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Opposing Force is the critically acclaimed first expansion pack for the popular first-person shooter Half-Life, developed by Gearbox Software and released by Valve Software on October 31, 1999. The expansion's single-player mode features the same setting as the original except that this time the player is cast as Corporal Adrian Shephard, a United States Marine. Shephard is sent into the huge underground Black Mesa Research Facility on an undisclosed mission, but things go wrong and he finds himself fighting for survival against sinister government agents and monstrous aliens.
Plot
The action of Opposing Force cleverly interweaves with the original events of Half-Life, so that the player occasionally catches glimpses of Gordon Freeman, the player character from the original game, and visits some recognizable locations.
In the original Half-life, after the resonance cascade, an extra-dimensional rift is opened, allowing an alien army to invade Black Mesa, and the surviving scientists and security guards of Black Mesa struggle to escape. A matter of hours later, the United States military responded with a massive "clean-up" operation on Black Mesa to eradicate the alien presence, as well as "silence" any witnesses. As the game begins, Shephard is part of this operation, but after his transport aircraft is shot down, and he is cut off from the rest of his unit, the clean-up mission is abandoned as he joins forces with the scattered survivors, fighting for their lives.
As the tide of the furious battle begins to favor the alien army, Shephard soon realizes the military forces have been ordered to pull out. The Black Ops forces, (seen only briefly in the first game) are acting independently of the marines, and intend to detonate a thermonuclear warhead at Black Mesa. Shephard deactivates the bomb but later sees the G-Man apparently reactivating it. After Shephard defeats the nastiest alien of them all, he finds himself back in one the Osprey-like transports with the G-Man. The nuke in Black Mesa detonates and the G-Man detains Shephard someplace where he can do no harm and cannot be harmed, pending further evaluation...
Multiplayer
Opposing Force also added several weapons and maps available in multiplayer games. The new weapons are: -
- Combat knife: The base melee weapon Shephard starts with. It delivers only modest damage, but is very fast and effective against headcrabs.
- Monkey wrench: Another crude melee weapon suitable for bashing crates and enemies alike. Alt-fire lets you slowly wind up for a powerful strike.
- *Barnacle (alien weapon): The Black Mesa scientists were able to "tame" this Xen creature that normally adheres to ceilings. Its tongue can latch on to organic targets, which does minimal damage to enemies. Its most useful as a sort of grappling hook allowing you to scale heights. Primary fire shoots out the tongue and pulls you to whatever it sticks to, alt-fire stops it from retracting its tongue, allowing you to swing around.
- Desert Eagle: This powerful pistol is similar to the Magnum from HL1, but has less recoil and faster rate of fire. Alt-fire activates its laser sight, which increases its accuracy and power at a reduction of its firing rate.
- M249 squad automatic weapon (SAW): This machine gun is very effective at cutting down groups of enemies, but empties quickly and has a painfully long reload time. Its powerful recoil makes if difficult to aim, ducking while firing can help alleviate this.
- M40A1 sniper rifle: A standard of FPS games, this weapon accurately delivers powerful single rounds at distant targets, which hit instantly, unlike the crossbow's bolt, which takes time to travel to its destination. Alt-fire activates the variable scope.
- *Spore launcher (alien weapon): This organic, "living" gun has two abilities. Primary mode fires a glowing green alien spore (which can be picked up from "spore pods" scattered all over) that does decent damage. Its alt-fire mode is much more effective, launching a slower moving "spore grenade" that bounces around for a few seconds and then explodes, causing greater damage in its area of effect.
- Shock Roach (alien weapon): Another "living" weapon, these bug-like creatures are the standard weapon of the alien Shock Troopers. When a Shock Trooper dies, it drops its shock roach, which can only survive a few more seconds before dying itself. If you are nearby, it will jump on your arm, allowing it to live, and you to wield it. Note that if you already have a Shock Roach, other Shock Roaches will recognize this, and attack you. The Shock Roach fires white bolts of an unknown energy that do moderate damage. It can fire off ten such bolts, but continuously regenerates itself. Attempting to use the Shock Roach underwater will kill you.
- "Displacer Cannon": An experimental teleportation weapon, its primary fire launches a large, slow, green orb of energy that damages enemies it passes by and obliterates anything that it hits directly. In the single player game, the alt-fire is used to transport yourself to Xen, and continue through the game, as well as access certain "hidden" areas of the game. In multiplayer, the alt-fire teleports you to a random area of the map.
In the single player campaign, some of these weapons replaced their old Half-Life counterparts (Desert Eagle/Colt Python, M40A1/crossbow, combat knife/crowbar, etc). However, in the multiplayer game the player can carry both the new Opposing Force weapons and their HL variants at the same time.
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