Developer Gearbox Software
Publisher Sierra On-Line
Format PC, PS2
Release 2001
Alyx Vance isn’t Half-Life’s first female protagonist. Nor is she its second. In fact, the VR heroine follows in the hazmat boots of Gina Cross and Colette Green. Like Gordon Freeman, both are Black Mesa scientists who discover a sudden and vital talent for shotgunning aliens. It was Cross who developed the HEV suit that Freeman wears, and trained him in its use; it’s her detached voice that intones “major lacerations detected” when the rakelike claw of a zombie connects with Freeman’s shoulder.
Don’t judge yourself too harshly for not knowing their names: gaming’s most famous pair of doctors remain Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk, the co-founders of Bioware. Cross and Green, by contrast, have faded over time, like radioactive isotopes. They were casualties of a market which, at the turn of the millennium, was still a long way from multiplatform parity. Having developed Half-Life exclusively for PC, Valve handed the game over to young Gearbox Software, which set about porting the shooter to new platforms. As a way of sweetening the deal for console players, Gearbox developed two expansion campaigns: one for Dreamcast, named Blue Shift, and another for PlayStation 2, named Decay. While the Dreamcast port never came out, Blue Shift managed to find its way back to the PC, and has been routinely bundled with the original game ever since. Decay, however, wasn’t granted the same longevity through Steam: when PS2 lost its spot beneath TVs, Cross and Green went with it.
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Bulwark: Falconeer Chronicles
Anyone familiar with the concept of kitbashing is already halfway to understanding what Tomas Sala’s open-world builder is all about.
Children Of The Sun
René Rother’s acrid revenge thriller – an action game with its limbs broken and forcibly rearranged into the shape of a spatial puzzler – is at once a bonafide original and an unlikely throwback. Cast your eyes right and you wouldn’t blink if we told you this was a forgotten Grasshopper Manufacture game from the early PS3 era (we won’t be at all surprised if this finds a spot on Suda51’s end-of-year list).
Post Script
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Rise Of The Ronin
Falling in battle simply switches control to the next person up, and then quick revive fixes everything
Post Script
The pawn and the pandemic
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The road from Vernworth to Bakbattahl is scenic but arduous. Ignore the dawdling mobs of goblins, and duck beneath the chanting harpies that circle on the currents overhead, and even moving at a hurried clip it is impossible for a party of four to complete the journey by nightfall.
BLUE MANCHU
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How a contrast of perspectives added extra layers to a side-scrolling platform game
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The creator of Spelunky, plus a super-group of indie developers, have spent the best part of a decade making 50 games. Has the journey been worth it?
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This abstract indie Soulslike has some bright ideas