Nightmare Fuel / Half-Life: Opposing Force

• Imagine this: You, a US Marine who has gone through hell and back, have been left behind by the evac chopper and are desperate to get the hell out of dodge. Thankfully, after some trekking, you come across what looks like friendly reinforcements in the form of the Black Ops, who are still managing to hold out effectively against the alien hordes. And then, they suddenly open fire on you when you try to greet them. Worse, they've also been torturing several of your comrades for intel, leaving them to bleed to death. Sure, the HECU kind of had it coming after gunning down numerous Black Mesa personnel, but it's harrowing to see just how much the US government considers Shephard and the rest of the HECU as expendable just for failing to manage a disaster they had no idea on just how to contain. Worse, Shepard's squad having been shot down on day 1 and him being unconscious until day 2 he has no idea his fellows have been killing civilians in the middle of an alien invasion and only knows that the government has betrayed them until later interactions with scientists and guards reveal this.
• The We Are Pulling Out chapter. The chapter starts after you jump onto a Black Mesa tram after the Resonance Cascade has already happened. You then proceed to ride the tram to the surface, while the all-too-familiar automated voice relays its horribly chopped and distorted message (also, there are Vortigaunts on the way up that will attack you if you don't shoot them). A short time later, after spending a few minutes with an incredibly socially awkward security guard, you reach the Osprey on which you and your fellow soldiers will leave. As you head towards the helicopter, the G-Man shuts the giant steel exit door before you can leave, forcing you to stay behind in the overrun hellhole while your comrades leave without you. That bit just really gives you the chills, and it just makes you wonder what the G-Man's real intentions are.
  • Want to really add to the ambiguity? Less than a minute later if you stick around, you'll hear a pop of an explosion in the far distance. If you are stuck at the exit door to watch the osprey take off, boom, what's left of Shephard's squad at that moment dies in an instant along with their entire aircraft. The G-Man just saved Shephard for his own nebulous purposes.
• The entirety of the game can be a bit creepy because it feels a bit more..... disjointed than Half-Life because you wake up just as the Marines were pulling out, and you spend most of the game by yourself. It can get to the point that you feel like the last man in Black Mesa.
• Race X, a group of aliens that are not native to Xen, and just happen to be taking advantage of the dimensional vulnerability the resonance cascade caused. Gearbox even canonically acknowledges how out of left field they are, as the Black Mesa staff have no idea what they even are.
• After reaching the Lambda Core, finding Freeman only to see him warp to Xen, taking a different portal to Xen only to quickly return to Earth, Shephard finds himself in a completely different facility far below surface level. The chapters Crush Depth, Vicarious Reality, and especially Pit Worm's Nest is a nightmare gauntlet with nary a friendly face in sight, full of Race X invaders and the occasional Xenian lifeform, all of whom want to kill you. The Pit Worm is essentially the Tentacles from the original Half-Life, except it can see you.
• Foxtrot Uniform is infamous among fans of the game.
  • A large portion of the chapter takes place inside dark underground tunnels, completely pitch black if it weren't for night vision. If that wasn't bad enough, these tunnels are crawling with Voltigores, giant Race X aliens that take a lot of punishment before they go down. They have powerful melee attacks and electrical arcs. You'll be out of M249 ammo before you can even notice it, so save some of it if you have the Displacer Cannon.
  • The worst part is that those with an unpatched version of the game cannot save it at all during the chapter, as for some reason, the save file will corrupt and trying to load it will simply crash the game at every attempt. That's right, the whole long segment must be done in one go, without saving at all.
• The final boss area can be very eldritch and strange in nature, where once you enter the elevator you come across a wind - shaft and walls covered with a strange biomass. Eventually, you find this massive monster that looks like the Cthulhu himself.
• Adrian Shephard's eventual fate. Trapped on an aircraft floating through some empty other dimension - for all we know, for eternity, as this fate is designed to preserve him. ...And I Must Scream indeed. One can only hope he's in stasis and not cognizant.

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