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 Overlord by Triumph Studios It’s been a while, but I am finally adding some stuff to the “Blast from the Past segment of my blog! While Overlord was released only a few years ago, it’s not exactly new, right? Anyhow, the entire premise of Overlord is that you are the recently resurrected, well, overlord. You have been dormant for several years when a band of heroes locked you away.

Blast from the Past Shogo: Mobile Armor Division by Monolith Productions I am introducing a new segment to my blog titled “Blast from the Past.” To be honest, I really couldn’t think of a better name, but it works. The name/article relation is that these segments will be talking about older games, either revered classics or games that time has left behind. Sometimes it’s good to reflect back on our gaming roots, and other times we can sit and wonder “Why don’t they make games like that anymore?