Developer Troika Games
Publisher Activision F
ormat PC
Release 2004
Being the first developer outside of Valve’s walls to make a game in the Source engine, and releasing the results the same day as Half-Life 2, is certainly one way to guarantee a place in videogame history. But it’s also a chalice you must be rather – let’s be generous – brave to swig from. The nascent engine presented a stiff enough challenge to its maker, which delayed its own game by over a year: the reason for that shared release date was not coincidental but contractual, Troika Games having to keep pace with Valve.
It’s perhaps no wonder, then, that arrived as it did, plagued with bugs to an extent rarely seen since the Book of Exodus. It might be tempting to call it the of its day, though we should note that the day in question was long before postlaunch dev support was the norm. And that’s without mentioning the presentation of its story, loaded with late-night-cable-grade titillation, or the combat, which,
