Half-Life: Decay

A forgotten expansion to Valve’s masterpiece was two decades ahead of its time

- Jeremy Peel

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.