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loonygames
goes to E3! By Jason "loonyboi" Bergman
Half-Life: Opposing Force: I was really looking forward to checking this one out, and I was quite satisfied by what I saw. Let's face it…making an official mission pack for Half-Life is not an easy task. How the heck do you follow up what many people consider to be the game of the year? Well GearBox software decided to give it a shot, and they seem to be coming along nicely. Essentially the game puts you on the opposite side of the battle from Half-Life. Instead of being on the scientists' team, you now play one of the military guys. Cool premise. So it takes place during Half-Life. You will even run into Gordon during the game. Your character blacked out when all hell started breaking loose, so you have no real knowledge of what's going on. You can follow orders and kill all the scientists you like, or actually use them to help you. They've added a new NPC character, Otis, who is sort of like Barney's overweight cousin. Apparently Barney and Otis will have conversations throughout the game. Pretty cool. They've added a few new weapons, including the wrench, which has a cool alt-fire where you wind up and bring it down for a powerful blow. The head crabs which before you never actually saw on anyone but scientists, will now attack everyone, and you'll see mutated security guards, military guys, and more. They've got one new alien race which looked allright…but different. The jury's still out on what it'll be like in the actual game. Considering that they've only been working on the pack for six weeks (!) Half-Life: Opposing Force is coming along quite well. TeamFortress 2: When I saw this at last year's E3, it was supposed to be a free add-on for Half-Life that would either ship with the game, or be released for free online shortly after its release. Well since then TF2 has become a brand new game, and is one of the more unique multiplayer-only titles I saw at the show. TF2 like TeamFortress Classic, isn't just another CTF game. It has CTF (although I didn't even see it demonstrated. I got the impression they're trying to downplay that) but most of the missions will be centered around different objectives. The game has a total military feel, and really looks well planned out. Characters use teamwork in really creative ways (one character loading bullets into another's weapon is pure genius) and the end result could either be a game that totally rules, or is at least mildly amusing for a few weeks. No matter what, I'll be keeping an eye on TF2. Team Fortress 2 also was yet another game demonstrated at the show that utilized voice-over-net technology. TF2 has some cool on-the-fly lip synching going, and it'll be interesting to see how popular this feature turns out to be.
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