Opposing Force: Friendly Fire

13th October 2012

The Replay Experience Experiment: Half-Life: Opposing Force: Friendly Fire

Details Adrian Shephard and other HECU soldier’s attempt to find and use an old transit system to escape to the Lambda Core, after battling through an office complex filled with aliens.

It is also the chapter in which the Black Ops are first introduced. Shephard comes across them in a hangar where they are loading a nuclear warhead into the back of a truck.

This is where the player learns that the Black Ops soldiers have been sent to kill the remaining HECU Marines and cover up the Black Mesa incident.

Shephard meets up with several other surviving marines and fights the Black Ops, eventually reaching an underground railway system that leads to the Lambda complex.

Trivia
  • This chapter takes place at the same time as the Half-Life chapter Lambda Core.
  • In an office, two dead scientists can be seen lying in front of their desks. Their names are S. Reardon and S. Jones, a nod to Gearbox employees Sean Reardon and Steven Jones.
  • In another office is a picture of Gordon Freeman labeled “Employee of the Month“.
The Poll


Challenges
  • Gain access to the security office outside.
  • Keep the second Engineer alive in this chapter.
Saves

HARD [139KB]

Screenshots

Click on the thumbnails below to open a 1024 pixel wide image.
WARNING: The screenshots contain spoilers.

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The Replay Experience Experiment

This post is part of the The Replay Experience Experiment 2012 event. This is a chance to replay all the Half-Life games and discuss them based on our experiences since we first played them.

Hat Tip

The trivia text taken from the CombineOverWiki, a fan-supported, editable wiki covering the Half-Life series of games.

Walkthrough
A Complete Half-Life: Opposing Force Walkthrough

On the left is a complete text walkthrough for Half-Life: Opposing Force.

It has been written by Stanley E. Dunigan and updated with all the tricks and tips from PlanetPhillip.Com readers.

It is in PDF format, meaning you can open it directly in modern browsers or download it and print it.

(Left-click to open and right-click to save)

Do Not Own This Game?

You can purchase Half-Life: Opposing Force directly through Steam and could be playing in within moments, depending on your internet connection.

10 Comments

  1. Summary

    It’s a strange chapter as it seems to include quite a few different styles: underground complex, offices, tram ways, storerooms, industrial, and even an open-air section.

    I’ll definitely go back and try to do the challenges.

    All in all another well-defined chapter with plenty of variety and action to keep us interested.

    Gameplay

    Plenty of actions with human enemies and 3 houndeyes. Jumping “puzzle” was fun and that area looked great. It’s one of those types of places you rush through but probably took longer to make than any other section within this chapter.

    It was fun to have the squad with you but in some ways they are more hassle than they are worth.

    Points of Interest

    It was nice to see two NPCs interact with each other, that really makes the game feel alive.

    Nice touch to have the Black Ops guys talking and giving us some more background.

    G-man Sightings

    Once again, I didn’t see him in this chapter.

    Bugs or Errors

    I didn’t find any issues.

    The Poll

    Nope, I even think I killed one of them!

    Challenges

    – Gain access to the security office outside.
    – Keep the second Engineer alive in this chapter.

    5 Words or Less Review

    MAN! My dogs are barking.

    PlayTime

    21 minutes

    Deaths

    3
    Twice on the ropes and once with the Black Ops squad.

  2. The elevator doors open, and we say “Wow!” – the architecture is incredibly stunning! Very intense fight with alien slaves starts. It reminds of the one from Half-Life’s Office complex, but this one is a lot better. The action is more intense and there are cool small scripted sequences. One time an Alien Grunt appears, for ambush and variety.

    http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=95036320

    Engineer breaks locked door, and we enter another wow-place. The beautiful cave with a building inside it. We can climb the cave walls to get on the rooftop of the offices, which is cool. Part of Black Mesa Transit System is visible from our position, but we can’t get there yet.

    The office part ends when we climb the pipe into above-the-ceiling maintenance zone. One of the doors tries to let us go. Other door is a lot better at it, so we go through it. Later there’s nice moment where we have to quickly shoot the explosives and then solve a simple puzzle by finding a place to shoot. The exercise we’re doing afterwards reminds us of our training and makes feel grateful that the instructor taught us.

    Through the good looking multi-floor hole we get to the surface. Medic tells us that we need to get to extraction zone near the Lambda sector. For that, we need to open the door first.

    http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=95043128

    The nearby building is locked, so we use ventilation to get through. Inside we meet Black Ops for the first time and carefully neutralizing them, trying not to hit the missile, otherwise the whole place will be turned into a big pit in the ground. We hit a switch and find a wounded engineer hiding in small garage. Medic heals our “locksmith” and he “picks” a door only to fall in the nasty deathtrap, but we can save him if we’re quick enough.

    Behind the door, intense music plays, and we’re attacked by what seems like a whole crowd of ninjas. Friendly soldiers are helpful here, although one time they started to attack me and I had to reload. Probably hit them with a shockwave from my grenade’s explosion. What happens later might be called “a small on a rail chapter”. But why there’s a staircase on the ceiling? Did they research changeable gravity?

    http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=95043526

    This place is very hard: there are too much Black Ops soldiers and ninjas. When the hard fight is finally over, through the windows we see the office building from the beginning of the chapter, which is a very nice touch. Then we climb the pipe once again to go through the ventilation and find ourselves in the chamber where Freeman is teleporting to Xen, but this is the next chapter, We Are Not Alone.

    Overall, this chapter pleases you very much with great level design, but also frustrates with too hard fights.

    Playtime: 30 minutes

  3. 2muchvideogames

    This is one of the best chapters in terms of squad battles. It is also the chapter where you could fight alongside up to 4 squadmates at once. It is also the last chapter where engineers plays a major role (not including one that just cuts a lock). Now, I HOPE you’re NOT ONE OF THOSE jerks that STEAL the M249 SAW from your fellow marine. But the “fight alongside your fellow marines” thing really gets it going in this chapter. First you fight with 2 grunts against a bunch of alien slaves, then you have two more guys (potentially with a medic and engie too) fight a legion of black ops. I really hoped that there would be more large-scale battles like this, but later squads tend to either be really small (two grunts at most, with no medics) or really short-lived (3 squadmates vs. shocktroopers and voltigores) — I’ve found that it would barely take 3 of your marines just to take on a single voltigore… not a very fair match I admit.

    Of course people would just say “if you want more squad-oriented military action just play Call of Duty!”

    I got the first challenge, but not the second. It’s not too difficult, however, if you just use the desert eagle on the sentry or something with high damage. Of course, in the next section the engie will actually try to KICK the black ops, so you’re not really saving him any more than you ever could.

  4. TWIN SUNS

    The chapter starts out with the game’s first proper squad action, not counting guards. Although I did get killed once by, ironically enough, friendly fire.

    I couldn’t help but smile at Gordon’s Employee of the Month portrait.

    This chapter re-introduces the black ops, granted this first battle only left me 7 HP. Also in this area my medic got stuck in an opening door which prevented me from healing the engineer and continuing.

    The last time I played through the chapter, I remember limping through the ” On a Rail” section with 2 HP and quick saving after each encounter. Things seemed to go a bit better this time around as I seemed to have one extra squad member and plenty of MP5 grenades. I made it to the end of the chapter with 8 HP this time…..

    Playtime: 27 minutes

  5. MisterAddy

    Ahh, I sure love the Black Ops…
    Oh, wait they kill me all the time. They are introduced in a really cool confrontation with a group of marines. After this they are used throguh the rest of the chapter and personally I suck at fighting them!

    We start off in a building that, to me, doesn’t seem to make sense. It seems to be some sort of lobby/entrance area, but it isn’t a part of anything else. It also has a skylight… with solid rock right above it. We even see the building again from another perspective later. Can anyone else explain to me what it is? Once again we come out on the surface, if I was Shepard I would be getting really annoyed by now! Doesn’t it seem strange that the surface of Black Mesa is just small, unconnected bits of road and the odd building surrounded by rock walls? Doesn’t seem very practical to me ;).

    Overall this was an OK chapter, but I didn’t enjoy it as much as the previous one.

  6. Unq

    Another good chapter here. We’re introduced to the Black Ops pretty gently (in that we can spy on them first and pick them off if we’re careful). And we get some hints at their mission: not only to “clean” up after the grunts, but something more sinister about a “package” – and note that the nosecone of the missile has been removed. A nice hint to what’s to come later on.

    After that, we get a decent dose of squad combat set in a location reminiscent of On A Rail. I found the whole Black Ops section to be quite challenging this time. The squad can actually help a lot here, especially if you bait the Black Ops a bit and then retreat to let your squad do some of the killing. On Hard it’s no easy task (especially since the female Black Ops cloak) and I personally had to use the medic a lot, until he ran out of health to give. A nice challenge without being unfair in my opinion.

    Playtime: 26 minutes (quite a few tries at the Black Ops section)

  7. General

    In this chapter you must progress and combat with other Marines. You also use their specials abilities in order to pass some obstacles. This is a new aspect of gameplay introduced in this chapter.
    On the other hand, your guy’s will continues to attack enemies at their own risk, so you must have some strategy to keep them alive. For exemple the medic is more helpful if you leave him back.

    The level itself is very varied, alterning offices, hazardous area and an “On a Rail” sequence. You can’t get bored especially with your humans ennemies.

    Poll

    No, I killed Tower with a AR grenade!

    Challenges

    Gain access to the security office outside. OK
    Keep the second Engineer alive in this chapter. OK

    Deaths

    Two. The first by females assassins, the other by my own guy because I accidentally kill his buddy. (That was friendly fire)

    Caught my eyes

    Why a so hazardous electrical and toxic installation near offices ?

    Playtime

    26 minutes

    French Let’s Play

  8. Sorry for being late, I just can’t keep up and produce, upload and review my vids that quickly….

    Friendly fire is a chapter that I hate, first of all there is a shitload of slaves at the beginning, and the first times I played it I died at least a dozen times in there (again, I was playing on hard and had something like 8 hp left).
    Now that I got the trick about running like mad instead of fighting, I can get through it pretty easily. Then we must get higher and higher through a huge multiple floor hole. When we get to the surface, we meet a medic, and meet some black ops. They’re not really different than h1’s human grunts, except their hitboxes are smaller and they got a little more hp. we have to heal our engineer friend, and he will open the door for us.

    After that, when we encounter two allies, I had a plan: I wanted to shoot the guy with a m249 once so that he follows me and I get to kill him right after opening the explosion door, but I guess he didn’t feel like taking revenge so now I don’t have a m249 D:

    Then some female black ops (argh ninjas) that are pretty hard to shoot, but I didn’t do so bad. we run along a track (weaks may use a tram) and then encounter both types of black ops at the same time, and sorry I was REALLY slow at that point because this is a hard part of the game, and I knew I would get killed by sprinting through it. then more tracks, and we eventually go through a ceiling vent and reach the next level.

    Five words or less review:
    Can fire actually BE friendly?

    Challenges:
    – Gain access to the security office outside.
    nope, ain’t nobody got time for that.
    – Keep the second Engineer alive in this chapter.
    I’m not sure, as I pushed him to the side I he might have survived, but maybe he just entered after I went through, and if he did then the turret probably killed him. anyway I didn’t make him follow me until the end so whatever.

    Deaths:
    Nope, still going 😀

    Playtime:
    6 minutes 7 seconds 375 milliseconds

  9. FRIENDLY FIRE

    Felt like it was trying to be Office Complex and On A Rail too much.

    Points of Interest

    The Alien Slave jumping through the door was cool.
    http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=105325840

    Bugs and Glitches

    This chapter had another misaligned texture on a vent at the very end of the chapter.
    http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=105325769

    Music


    A bit generic and filler like but still has a good techno beat.

    Poll

    Negative, sir.

    Challenges

    Gain access to the security office outside.
    You would have to try to NOT get this challenge.
    Keep the second Engineer alive in this chapter.
    I went up and knifed the Turret so the Engineer could live.

    Misc.

    Gearbox went WAY overboard with the Black Ops in this chapter.
    You can actually die by destroying the Nuke by shooting it too many times.
    http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=105325908

    Playtime

    18 minutes

    5 Words or Less

    Office Complex 2: Electric Boogaloo

  10. Ade

    Got both challenges but MAN that’s hard, specially when that fridgin engineer keeps kickin black ops in the face instead of actually shooting!
    I wasted some time running around hoping I would open some door for the first 2 soldiers but I guess you just have to leave them behind so I kinda felt bad for them, I believe in the “no man left behind” phrase.

    Playtime: 36 minutes

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