Opposing Force Is A Poorly Designed Game
There are a lots of problems I have with Opposing Force when I play it. Looking at it,it just is a very poorly designed game.
For Instance:
The Weapons are cool but they don’t have a useful function most of the time. The Barnacle grappling hook and the teleport gun are cool but aren’t used very much to justify them being useful weapons. Especially when the game punishes you for trying to use them more by getting attacked by being close with the barnacle tongue, and using the displaced cannon only to get thrown in a pit!
The Military Companions aren’t useful either for the most part. The engineer is a cool idea but is only utilized twice in the whole game. It’s cool that they attack enemies but their AI isn’t as advanced as the enemy AI to look for cover when being shot and strategize with you to kill enemies.
Race X are not very good enemies. The Vortigore is just a giant tank that eats bullets, the Pit Drone is just annoying to deal with, and the Pit Worm is too aggressive as it attacks every 4 seconds! The only exceptions are the Shock Drone and the Gene Drone as they’re actually interesting to fight!
The layout of the facility is terribly made. When you get Otis you go all the way till you get to an elevator where you fight some Vortigaunts. Once you beat them, there is a security door so you’d think that with Otis at your side your supposed to bring him to the door so he can unlock it like Barney did in the first game. BUT NO, Otis isn’t programmed to go up the elevator and there is nothing behind the door! Instead, you’re supposed to get in a random vent on the side of the wall to progress! And there’s plenty of stuff like this throughout the game! There’s also another instance where you get a medic and an engineer to open a door, and behind it is a tripwire and a turret, but the game doesn’t tell you that it’s there so you can easily lose your medic and engineer because of the turret being place right behind the door.
The puzzles can be very nonsensical at times and aren’t consistent. In one instance you need to turn off a power box to turn off the electricity that is zapping the helicopter blocking your way. Now you need to turn off the electricity by turning off a lever, hitting the box doesn’t do anything. However, in a future puzzle you see a power box shocking the xray scanner blocking your path and you would think that you just need to pull the power box lever but NO, you have to shoot it to stop the electricity unlike before where hitting the original power box did nothing. And later you have to throw a grenade in a hole to explode open a wall to progress but it doesn’t give you any surplus of grenades so if your out of grenades, you’re effectively soft locked!
The NPCs are really frustrating. Most of the time you want them to go in a very specific place but the game won’t let you because either their pathfinding sucks or because a specific NPC isn’t needed beyond a specific point so it just refuses to move forward like Otis at the elevator.
This isn’t just a criticism of the game but the other expansions. Opposing Force tries to do so many things at once that it leaves the other expansions like Blue Shift feeling empty in comparison. If Gearbox spread this new content throughout the other expansions, it would’ve made a better experience. Instead they blew their whole load immediately.
You can disagree with me on this and that’s perfectly fine but this is why I don’t like Opposing Force. Blue Shift is a better experience in my eyes because of not only its consistency but how much like it is with the original game. Decay keeps things interesting with Co-op but Opposing Force just feels like it tries to do too many things intstead of doing one thing consistently good.
There are a lots of problems I have with Opposing Force when I play it. Looking at it,it just is a very poorly designed game.
For Instance:
The Weapons are cool but they don’t have a useful function most of the time. The Barnacle grappling hook and the teleport gun are cool but aren’t used very much to justify them being useful weapons. Especially when the game punishes you for trying to use them more by getting attacked by being close with the barnacle tongue, and using the displaced cannon only to get thrown in a pit!
The Military Companions aren’t useful either for the most part. The engineer is a cool idea but is only utilized twice in the whole game. It’s cool that they attack enemies but their AI isn’t as advanced as the enemy AI to look for cover when being shot and strategize with you to kill enemies.
Race X are not very good enemies. The Vortigore is just a giant tank that eats bullets, the Pit Drone is just annoying to deal with, and the Pit Worm is too aggressive as it attacks every 4 seconds! The only exceptions are the Shock Drone and the Gene Drone as they’re actually interesting to fight!
The layout of the facility is terribly made. When you get Otis you go all the way till you get to an elevator where you fight some Vortigaunts. Once you beat them, there is a security door so you’d think that with Otis at your side your supposed to bring him to the door so he can unlock it like Barney did in the first game. BUT NO, Otis isn’t programmed to go up the elevator and there is nothing behind the door! Instead, you’re supposed to get in a random vent on the side of the wall to progress! And there’s plenty of stuff like this throughout the game! There’s also another instance where you get a medic and an engineer to open a door, and behind it is a tripwire and a turret, but the game doesn’t tell you that it’s there so you can easily lose your medic and engineer because of the turret being place right behind the door.
The puzzles can be very nonsensical at times and aren’t consistent. In one instance you need to turn off a power box to turn off the electricity that is zapping the helicopter blocking your way. Now you need to turn off the electricity by turning off a lever, hitting the box doesn’t do anything. However, in a future puzzle you see a power box shocking the xray scanner blocking your path and you would think that you just need to pull the power box lever but NO, you have to shoot it to stop the electricity unlike before where hitting the original power box did nothing. And later you have to throw a grenade in a hole to explode open a wall to progress but it doesn’t give you any surplus of grenades so if your out of grenades, you’re effectively soft locked!
The NPCs are really frustrating. Most of the time you want them to go in a very specific place but the game won’t let you because either their pathfinding sucks or because a specific NPC isn’t needed beyond a specific point so it just refuses to move forward like Otis at the elevator.
This isn’t just a criticism of the game but the other expansions. Opposing Force tries to do so many things at once that it leaves the other expansions like Blue Shift feeling empty in comparison. If Gearbox spread this new content throughout the other expansions, it would’ve made a better experience. Instead they blew their whole load immediately.
You can disagree with me on this and that’s perfectly fine but this is why I don’t like Opposing Force. Blue Shift is a better experience in my eyes because of not only its consistency but how much like it is with the original game. Decay keeps things interesting with Co-op but Opposing Force just feels like it tries to do too many things intstead of doing one thing consistently good.