Blast from the Past The Operative: No One Lives Forever by Monolith Productions Today we have yet another Monolith game! Back before the days of Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor, Monolith was one of my favorite game development studios. They were one of the most creative forces in the first person shooter genre, and this title is no different. Monolith had great shooters in the Blood games and Shogo, but this game is the one that really escalated them to cult classics.

Blast from the Past Half-Life 2 by Valve Software And to finish it out, we have the second legendary game in the legendary Half-Life series, Half-Life 2! Half-Life 2 continues the trend of silent protagonists, crowbars, and a gargantuan modding community. Graphics Half-Life 2 has aged tremendously well compared to its predecessor. Models are more detailed, faces have more structure, textures are sharper and higher resolution, shaders are improved, and some fun render-to-texture tricks are being played around with.

Blast from the Past Half-Life by Valve Software This episode goes over the legendary Half-Life! The game that spawned a massive modding community, made us fall in love with crowbars and silent protagonists, and is likely the introduction for a whole generation of people to first person shooters. Graphics I’m going to get this out of the way first. This is a late 90’s era game. Polygonal models were starting to get more details, but polygon counts and texture resolution was at a premium.

Blast from the Past Fire Emblem by Intelligent Systems I have recently been playing Fire Emblem for the GBA. This is the first game in the series I have actually played, and while I heard it was good, I was never sure how good. It’s no Final Fantasy Tactics, but it holds its own quite well, and is definitely a worthy addition to any turn-based strategy lovers’ collection. Fire Emblem is split up into two parts: Talking and Fighting.

Blast from the Past Wild ARMs by Media.Vision Wild ARMs is an RPG for the original PlayStation by Japanese developer Media.Vision. I have a lot of nostalgia for this title, as it was one of the first games I every played on the PS1. When it came out in 1997, it was considered the game to hold you over until Final Fantasy 7 came out. Wild ARMs follows the classic tale of a boy who is an outcast and cannot find his place in the world.