Now, if anyone actually reads this, a review of Half-Life will probably be largely unnecessary, so I will be skimming, but if you are one of the benighted souls who somehow has not played the original Half-Life, I heartily- urgently– recommend you go play it. I plan to come back to that particular holy grail later, once I’ve prevented John Romero from making me his bitch, but you obviously can’t understand why Opposing Force is so particularly good unless you can contrast it with the base game. I guess we should do a brief overview of Half-Life to set the stage. You might say that “best” qualifier is cheating, considering it piggybacks on what is already one of the greatest games of all time, but hey. It’s one of the best expansion packs ever released for any game, and is both the first and (I believe) the best game that Gearbox Software ever made. You see, Half-Life: Opposing Force is great. The same cannot be said for the expansions, however, and it’s been a while since I played Opposing Force in particular, which is fine by me. Unlike most of these games, even my favorites, Half-Life is a game I’ve never really stopped playing since it came out nearly twenty years ago- at least every few years, I break it out for another spin. It makes sense, really- while Valve have been wise enough to protect their purity, Gearbox have allowed themselves to become tainted over the past ten or so years by actually releasing games. The closest he could get me is the first expansion, Half-Life: Opposing Force, by Gearbox Software. AHA! I knew it! Half-Life is too good- too holy!- for the Prince of Darkness to affect.

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