Half-Life: Opposing Force
Moderate overall intensityWhat's in it
Realistic first-person gunfire and explosives against human soldiers and alien creatures, with blood spray and occasional creatures bursting into chunks when killed.
The player's military unit is tasked with silencing witnesses at the facility, and the setting includes grotesque body-horror alien creatures.
Dim facility corridors, sudden alien ambushes, and grotesque creatures such as headcrabs create tense, occasionally startling moments.
Occasional mild exclamations from marine and scientist characters during scripted moments.
Who can reach your kid
What it is
Half-Life: Opposing Force is a single-player science-fiction first-person shooter (with optional online deathmatch) in which you play a U.S. Marine corporal sent into the Black Mesa research facility after an experiment tears open a portal to an alien world. The core of the game is combat: you use conventional and alien weapons to fight monstrous creatures, rival soldiers, and covert operatives through underground labs and industrial areas, solving environmental puzzles along the way. Fighting produces blood and enemies can be blown apart into chunks, though the action moves quickly and does not dwell on gore. There is no sexual content, nudity, drugs, or gambling, and language is limited to occasional mild exclamations. The atmosphere is tense and sometimes frightening, and the story's premise — a soldier ordered to eliminate survivors and witnesses — carries a grim undertone.
How it's framed
The game frames the violence as survival and duty from a soldier's point of view; enemies are aliens and hostile humans, and the darker order to 'silence all witnesses' is presented as part of a bleak military cover-up rather than something celebrated.
Details
- Developer
- Gearbox Software
- Publisher
- Valve
- Released
- Nov 1, 1999
Similar games
We built this because we needed it
Balanced Play pools your kids' game time into one budget across Steam, Switch, PlayStation, Xbox and more. We're taking 100 founding families — free for life.
Claim a founding spot →Free for life for the first 100. No card, no spam.