#april ryan

Alice: Madness Returns

Alice has a knife (good start), a pepper mill / Gatling gun, a hobby horse, and a teapot that fires blobs of hot tea.. Pretty nice selection, honestly. Of course, all of these only exist in Wonderland; in plain old London she has only her ability to shove people. This is sometimes effective though. 8/10 - points deducted for not existing.

Before people ask; the first American McGee's Alice is not on Steam for some reason. It does not count for this list.

Dreamfall: The Longest Journey

This is the only game in the The Longer Journey / Dreamfall series that involves combat, and if you've played Dreamfall: The Longest Journey, you'll understand why.

April fights with a staff. Not the fanciest of weapons, but it does the job. She can beat people with it, she can block with it. Really, that's the minimum a weapon needs to do. 3/10 - it's a stick

Zoe is a kickboxer, so I guess her weapon is her whole body. I'm going to just consider it to be her fighting skills though; rating all the female characters by their body is a different type of list entirely and not one I really jive with. 5/10 - she mostly does short jabs but gets some sweet kicks in there too.

Kian uses a sword, but he is male and doesn't count.

Kena: Bridge of Spirits

Kena also uses a staff, but hers is a lot cooler. For one thing, it's got a big blue crystal on the top, that's neat. Second, it's more than just a wooden pole. It's a bow, it shoots energy blasts out the top, it's pretty sweet. She can also summon bombs, but they're mostly used to make objects levitate. 9/10

Left 4 Dead / Left 4 Dead 2

Neither of the two female protagonists (Zoey and Rochelle) have any weapons unique to them, but there's a wide variety of guns to use. None of them really stand out as especially cool to me, though I am fond of the classic Zombie-killing shotguns, or the classic Everyone-killing grenade launcher. 4/10 for guns.

Now the mêlée weapons, that's where it's at. Machetes, fire axes, rock guitars. The classic Zombie-killing chainsaw? All cooler. 5/10

Phantasmagoria

Does Phantasmagoria have combat? No, not really. But you can throw drain cleaner into a rapist's face, and I can't hate that. 10/10 - burn, burn his face

Portal / Portal 2

Chell's only weapons are her wits, her unbreakable spirit, and a machine that opens spatial distortions. So in the context of the game then she's a formidable foe. If she happens to be in a situation where her opponent does not have any rockets, bombs, lasers or tall pits in the area for her to actually use against them, then she's kind of at a loss. 9/10 for the idea but 1/10 for lack of any real offensive abilities.

Raft