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Having earned thirty-nine Game of the Year awards when it was released in November 2004, Valve’s Half-Life 2 is one of the most celebrated video games of all time. As of February 2011 it had sold twelve million copies worldwide. It’s a first-person shooter game set in a dystopian future where a technologically advanced alien empire known as “the Combine” has conquered Earth. With its Eastern European setting ruled by a tyrannical alien police state, it’s notable for its anti-Communist and anti-imperialist themes and imagery.
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Shadow of the Colossus is an artistic and technical triumph that looms large on lists of top video games, with an average score of ninety-one percent on review aggregator Metacritic. It is rightly considered a masterpiece. Originally released in 2005 for the PlayStation 2, it was reissued in high definition on Playstation 3, and got a full makeover on Playstation 4 last year. Several games have paid homage to its designs, and it has been optioned for a film adaptation.[1]
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Famously based on zombie horror films, the Resident Evil video games have sold millions of copies each over the past two decades, and spawned a (terrible) film franchise to boot. As such, they’re an important cultural touchstone to a large segment of the gaming public, many of whom are young white men. The Japanese title Biohazard better communicates its central premise: A virus engineered by a multinational pharmaceutical company causes a pandemic resulting in the zombie apocalypse.
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5,995 words
