YMMV / Half-Life: Opposing Force

• Demonic Spiders: The Shock Troopers are unquestionably the most dangerous non-boss enemies in the official GoldSrc Half-Life games. They have more hit points (likely to make up for their lack of bullet-reflecting armour) and possess a greater degree of intelligence than Alien Grunts, constantly spam spore grenades, and while the electric bolts from their Shock Roaches don't track you like the Hivehand's hornets, they deal twice as much damage per shot as the MP5/M4. And just to rub salt into the wound, their Shock Roaches will detach from their deceased host and retaliate accordingly!
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • The Barnacle Grapple, due to the fact it turns one of the series' staples into a surprisingly useful tool and makes an otherwise creepy enemy kind of adorable.
  • Shephard, for being a military Anti-Villain analogue to Gordon Freeman. His earning the attention of the G-Man and the ambiguous circumstances of his fate have left fans begging for Shephard to make a return in a spin-off game.
• Game-Breaker:
  • The M40A1 Sniper Rifle may look like just another run-of-the-mill rifle, but when you fire it, each bullet deals 100 damage - greater than that of a direct hit with a rocket, with more common ammo to boot (though it was still uncommon compared to the more contemporary firearms). Combined with the fact that (prior to a later update) it was 100% accurate even without looking through the scope, it made many multiplayer games very, very easy.
  • The M240 Machine Gun is a real man's weapon that would make Rambo blush. This is a frontline weapon that's fit for the task of slaying Black Ops soldiers and Race X aliens! It also has a lot of knockback, making for some speedrunning exploit potential.
  • The Shock Roach, an alien weapon you got off a Shock Trooper much like the Alien Grunts' Hivehand. It's very accurate, recharges infinitely, has a high rate of fire, and does quite a lot of damage.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • The final boss, the Gene Worm, is trying to take over Earth and transform it to suit Race X, ruining it for humanity. When fighting the monster, it plays a backwards-masked audio clip that, when reversed, states, "To win the game you must kill me, Randall Pitchford!" Upon release, it was a mildly amusing reference to Doom II. Now, after Randy Pitchford "took over" two beloved franchises, earning himself widespread scorn and ire for extremely lacklustre games and various other antics behind the scenes at Gearbox, seeing him as a parasitic invader taunting the player to kill him is just priceless.
  • An NPC is given the script name "duketakemforever", a typical joke at Duke Nukem Forever's expense. Years later, it would be Gearbox themselves who would finish Forever's development. It's probably a Development Gag as well, as Pitchford briefly worked on Forever.
  • Playing a soldier named Shephard while fighting aliens? Now we know what happened to Shepard's ancestor! No, not that one.
  • The M40A1 sniper rifle is depicted as loading from a 5-round detachable box magazine. The rifle that the M40 series is based on, the Remington 700, as well as the A1's predecessor (The original M40) and immediate successor (A3) all load from an internal box magazine. 2009 would see the introduction of the A5 model, which loads from 10-round detachable box mags.
  • You know how Opposing Force is the only entry in the Half-Life franchise to have rope mechanics? Well, during the chapter Missing in Action, the player can find a dead scientist laying on a desk, with the Einstein model specifically, being zapped by an electric wire hanging from the ceiling, perhaps he mistook it for a rope.
• Hype Backlash: Has been subject to this in recent years. While still seen in a positive light for its new weapons and gameplay mechanics not seen anywhere else in the series, a growing number of players see Opposing Force as overrated as many of its new mechanics aren't explored enough even with the relatively short length of the expansion. Other criticisms are pointed at its level design and story, with the expansion's focus on Race X and the hostile Black Ops not only creating issues with the canon established by the original game but taking away from the HECU's villainous role in the Black Mesa incident.
• It Was His Sled:
  • The Black Ops aren't backup. They're out to kill anyone and anything left in Black Mesa, including HECU stragglers such as yourself.
  • The G-Man puts Shephard in indefinite detainment. One of the most common questions you'll ever hear about a potential new game in the Half-Life universe is if Shephard will finally make a comeback.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • The Pipe Wrench suffers noticeably from the game's poor melee combat mechanics due to its slow swing speed, meaning it is quickly outclassed with the introduction of the Combat Knife, which pairs the Pipe Wrench's higher base damage (10 damage) with the Crowbar's faster swing speed (240 hits per minute). Despite this, the Pipe Wrench still stands out thanks to its more powerful alt-fire attack, which (depending on how long it is charged) can deal anywhere between 45 and 200 damage - enough to instantly break large crates and down a Shock Trooper on Hard difficulty in a single, well-timed swing! This, alongside the many similarities it shares with Gordon's Crowbar (the first weapon found in the game, an everyday mundane tool turned melee weapon) has cemented its status as Shephard's signature weapon.
  • Players will notice right away how poor the squad mechanics are for Shephard's allied soldiers. Many times throughout the campaign, you will be struggling to get the soldiers in your squad to behave the way you want. Especially when it comes to getting your squadmates through small doorways. If they're not lined up properly to go straight through the doorway, the soldier will refuse to go through.
  • 9mm ammo pickups provide double the usual amount from the base game. Normally, this would be welcome, but this ammunition is so common that it not only renders the doubled value moot, but it also means there is way too much leftover that Shephard can't pick up. This excess often takes the place of other options that players could want, especially since many of the game's new weapons tend to overshadow the MP5 and pistol.
• Scrappy Weapon:
  • The MP5 really gets the shaft in this game. The amount of souped-up enemies introduced in Opposing Force renders the MP5 a mere pea-shooter compared to the player's other options. Even still, the game encourages its use way more than usual. Ammo is way too plentiful; the weapon is already ubiquitous among Black Ops agents, but 9mm pickups are among the most common in the game. They also yield double the usual amount of bullets than in the original Half-Life. Thus, it's common to have a lot of unused 9mm ammunition sitting around where other ammunition could've been placed. The gun's firing rate is slightly slower than that of its Half-Life counterpart, to boot.
  • The Barnacle Grapple serves well as a (limited) grapple. Not so much as an actual weapon, as it yanks smaller enemies towards the player, but propels the player towards anything heavier, putting them within melee range of the target. Either way, it only deals damage on contact, by then said target will have attacked you instead.
• Special Effects Failure:
  • The M40 sniper rifle has two firing animations ^note One for cycling the bolt normally and one for just opening the bolt if the shot that was fired was the last shot in the magazine. The latter is because the empty reload animation involves closing the bolt to chamber a round after changing the magazine, while the non-empty reload is just a quick magazine swap. swapped with one another.
  • In certain briefly-seen parts of Xen, the skybox appears to show faded, semi-translucent electron microscope images against a mostly purple backdrop. While this is perhaps cool to look at on its own, it isn't sold well as an Alien Sky (especially when compared with Half-Life) and looks rather lazily done.
• That One Level: "Crush Depth" and "Vicarious Reality" are probably the first really difficult chapters in the game. After being teleported to Xen briefly and then returning to Earth, Shephard finds himself in an underwater laboratory long fallen to the Race X enemies, with the occasional classic Xen alien here and there. The Race X aliens are far deadlier than their Xen counterparts, and with the Black Ops taking an absence in these chapters, supplies are scarce. It is also home to several platforming puzzles and labyrinthine levels that can overwhelm a newcomer.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • The idea of playing as Marines trying to stop the Xen invasion and hunt down Gordon Freeman is awesome, but that gets thrown in the bin as soon as the game starts. Shephard arrives during the height of the Marines' losing battle at Black Mesa, but gets knocked unconscious and by the he awakens the war is over and Shephard is forced to work with the Black Mesa personnel to survive. Functionally, there's little difference between Freeman and Shephard, which is a pity.
  • The idea of Shephard being a HECU marine who never got the orders to dispose of Black Mesa's employees, which in turn makes him come off as friendly to the surviving employees, is also an interesting idea that's never truly delved into. Not once is Shephard's loyalty ever put to the test where you would think that he would stumble across some worker-killing HECU soldiers, which they would find it odd as to why Shephard's not taking part in axing off the Black Mesa employees with them. The result is missing out on what could have been a bit of inner turmoil going on amongst the HECU.
• Ugly Cute:
  • The Spore Launcher is a repulsive alien creature that Shephard can use as a weapon. But if you hold still for a bit, Shephard will pet it and for a moment it’s just adorable. Its reload animation is also quite cute since you feed it ammunition which it happily chomps down.
  • The Pit Worm can be oddly adorable as well, with the creature's bird-like squawking and seeming to be more scared of you than hostile, like a trapped animal. Kaiju and giant monster fans will likely dig the creature's design as well.
• Underused Game Mechanic:
  • Opposing Force offered a few gameplay mechanics not seen in any of the other games such as using a detached barnacle as a grappling hook and rope climbing.
  • Only one Black Ops soldier uses a Sniper Rifle against the player, as all others use the MP5. Nope! No Shotguns either!
  • Shephard is never given the order to silence Black Mesa personnel, so he's just another average Joe trying to survive the hardships of Black Mesa alongside the scientists and security guards, plus his own HECU comrades, instead of being the bad guy and having the former two be hostile. The HECU and Black Mesa NPCs are neatly segregated throughout the entire game, with the only possible mix-up being the end of "Missing in Action" where one of the first soldiers Shephard can command can spot the hiding scientist in the shaft, and go hostile.
  • The squad mechanics in general are quite underutilized. Particularly when it comes to the HECU Medics and Engineers. There are only 2 Medics you ever come across in the game to take advantage of their healing ability. Meanwhile, there are only 3 Engineers in the game, and their ability to knock down doors is quite rare as there are only three doors throughout the entire game that require an Engineer to knock down. In addition, only one of the doors is optional as the other two are plot-forwarding Locked Doors, and the last Engineer you meet up with in "Foxtrot Uniform" doesn't even come across any doors to open (he's instead used to open the grate to access the surface where he and his squad are hiding; this is a railroaded scripted event). Like in base Half-Life, there are also only two actual commands you can give your squad: "follow me" and "stay here" (plus "heal me" for a medic).
  • You only get to fight alongside Otis in any serious capacity once. Every other time he appears, he's just there for exposition, scripted sequences, or, in one case, getting killed immediately by aliens before you get any chance to save him.
  • Race X is hostile to the Xen aliens, but you won't know that unless you do a bit of file mining, or if you take too long in killing the Gargantua on the dam, as the Shock Troopers that warp in on the other side will attack it once they've killed the HECU soldiers in their place. Otherwise, the two alien races are never seen in the same area.
  • The Boot Camp tutorial states that the PCV can be charged by HEV, PCV, and commercial charging stations. You only see one of the second in the entire game, and you never see the third in the game proper, relying mostly on the usual HEV stations and batteries.

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