I've always said that my favourite chapter in Half-Life is Office Complex. In a game all about recontextualising the FPS from abstract mazes into a realistic, coherent setting, to me Office Complex felt like the ultimate expression of that. It's the most mundane part of Black Mesa's clandestine research facility, swapping the hellscapes of Doom and the fantasy realms of Heretic for a cold and clinical administration centre.
There are no fancy laboratories, rocket silos, or experimental weapons manufacture here, just dimly lit workspaces connected by chequerboard-tiled corridors. Its wildest indulgence is an implausibly large freezer, which given the number of people who need to be fed in Black Mesa, probably isn't all that implausible in any case.
