Who here has fond memories of playing Half-Life and it's expansions? I do. A little while ago, I decided to start up Opposing Force, the expansion from Gearbox where you play as a soldier that shows up at Black Mesa. I expected that I would simply play though the "boot camp" tutorial level again, and then be done. But before I knew it, I had begun a new game and was playing through it.
It really is great that I can play a 13 year old game today and play through it at a resolution of 1680×1050 on a modern 64 bit operating system without any trouble at all. Valve are doing a great job of maintaining it.
As I played through it, I began to appreciate just how far ahead of its time Opposing Force and Half-Life were. From the scripted story telling, to the helpful team-mates you come across. There's even a very rudimentary physics engine in place, so that you can move around boxes, positioning them to solve puzzles, or even climb up and swing on ropes. Admittedly, a lot of this was done somewhat crudely, but it works. I'd like to know why I haven't seen another FPS game in the past 13 years with climbable ropes. They opened up some unique possibilities that no other game has really explored since, namely, platforming in an FPS game.
One thing that really stood out for me was that the game doesn't assume you're an idiot. Often the way forward isn't totally clear and you're expect to explore a bit, including climbing on top of things. You actually solve a few of the puzzles that way. Some times you'll encounter a problem and in order to solve it you must use the same skills you would use to solve a real life problem. Some of the solutions to the puzzles are completely natural, that it almost doesn't feel obvious that the puzzles were intentionally placed there for you. Actually, some of the puzzles felt so natural, they didn't really feel like they were placed there for me at all. There are a lot of "modern" games out there that don't do puzzles this well.
Through the entire experience you are never at all taken away from the action, with the only exception being at the start and end of the game. During those time, you find yourself in a plane learning about a bit of the story. I liked this. In too many games, they tell the story in a way that give the user no ability to interact at all. You might as well take your hands off the keyboard and mouse, then suddenly you're more disconnected from the game than you should be. These days there so much out there to distract you during these non-interactive parts. You could do something as simple as pick up your cell phone, then suddenly the game is out of your mind and you're completely disconnected with the experience.
Fortunately, in both Half-Life and Opposing Force, that won't ever happen. Yes, there are times when characters in the game will talk to you and tell you what's going on, but you're always in control, and these encounters are usually pretty brief. So instead of getting bored and being tempted to check out what's new on your cell phone, you can continue to interact with the game enough that you'll still be focusing on what's being said. Even that limited amount of interaction is enough. The unfortunate thing is that so many of the games that have been released over the past 13 years haven't done any better of a job of telling the story than they did here.
As you play Opposing Force, you'll never be bored. It has just the right mix of combat, puzzles, and story, and it's all presented in such a way that will keep you entertained the whole time. When you might be starting to get bored of the combat, you'll encounter a character who's there to move the story along some more, or you'll find a simple puzzle, but neither the puzzle nor story will be so long that you'll then get bored of those as well. To top it all off, the game knows that more play time is not equivalent to more value, so you won't be bored of any of these elements by the time it's over.
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