And by that I of course mean silliest. Do you ever just randomly talk to the games you play? Poke fun at characters playfully? That's essentially what BlackLightAttack does with his 60 Second Let's Play series.

60 Second Let's Play: Half-Life 2 [YouTube]

If there's one man who knows from originality in video games, it's Viktor Antonov. He's the man responsible for the oppressive, beautiful art design of City 17 in Valve's masterpiece Half-Life 2. One of the main reasons that I'm excited about the upcoming Dishonored is that Antonov will be art director. Just check out this gallery of the man's work. He's a true original.

But Antonov is generally unhappy with the current state of video games. In an interview at Eurogamer, he laments: "It's been a poor, poor five years for fiction in the video game industry."

Antonov's observations mostly revolve around the fact that there are so few new ideas for games, and that so many games look the same. He sees the fact that the closest touchstone for this year's Dishonored is BioShock, a game from 2007 that doesn't actually have all that much in common with Dishonored, as cause for concern.

"I'm not a harsh critic of games," Antonov insisted. "I'm extremely happy of where technology has gone. But artists and art directors should make their own life a little bit harder by pushing management to take more artistic risks, and use the technology to a better, higher level. That's what I've been doing and suffering by - I've been spending as much time creating, as convincing the people who are financing games how important it is.

"We were always waiting for the next generation of great worlds or great graphics. Well, great graphics came; the worlds that came with these graphics are not up to the level of the graphics.

"Graphics used to be an excuse 10 years ago, that we can't make great worlds. Right now, we have a lot of New Yorks, we have a lot of war games. Please everybody," he pleaded, "let's do more science-fiction and more crazy worlds out there."

Antonov advises that developers stop trying to make games that are all things at once. "Now a game is trying to pack too many games - narration, music, contemplation, shooting - that they lose the experience." Instead, he suggests, developers should make more specialized games that pick one thing to do and do it well.

Read the rest of the article, which talks in-depth about the process behind Dishonored's city of Dunwall, at Eurogamer.

"It's been a poor, poor five years for fiction in the video game industry" [Eurogamer]

...well, yeah. You can't unsee it.

And I thought fast zombies were bad. Fast squirrel zombies with headcrabs on their chins that screamed as they crawled down post-apocalyptic trees would be about the worst thing ever.

Animal pictures of the week: 8 June 2012 [The Telegraph, thanks John!]

Artist Drew Northcott brings us "Vincent Van Gordon", a Van Gogh inspired portrait of everyone's favorite headcrab killing physicist.

According to Northcott, there might be character similarity between Freeman and Van Gogh. He adds, "There's certainly a physical resemblance anyhow." That's certainly better than Freeman mailing his ear to a prostitute.

Vincent Van Gordon - half life [Deviant Art via GameFreaks]

The website ValveTime has posted a gallery of concept art that their source claims are leaked pieces of concept art for Valve's much-anticipated (and super long-in-development) Half Life 2: Episode 3. (I should add that the art is from an anonymous visitor from an unnamed source. So, grains of salt in hand.)

The art is described as being from "circa 2008," meaning that if they're real, they are truly just concept drawings. However, a number of things about them—the fact that the helicopter from the end of Episode 2 turns up crashed, the arctic setting, which holds with past rumors of the game's setting, and the fact that a Combine advisor is shown, all indicate that these could well be legit.

And hey, even if they're fake, some of these are still quite lovely. To see the images at full resolution (along with a bunch more of 'em), head over to ValveTime's gallery.

It ain't news about Half Life 2: Episode 3 (much less Half Life 3), but it's something.

http://www.valvetime.net/threads/exclusive-half-life-2-episode-3-concept-art.206815/ [ValveTime via NeoGAF]

His finger-point introduction says "yes," but his fidgety shake of the crowbar says "yes, I will kill you now."

Henry The Worst [Tumblr]

The creators of Team Fortress 2 have hired their very own economist to help out with their various crazy hat-based projects.

Writing on his new blog over at Valve's website, newly-minted consultant Yanis Varoufakis discusses how he met with Valve chief Gabe Newell and put a deal together.

"Within hours, an agreement was reached: I would become, in some capacity (that was to be hammered out later), Valve's economist-in-residence," he writes.

"My intention at Valve, beyond performing a great deal of data mining, experimentation, and calibration of services provided to customers on the basis of such empirical findings, is to to go one step beyond; to forge narratives and empirical knowledge that (a) transcend the border separating the ‘real' from the digital economies, and (b) bring together lessons from the political economy of our gamers' economies and from studying Valve's very special (and fascinating) internal management structure."

And hats. Never forget hats.

IT ALL BEGAN WITH A STRANGE EMAIL [Valve]

In development for around eight years now, the fan-made remake of the original Half-Life, known as Black Mesa, is almost a punchline for the torment followers of the series as a whole are feeling at its lack of updates.

The developers of the project are still plugging away, though, and have this morning released a bunch of new screenshots for Black Mesa, reminding us all that it's still not out, and that it's still looking great.

Last we heard Black Mesa was going to be playable "soon-ish".

You may have seen this years ago, but since there's a good chance you haven't, here. See it now.

Last week's story on that awesome StarCraft statue outside Blizzard's French offices reminded us that the primary artist involved, Steve Wang, is no stranger to amazing video game craftsmanship.

Back in 2005, he made this stunning Half-Life headcrab, originally as a piece for his kid's Halloween costume, then later being adapted as a display piece.

I'm not sure what makes it so damn creepy. I think it's the veins. Urgh.

Steve Wang FX [MySpace]

It was almost four years ago that we first saw that incredible trailer for Black Mesa: Source, which looked like a full update of Valve's classic PC game Half-Life. It truly was incredible—hell, I rewatched that trailer just now and I still feel incredulous about it. It basically looks like the first game redone with the graphics, animations and visual effects of Half-Life 2.

I like Valve's official Half-Life: Source, but it sure doesn't look anything like what the folks behind Black Mesa: Source were showing.

That trailer, however, aired back in 2008. Since then, it's never quite been entirely clear the state of the project—and it certainly hasn't come out.

Over at Rock, Paper Shotgun, reporter/superhero alter-ego Nathan Grayson's got a great two-part interview with Carlos Montero, the project lead of Black Mesa: Source.

Talking with Montero at length, a picture begins to emerge: a picture of a talented team that perhaps bit off more than they could chew, overpromised early, and then realized that what they were attempting was much, much more difficult than they'd even guessed.

As Montero points out, Black Mesa: Source can't actually be a straight-up port, since that is illegal—instead, it's become a full-fledged remake, featuring over 2,000 custom models, 2,000 choreographed scenes and over 6,500 lines of dialogue, by Montero's reckoning.

"We have always wanted Black Mesa to be Valve-quality," Montero tells RPS. "Turns out that is very tough to do from every angle of development. Imagine that!"

I shudder to think of the challenges presented by doing this—it's like trying to recreate a symphony not just by transcribing and re-writing the parts, but by re-making every instrumental performance one by one. No, you know what? It's much, much harder than that. It's like doing a shot-for-shot remake of The Godfather, but first you have to build the cameras Coppola used from spare parts. Then, you have to build the actors in a lab.

Montero says that they made a mistake by overpromising early, by hyping people up with that incredible trailer. "If I could go back in time and prevent us from releasing the media and hyping up the public the way that we did," he says, "I would. In the end, all of that hurt us more than helped us."

He's quick to assure people, however, that they are still working on the project, and they haven't turned their back on anyone. They've just learned not to promise release dates or overhype their product. Here's Montero:

This hasn't been about polish for polish's sake; it's been about learning all there is to know about how to make great games, and using it to make a great game. There aren't any shortcuts there. We just had to learn by doing, by making mistakes, by screwing things up and starting them over again. Sometimes along the way we have learned things that fundamentally changed our way of thinking, and sometimes we have gone back and fundamentally changed parts of the game to reflect that.

So no, I don't think it is tempting to over-polish at all. We are all eager to get the game out. We are dying to get this game out and show everyone what we've been working on, but we aren't so eager that we would sacrifice our values and what we believe will make this game great. We aren't going to put out something that isn't good enough for us.

Hmm, that actually sounds a bit like another game developer I can think of… maybe Montero's team has more in common with Valve than even they know.

And when, pray, will this incredibly ambitious project finally come to some sort of playable fruition? Montero will only go so far as to say "soon-ish."

Hey, it's more than we've got to go on with Half-Life 3.

What ever happened to Black Mesa: Source, Part 1 and Part 2 [Rock, Paper Shotgun]

Black Mesa: Source [Official Page]