After using a Xen relay to slingshot itself across an interdimensional portal known as "the Internet," Black Mesa and its updates to Half-Life 1 continue to influence satellite mods that restore extended chunks of Gordon Freeman's tale. Next in line for Black-Mesa-fying: the Hazard Course, Gordon's optional and educational pit-stop for teaching movement and shooting basics.

Along with the standard face(granite?)-lift to the Hazard Course's bunker-like training areas and twisting pipes, the mod hopes to add a few new characters and areas for that extra bit of distraction as you eternally run late for that silly test chamber appointment. A notable planned addition is the tram station and the brief meeting with a few scientist overseers from the PlayStation 2 version of the game (here's a video), which is a rare opportunity to see one of the lab's normally stuffy pencil-pushers shirk procedure over a liability contract.

The mod just moved into its alpha stage after its team announced the first connection of all playable areas just yesterday. You can track the mod's progress over at Mod DB, and here's a few more screenshots showing off the completed work so far.

Now Black Mesa has fallen through a Source engine resonance cascade and out into the world, modders are piggy-backing off its upgraded assets to fill in the extended family of Gordon Freeman's original adventure. Black Mesa: Insecurity hopes to remake Gearbox's second expansion, Half-Life: Blue Shift, starring everybody's favourite beer-owing security guard Barney Rubble Calhoun.



"Overall what I hope to achieve is an experience similar to Black Mesa's in that the essence of what Blue Shift was remains intact while adding a major facelift and re-imagining to the rest," writes the mod's creator. He admits that this is a small project, being worked on during study breaks, but the team have already created a number of new models to go along with the repurposed Black Mesa files.

More screenshots below. The project's release is still "TBD," but yo can keep up to date with the latest work over at Insecurity's ModDB page.

It's been tested, it's been debated, and it's now available to all: Valve announces the official launch of the Steam Linux client after nearly four months in beta. Expectedly, a sale is going on for all Linux-supported games in Steam's catalog, including Crusader Kings II and Counter-Strike: Source.

The sale lasts until February 21 and takes 50 to 75 percent off the 54 games Linux users can slot into their brand new platform. Team Fortress 2 joins the revelry by automatically awarding a free and tradeable in-game Tux accessory for all Linux mercs jumping into the free-to-play shooter before May 1. Prepare for an avalanche of crates, Ubuntuans.

Grab the Steam Linux client and browse the full list of discounted titles on the sale page. Welcome to Steam, Linux gamers.

The Steam pages for Valve classics Half-Life and Counter-Strike have been updated with small, penguin-shaped icons. No, they aren't unsubtle emblems of a secret flightless waterfowl cabal, but they do signify newly added Linux support for both FPS games as part of Valve's compatibility push.

Valve recently released a Linux version of Steam and has since been retrofitting older games to run on the open-source OS. It's a neat affirmation of the company's goal to broaden the choices for PC gamers, but not everyone is convinced—id Software's John Carmack believes Linux is a useful tool but bad for business.

The faux movie poster that five minutes and Photoshop made.

Gabe Newell and director J.J. Abrams conversed on stage this morning at the D.I.C.E. (Design, Innovate, Communicate, Entertain) summit in Las Vegas. After a back-and-forth about player agency and storytelling (via Polygon's live blog), Newell revealed that the duo had been "recapitulating a series of conversations going on," and that they're now ready to "do more than talk": Newell suggested "either a Portal movie or a Half-Life movie," and Abrams said he'd like to make a game with Valve.

Abrams is the currently reigning king of big franchise sci-fi filmmaking, taking his throne in the director's chair of both the Star Trek and Star Wars series. He's also known for producing Fringe, Cloverfield, and the maddening tale that was Lost.

In 2010, Newell told us that if Valve were to make a Half-Life movie, it wouldn't hand over control to any Hollywood studio, saying:

"There was a whole bunch of meetings with people from Hollywood. Directors down there wanted to make a Half-Life movie and stuff, so they’d bring in a writer or some talent agency would bring in writers, and they would pitch us on their story. And their stories were just so bad. I mean, brutally, the worst. Not understanding what made the game a good game, or what made the property an interesting thing for people to be a fan of.

"That’s when we started saying 'Wow, the best thing we could ever do is to just not do this as a movie, or we’d have to make it ourselves.'"

There are no details on Newell and Abrams' project—be it game, film, or both—outside of the tease that they're talking. But they're talking, so how about some fun speculation? Who would you cast as Chell? Alyx Vance? Gordon Freeman? We love Bryan Cranston for the latter role, but he may have aged beyond Freeman. Is Hugh Laurie still a favorite?

Frankly, I'm not sure the Dragonball Z anime series appeals to everyone. It takes a special kind of patience to sit through half a season of two muscle-ridden warriors just taunting each other before commencing the clubbing. Thankfully, the upcoming Earth's Special Forces mod skips the drawl and cuts to the brawls between Goku, Vegeta, Frieza, and other characters from the show. The twist? Its stunning visuals are all built on Goldsource, the same engine used for Half-Life.

Earth's Special Forces isn't new. Its development team has worked on and released various alpha versions of the frenetic fighter for nearly a decade, but its not-so-New-Year's trailer shows off the most recent efforts of pushing the aged Goldsource engine to its absolute limit. Floored reactions are proof enough: "I absolutely cannot believe this is the Goldsource engine. Unbelievable," reads one comment on Reddit. "On what engine is this running? CryEngine 3?" asks another.

As for what you actually do in Earth's Special Forces, the mod's website explains it thus: "Select your favorite character and fly, power up, transform, melee, and beam your enemies into pulp. Each character is given signature moves and abilities to compliment different style of play. Some are stronger in hand-to-hand combat, others are better with energy attacks. Play in three different game modes: deathmatch, team deathmatch, and capture the Dragonballs."

Not many games offer a mode where you blow up half the planet while chasing after euphemistically named spheres, but Earth's Special Forces pulls it off in gorgeous style. You can grab an older and less-glossy alpha version here to check it out, though it carries significant bugs and non-working bots.

Black Mesa's overhaul of Gordon Freeman's educational field trip is a lovingly crafted tribute to the FPS classic, but it's still not entirely done. Although the team is working on the concluding Xen areas, certain earlier parts took cuts to stay on schedule. A notable example is the Surface Tension chapter which abruptly cuts off after a one-man assault on the dam section. Luckily, one gamer took it upon himself to design and restore missing levels with the Surface Tension Uncut mod.

Modder TextFAMGUY1's three levels cover Surface Tension's second half, including a tangle with a tank, flying alien manta ray things, and a lot more zappy noises. Like the majority of Black Mesa, the mod's level design incorporates new buildings and altered layouts while keeping the core pacing right on track with the 1998 original.

It's unknown if the Black Mesa team will go back at some point and release official updates to the shortened levels, but TextFAMGUY1's effort is here now, so head to Mod DB to download it, and keep an eye out for more of TextFAMGUY1's work—he's planning a retouch of the On a Rail chapter next.

Thanks, RPS.

Some 15 years ago, a little company called Valve was hard at work on a shooter you may have heard of called Half-Life. We came across this footage, courtesy of YouTuber MarphitimusBlackimus, peeling back the pan-dimensional curtain on the classic-to-be as it existed about a year before landing on store shelves.

Yeah, store shelves. Remember those? Good times...

From the entire room devoted solely to showing off colored lighting to the impressive (for the time) skeletal animations of the derp-faced MPs, it might be one of the most entertaining and intriguing nine minutes you watch today. So pop open a Surge, crank up some Hanson, and point your crosshairs down memory lane. Just watch out for the vortigaunts and... whatever that thing with a whole bunch of eyes for a face was called.

Face Off pits two gladiators against each other as they tackle gaming's most perplexing conundrums. This New Year's Eve edition is a chronological throw-down: which decade gave PC gaming the most? Podcast Producer Erik Belsaas says it was the '90s—the origin of modern PC gaming. Executive Editor Evan Lahti insists it was the '00s, with its speedy internet, better PCs, and shinier graphics engines.

Evan: The 1990s had the CD-ROM and the McRib sandwich. The ‘00s had Windows XP and two terrible Star Wars movies. I think the latter birthed better games: the Battlefield series, Crysis, Company of Heroes, BioShock, Dragon Age: Origins, Guild Wars, The Sims, Rome: Total War, Star Wars: KOTOR, and the best Civilization games happened then. What've you got, Erik?

Erik: Lucasarts, id, Ion Storm, Interplay, Blizzard: the iconic names that created franchises that we still discuss today. “RTS,” “FPS,” and “MMO” had no meaning before the pioneers of the '90s came along with some-thing other than sequels and rehashes: Baldur's Gate, Wolfenstein 3D, Duke Nukem 3D, MechWarrior, Unreal Tournament and every LucasArts adventure game from Sam & Max to Grim Fandango.

Evan: This is going to devolve into who can name-drop more game titles, isn't it?

Erik: Pretty much.

Evan: Cool. In that case, let’s put the best we've got on the page. What are the top three games from your decade? Mine: WoW, Counter-Strike, and Half-Life 2.

Erik: Just three? How about X-COM, Fallout, and The Secret of Monkey Island. Timeless classics that we still play today.

Evan: Is that the best that the decade that gave us the Spice Girls has got, grandpa? The innovations of the '00s will last far longer. Half-Life 2 wasn't just the basis for the way modern action games tell stories, it’s the technological foundation for the most ambitious mods we have today and the preferred canvas for machinima creators. World of Warcraft’s meteoric rise brought PC gaming into popular culture, ruined innumerable marriages, and earned its own South Park episode. Top that.

Erik:Your great games are all parts of established franchises that began in the '90s. For that matter, the original Counter-Strike mod came out in 1999, before Valve turned it into a retail product! Take away the names that began in the '90s, the '00s would've created very little of their own.

Evan: Megabyte for megabyte, I’d rather replay Half-Life 2 than its predecessor. Likewise for Diablo II, Warcraft III, Fallout 3 and other major franchises that began in the '90s but matured in the '00s. I really think that the tech of the '00s (better operating systems, fast internet, faster PCs) produced better gaming experiences. EVE Online couldn't exist in the '90s. Team Fortress 2's dozens of free content updates couldn't have streamed down our wimpy modems—the same goes for 25-man WoW raids or a heavily modded playthrough of Oblivion or Morrowind.

Erik: You've got a short memory. EverQuest allowed 72-man raids. And before Oblivion and Morrowind came Daggerfall, which was amazing and heavily modded. Doom, the father of modding, came out in '93.

Evan: I’ll play your game, Belsaas. Here's my ace: Deus Ex, our most favorite game ever, happened in 2000.

Erik: Deus Ex is a good game...but how about StarCraft? Has any other game absolutely defined its genre or rallied an entire nation behind it like a sport?



Evan: I was worried you’d play the Korea card. What can I counter that with? The 100-million-selling main-stream success of The Sims? The booming popularity of independent gaming? ...Peggle?

Erik: Peggle? Well I’ve got...you know...uh...Carmen Sandiego. Fine. Peggle wins.

"You can call it the Zero-Point Energy Field Manipulator if you really want to," Half-Life 2's Alyx Vance said as we were introduced to the Gravity Gun, one of the most memorable physics-twisting tools of PC gaming. Soon you'll be able to lug around your very own triumph of science: collectible manufacturing company NECA announced a 1:1 Gravity Gun replica available for purchase in spring 2013.

Though it misses this holiday shopping season by a few gluons, the model—still in an early prototype stage—looks like it'll tout just as much fine detail as NECA's Portal Gun. A pre-order form should be available soon, NECA said. We presume it won't take headcrab legs as currency.