It’s only taken 600 days and 14 people, but Half-Life 2 has finally been completed in under 1 hour and 28 minutes. The speedrun I’ve embedded below is the product of Source Runs team, and it reduces Valve’s opus to a dramatic, comedic relay of astonishing keyboard gymnastics. Each player passes off their best run through to the next, completing the game as a team. There are 200 segments covered in the same time it would take to watch Paranormal Activity. In fact, some might say what you’re about to see is parano – [*snip* We'll have none of that - segue Ed]. (more…)

There are some things that need to fixed in Team Fortress 2. Valve explain: “Unfortunately, as players’ tactics and abilities have grown, so have the bugs and exploits in some of the maps. For example, since Badwater shipped in The Heavy Update, TF2 has added more than 140 weapons to the game, some of which introduced new capabilities: sentry jumping, rocket jumping with no health cost, the ability to pick up and move your buildings. All of these are just a fraction of the many ways players can now turn maps like Badwater upside down.” But there’s also some content on the way, too, with two new maps appearing: ” Introducing two all-new Capture Point maps: Process and Standin. Beyond a great polish, both of these maps offer unique and exciting gameplay; Process with its five streamlined Capture Points and Standin with its triple Cap Point free-for-all.” The new maps are by community mapper Ian Cuslidge, so congratulations to him.

When they’re not spinning around and around in their expensive chairs, weaving hats, or thinking up other ways to not make games that people want (“Shall we all got to Hawaii this week, or shall we crack open that HL3 design document?” “Aloha! Aloha! Aloha!”), Valve’s brain drones are at least attempting to create a community of people that can earn a living from making and contributing to games. Sometimes it’s a bit broken, like Greenlight is right now. Other times it can be so successful that Valve can afford to share the wealth between organisations that contributed to the success, but had no way to monetise their involvement. So now, when a community item in Team Fortress 2 or Dota 2 is sold in either game’s store, it’s possible for some of Valve’s take to be directed to the likes of Blender and Polycount. Ooh, just thought up a new word for it: Valvetruism. (more…)

I rarely role-play in games. I’d like to believe it’s because I have such a well-defined personality that I simply can’t accept not being myself, but the real reason is that I’m rubbish. I only ever have one well-defined notion of what I want to be: Garrett. Every opportunity to create a character in a game for me means loading up on stealth options, and when I do I don’t really feel the character. I’m just a dude in the dark. But my last Skyrim character was lost to the great platter splatter* of October 2012, and I’m keen to go back the Fus Ro Dah. The question of whether or not I replay as a Garrett lookalike or roll something more adventurous has been answered with this mod that puts Team Fortress 2′s heavy into the dragon’s lair. I can tell I’m not going to be loading up on stealth options with this one. (more…)

Like the world’s most fun STD, Team Fortress 2 really likes to spread itself around. What’s that itch, Joe Danger? Why it’s a just a case of the hats. That’s not a wart on Poker Night at the Inventory, it’s an achievement. And though the one game we all wanted to have a little bit of TF2 in it has remained resistant, there’s a new strain that’s proven to be too much for its immune system. Surgeon Simulator 2013′s rib-cage cracking ridiculousness really did look a lot like the Meet The Medic trailer, and Valve has allowed the characters to appear in Bossa Studio’s scalpel sim. It was inevitable. (more…)

Much like JLS, the cast of Team Fortress 2 will put their faces anywhere. Though unlike JLS, they’ve yet to put them on the front of a box of Johnnies.* This time they’re showing up in the long-awaited, far too long in happening PC versions of lovely Hello Games’ lovely Joe Danger games. Tiny cutesy Heavy on a motorbike! Aww! Hello claim they initially only put the TF2 characters in for fun, but I DON’T BELIEVE THEM ONE BIT.

Also there are Minecraft levels, and the option to make your own ones, just to double up on the whole PC gaming Zeitgeisty thing. (more…)

It’s another instalment of our Twenty Bucks series, where we unscientifically hunt around in free-to-play games and find out what it really costs. Hooray! This time Craig tries to spend money in Team Fortress 2, where paid-for things will often drop on your head, but hats will often not. Here is one Buck with Twenty Bucks. > (more…)

There are nearly as many Team Fortress 2 hats as there are snarky jokes about Team Fortress 2 hats. I see more hats in a day of browsing the Valvier parts of the Internet than I do in a year of going outside. But let’s face it: ours is a hatted man’s world, and so long as there are heads to be ogled and summarily shot, people will clamor for more carnivals of craftsmanship to cover them. You can probably see where I’m going with this. There’s a new Team Fortress 2 update, and it’s entirely> player-created. Also, it’s mostly hats. These, however, are robot hats, and – as the wisest of all Benders taught us – that makes them exponentially more interesting. There’s also a video, comic, and all sorts of other post-update revelry. The break is not a robot, but it will do is best to emulate the experience.

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I hate Adam Foster, creator of last decade’s rapturously-received Half-Life 2 mod series MINERVA (not to be confused with BioShock 2: Minerva’s Den) and more recently a Valve employee. I hate him not because he is talented, not because he works at a cool place and not because I have a pathological distaste for people called ‘Adam.’ (Smith, you’re fired). I hate him because today he has made me feel SO OLD.

One of the first long-form pieces I ever wrote for RPS was an interview with Mr Foster about his excellent, thoughtful mod, and its fine accomplishments in level design and mood. That was in 2007. Now it is 2013. Six years> later. And I am posting about MINERVA again. He now works at Valve, and meanwhile I’m still typing words into the same CMS, but older, grimmer, fatter. At least I’ve changed my chair twice since then. Something Foster has also done is repackage and spit’n'polish his mod for a well-deserved re-release on Steam today. (more…)

I am increasingly anxious about of the pointlessness of videos of virtual reality>. Nevertheless, you can sort of imagine what’s going on in this Oculus Rift plus Virtuix Omni (a multi-direction treadmill platform for moving about in VR) as a chap plays Team Fortress 2, below.

I am not sure if it would make me feel a bit giddy. (more…)