all that and a cliff hanger that is less than chipper, it's kind of disheartening to not have a proper conclusion to the story. But who knows, Alyx looks great from what I've seen, and with the ever-increasing growth of technology we could one day see a proper follow up to this story. Let's just hope Freeman doesn't find himself in another statis void.

I wanted this collection so bad when I was a young kid and I was absolutely over the moon when I finally got a copy. This was the collection that introduced me to my favorite game ever for the first time. I watched the retrospective mini movie over and over and over again because I was so enthralled with the series. I have heard complaints of the N64 games translating poorly onto this collection but I've played the originals and even going back to these I never found an issue with glitches or crashing or anything like that and on top of that I think the GameCube controller greatly enhances the gameplay of Ocarina and Majora. It was magical to have this growing up and this continues to be one of my most prized video games in my collection, let alone on the GameCube. Though, if I must take off my rose-tinted glasses I do have to admit that the original NES games have their worst versions on this platform. I love the GameCube controller but it absolutely does not work with these two games. Still, quite a bang for your buck since all of these games are starting to get expensive individually and come on they slap no matter what! (yes, even Zelda II that game is great y'all stop being mean and jumping on the bandwagon)