Not such a Half-Life after all

Graphically what can you say, it's Half-Life with its sexy 16Bit textures and rampant effects to soil your trousers with. You travel through a Half-Life with similar texturing but not the same and enough to be different and yet appealing. Zen, cramped corridors and hugely open outer areas are all in here along with the lush and detailed visuals of the Half-Life universe you know and love, this is it!

As with the graphics and all the rest you can certainly trust the sound of this game to be just as good as it always has been. The music is a slightly less spooky but none the less fun beating and thumping bunch of tracks, a cross between techno and rock mixed into some strange sci-fi hybrid to make you ears curl. However we preferred to turn the music off, we always favoured Half-Life when we could hear all the ambient sounds around us and not some gameplay distracting music tracks. Play with them if you like but they may not give you quite the sense of realism and fright as playing without them.

As you'd expect, EAX and A3D are all in and not to mention that this upgrades you to v1.0.1.5 of Half-Life so you might expect an updated version of World-Craft or similar to follow shortly afterwards. My biggest disappointment was that once completed I now have to wait for Team Fortress2 and the sequel to Half-Life itself, here's hoping it's sooner rather than later.

The Verdict

This is the Half-Life that you know and love but everything has been fixed, changed and updated to make it look and feel so much better. From the speech to the enthralling gameplay helped along by scripted sequences this is the perfect add-on for an otherwise perfect game. Lacking slightly near the end but this ones bad points hardly come to detract from the overall fun surrounding Opposing Force.

It's going to be in the shops any moment so our advice is to rush out and Pre-Order it because there won't be another game like it for some time. After all, it is Half-Life. As such it gets the highest score of any game/add-on EVER under Speedy3D.

by Mark 'KILLZAT' Jackson

Graphics - 9.5 Sound - 9.5 Originality - 9 Gameplay - 9.5

Overall - 9 (95%)

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