5. Half-Life: Opposing Force – November 1999
As a giant Half-Life dork, I’ll admit that it took me longer than you might expect to finally come around on the Gearbox-developed Half-Life 1 expansion Opposing Force. For years I found the military angle boring. We get a lot of military shooters, why turn Half-Life into one? But more recently, I’ve replayed OpFor and it’s more than just a military shooter set in Half-Life. The new Race Xenemies who wield new weapons, like an organic shock rifle, and use teleportation as a combat tool. These new aliens add an additional wrinkle to the classic combat of HL1. The new weapons give you more options, and the ability to command a squad of marines makes you feel like a totally different character than Freeman. He was a lone wolf trying to survive. In Opposing Force, you’re a soldier with skills, a squad, and a mission.
