RETRO: Opposing force

Half-Life: Opposing Force

In my opinion, the greatest Half-Life of them all. As the named suggests this is a standalone expansion to Half-Life that allows you to experience the game from the other side of things. Instead of being Gordon Freeman, you are hunting him down. You are Adrian Shepard, another mute superhuman capable to taking down an entire armies alone. Although this time it is more plausible as you are a soldier actually trained in firing arms opposed to a quantum scientist. You get to play through boot camp, which serves not as just an introduction, but actually adds some character allowing you to see what training he went through to get himself here.

Half-Life is a revolutionary game. When you first experience Half-Life you see the grunts as mindless brutes with no sense of moral or original thinking. But now you discover that...well they're the same. But Adrian Shepard isn't. You battle the same Xen monsters with a similar success to freeman himself and once again Gman influences your every turn.  (Pictured is Gman leaving you in black mesa to do his bidding) A tangent from the fighting occurs when you see  an osprey taking the rest of your squad home, but you are left with these monsters to die. You are filled with dread and fear once you realize you isolated here on this death trap. But you are not alone, other grunts were left behind and have yet to succumb to the sweet bosom of insanity. They act as meat shields and ammo cabinets, always willing to serve Adrian Shepard. Eventually you sight Gordon Freeman leaping into a Xen portal, and you have no choice but to follow him deep into the depths of the unknown.

Now although all that story and background is good and fine, the part that stands above all other Half-Life games, is the range of weaponry, and the originality of such. There are three aliens you can wield as weapons. One of them serves as a grappling hook. Do I need to say more? It enhances the whole experience as there are so many ways to dispatch your unlucky foes. Each area bring originality and beauty. The world of Half-Life (The labs, Xen area and outskirts of the labs) is amazing to explore and opposing force only brings more to this. It has many-a scripted event which still are stands up to the current gaming market and remains encaturing. Something I don't think is seen enough in many modern games. It was also one of the first games to have multiple endings, (Albeit one is just a death sentence.)

Opposing forces is a game that I just can't forget, it gives an immersive atmosphere and although it can be frustrating and sometimes glitchy, and the graphics don't keep up to date to well, it's still a great and beautiful game to play. Opposing force, if you haven't played it, go play it now. Unless you haven't played Half-Life, in which case go download and play it ASAP.

FLASH: Lemon Smash

There is something about Lemon Party that makes it stupidly addictive. I don't know whether it's the cutesy, carefree animation, the happy go lucky soundtrack or simple controls but they all add up to create a very fun game. You control an unexplained, very bendy man, who, for unknown reasons, needs to smash as many lemons that, again without reason, fall from the sky. A lot goes unexplained in this game, but then again it doesn't need to be, what it does need to be is fun and it does this very well. You use the arrow keys to move left and right and the space bar to hit lemons with your massive mallet, it's childishly simple but that's what makes it so replayable and so addictive.

Light Hearted and Carefree, you will love this game and it can be found on Newgrounds

Lets Start with a feature on Dwarf Fortress

 Since Dwarf Fortress still is an alpha shows that there is still a lot the two developers, Tarn and Zach Adams, want to work on. The premise of Dwarf Fortress seems simple enough: take 7 drunken idiots, put them in the middle of a field/desert/jungle/haunted marshland, feed them, clothe them and brew their booze and if you're lucky they won't get eaten by Zombie Raccoons. When you start a game, Dwarf Fortress procedurally generates a world for you, with rivers, towns and mountain ranges, all rendered in ASCII graphics. You are then given the opportunity to choose the skills, equipment and animals your Dwarves take with them or you can just choose the default loadout.

It's here that the game really starts and begins to open up. This is also where the Rookie player can get most overwhelmed. The Learning Curve of Dwarf Fortress is more like a learning cliff and a newbie player WILL get the "Your Fortress has crumbled to its end" message before the end of winter. Starting off, the Fortress has no buildings or even any basic shelter and it is up to your miners to carve it out of the mountainside or the very earth beneath their feet. Individual dwarves are moved about by the player in DF, instead you have to designate an area to be mined or a workshop to be built and wait while the drunken fools do those tasks. This can be further than you get on your first go because there is no tutorial and first timers are left without any clue of what to do.

Even if you do get that far, feeding your Dwarves is a whole other problem. Setting up a farm is hard to do without flooding your fortress and it is not even apparent how one would set up a farm, except from the fact that you need muddied, freshly irrigated, land. If things get too bad, you can always slaughter any animal under your control as well as hunt for other creatures on the map, a favourite for the forum is to slaughter kittens (for nutritional and computer performance reasons). After that, your Dwarves drink booze, which needs the same vegetables as that the dwarves eat, Plump Helmets, so you need to make sure you produce enough crops and enough barrels to keep them from nasty rats and other pests. Oh, you've ran out of barrels to keep booze in? You won't be able to brew then and now your Dwarves are not working because they aren't motivated by booze. Now the farms are going untended. This means there aren't enough vegetables to go around and your Dwarves have to make do with water instead of beer. A dwarf starves, his friends mourn his loss by throwing a tantrum and killing another dwarf and his friends do the same thing. This is a 'Tantrum Spiral', a series of events that causes the death of fortresses more than anything else.

The learning cliff and ASCII graphics can be discouraging to a newbie player but once they over come it and reach the plateau of Knowing How To Play Dwarf Fortress they can enjoy one of the best indie games on the internet, whats more, there is still a lot to be added to the game and the close knit community are an endless source of modding and merriment.


Get the game and read more about Dwarf Fortress at www.bay12games.com/dwarves




Will Creed

Snark Attack Introduction.

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