Smissmas, the magical time of year when men with big guns, questionable morality, and an unusual commitment to a two-tone color scheme are given all-new, all-festive ways to inflict violence upon one another, has once again come to Team Fortress 2!. This year's magical event features a slew of new Festivizer weapons, 17 winter-themed community cosmetics, and—just in time for the holiday season—three new taunts. 

Apart from the new stuff, the holiday update will also make some improvements to Casual matches and autobalancing. At the end of Casual matches, players will now automatically be formed up into a new match with the same players and teams, and will be given the opportunity to vote on which map is played. A new autobalancing system will encourage players to switch sides when necessary by offering bonus XP to volunteer turncoats. 

And of course there will be stuff to buy in the Mann Co. Store, much of it on sale. It doesn't look to be the biggest Smissmas update of all time, but then again, as Valve says, giving people gifts can bite you in the ass. Maybe you should just be thankful for what you get. Speaking of which, you can get the details at teamfortress.com.

A reload is a seconds-long sideshow of watching ammo numbers go back up, a firearm equivalent of wiping the blood off a blade. Whether it’s the snappy accuracy of a mil-sim mag swap or feeding vomit balls to a living rocket launcher, reload animations are testament to the artistic prowess of personalizing a ubiquitous aspect of shooters. In alphabetical order, here’s some of the best reload animations on PC.

Battlefield 1 - Gewehr 98

Battlefield’s reloads mix function with form to spruce up each kit’s arsenal without straying too far into prolonged five-finger theatrics. The bolt-action rifles have satisfyingly crisp rechambering sequences, and it’s wonderful picking out DICE’s split-second touches on the older weapon design. The left hand of this Gewehr 98 sniper clamping over the rifle’s port to prevent an unspent bullet from flying out as he cycles the bolt to reload is a fine example. 

Battlefield 1 - Kolibri 

Behold the pee-wee Kolibri, the tiniest sidearm in a game filled with bulky, ancient MGs and hulking tanks. This novelty pistol has perhaps daintiest reload animation in gaming history. Swapping a magazine smaller than some caterpillars (the slight wiggle before the magazine enters its housing is a hilarious nudge) perfectly accompanies the sophistication of the pinky, ring, and middle fingers raised at maximum teacup clearance. 

Battlefield 4 - AK-12

Diverging from typical FPS fare of tilting the gun sideways for a clearer view of a reload, Battlefield 4’s AK-12 instead scores points for sticking with the realism of a trained military soldier dispensing with unnecessary movements. Note the forward-facing angle during the entire animation—this keeps the barrel’s business end pointed at the enemy—and the support hand curving beneath the grip to rack the charging handle and keep the firing hand near the trigger.

(gif via Jarek the Gaming Dragon)

Battlefield 4 - AN-94

 The AN-94 provides another AK-style reload with a much flashier “mag-pop” sequence that both seems terribly wasteful and oddly celebratory at the same time, almost as if it’s the gun version of sabering champagne.

(gif via Static Gaming)

Battlefield 4 - Unica 6

Catching one of DICE’s handful of easter-egg reload animations guarantees a double-take and that special feeling of accomplishment for triggering the fabled 1-in-10,000 probability. The Unica 6 secret reload is one of the earliest recorded from Battlefield’s community, and it holds a special place of honor for its ridiculous speedloader flick and follow-up cartridge comfort pat.

 (gif via Shimytangtang)

Battlefield Hardline - .410 Jury

Battlefield Hardline boasts plenty of hidden reload animations seemingly trying to upstage each other with increasing ridiculousness. Levitating an AK magazine with powerful criminal magic is impressive enough, but it’s hard to top the mesmerizing smoothness of the twirling .410 Jury and its gunslinger savant performing some extremity ballet.

(gif via Gibs O Matic)

BioShock - Grenade Launcher

Everyone’s favorite objectivist dystopia beneath the sea is a playground of art-deco architecture and hybrid steampunk weaponry—and then there’s the Grenade Launcher which looks like something the Home Alone kid slapped together in his garage. Its rough reload gives weight to its explosive power; you practically break the thing in half to shove in another coffee can’s worth of grenades into its metal gullet.

Borderlands 2 - Tediore

Borderlands 2's zillion guns follow a small pattern of reload animations based on each manufacturer. For Tediore, it involves chucking the entire gun like a slab of beef (with obligatory explosion) before generating a new one right in your hands. And yes, there’s entire character builds centered on throwing out as many Tediores as possible.

Call of Duty: Black Ops - G11

The few prototype guns found in Black Ops’ Cold War-era arsenal are a refreshing change from the cookie-cutter animations pasted across nearly every Call of Duty, and the G11 assault rifle nails that conceptual feeling best with its caseless rod reload and cocking handle crank that wouldn’t look out of place on a windup toy.

(gif via Undeath92)

Crysis 2

No single weapon in Crysis 2 sports an interesting reload, but each Nanosuit mode changes how Prophet rearms himself with suitably subtle animation changes. If you’re in power mode, you’ll slam in magazines with gusto and cock the handle with a firm grip. In stealth mode, you’ll more gingerly swap magazines and slowly bring back the handle so it makes less noise. Maximum context.

Counter-Strike 1.6 - M4

Surprising detail and nuance, for the time. The classic one-two of the open-palm mag-tap and fantastically inaccurate forward assist yank was a common occurrence when spectating a CT victory during those binge nights when homework was finished early.

Doom 2 - Super Shotgun

The only new weapon in Doom 2 was a powerhouse of a double-barrel shotgun with a big boom and a framey click-clack reload that’s music to a shooter grognard’s ears. You could've switched back to the original pump-action and saved some ammo, but you didn't.

Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon - Galleria 1991

Picking out a single example from Blood Dragon’s neon hallucination was almost as impossible as questioning Rex Colt’s sense of subtlety, but the Galleria 1991’s extra flair of casually tossing in shells is too excellent a combo to pass up.

Far Cry 4 - M-700

Carried from Far Cry 3 into the mountains of Kyrat, the M-700 is a plain but reliable sniper rifle favored for stealth-inclined players. Its reload is far more interesting with its abundant use of left-side screen space as the gun traverses across your monitor and back.

(gif via Jarek the Gaming Dragon)

Half-Life: Opposing Force - Spore Launcher

Shepherd’s logical action of picking up a baby of those creatures from another dimension trying to kill him gives us this Half-Life memento of an impromptu feeding session followed by—what else?—deadly vomit.

Killing Floor 2 - Dual 1858 Revolvers

The gun nuts at Tripwire earned their reputation as reload wizards from Red Orchestra’s authenticity, and Killing Floor 2’s high-fps, motion-captured animations are visual treats. The Gunslinger’s dual reloads pack so much refinement, the above GIF had to be slowed down to more easily observe the entire reload from start to finish. Nearly every other reload style is a blast to watch, a popular favorite being the smooth magazine retention for rifles and SMGs.

Max Payne 2

With enough kills chained during Bullet Time, Max whirls into a camera-orbiting move that’s less of a traditional reload and more of a sudden urge to pirouette his pain away. Still, it’s a stylish ode to Payne’s cinematographic influences, especially if you keep “Ave Maria” playing in your head the entire time.

Max Payne 3

Rockstar gleefully embellished Max’s gun-fu in his third killing spree, with the best animated touches emphasizing Max’s familiarity at juggling a small armory of guns. Reloading a one-handed gun while holding a two-handed weapon in the offhand is one of the best displays from the world-weary monologuer, as he tucks the bigger gun beneath his arm to free up his hand to change magazines.

Metro: Last Light - Shambler

The ramshackle design of Metro’s arsenal is already a pleasure to behold, but the Shambler shotgun’s revolver-style reload is one of the most unique of the series. The small toss between Artyom’s left and right hands as he feeds a shell into each clamp is a dash of detail and personality. 

(gif via Arbybear)

Overwatch - Torbjörn's Rivet Gun

Blizzard’s penchant for polish is on display in Overwatch’s reloads. Most of the cast would be right at home in this gallery, such as Torbjorn’s screen-spanning scrap refill, the only time I can think of molten liquid being poured into a gun.

PlanetSide 2 - Commissioner

The powerful Commissioner revolver is a trusty companion in PlanetSide 2’s massive warzones, and its split cylinder reload and automated spin bring that subsequent thrill of badassery after some bullseye frags.

Postal 2 - Beta Shotgun

The well-known video of Postal Dude elegantly shoving a fistful of shells into his awaiting shotgun embodies creative reload animations dispensing with silly real-world rules such as gravity and jams. The animation’s absurdity is even better experienced firsthand in the thick of Postal 2’s chaos, so definitely grab either the Paradise Lost DLC or the Eternal Damnation mod to see it for yourself.

Resident Evil 4 - Broken Butterfly

Console players have long recognized Leon Kennedy’s reloads in Resident Evil 4 as those of an expert zombie slayer, and the 2007 PC port brought his expertise into sharper detail. The Broken Butterfly revolver is a top pick; Leon’s nonchalant no-eyes-needed head tilt as he dumps out the cartridges and the almost lazy-looking single-bullet toss into the cylinder are just pure awesome. 

(gif via Hi-Res Reset)

Rise of the Triad - Dual Pistols

The challenge of animating an elaborate akimbo reload is smartly executed in Rise of the Triad, a fantastic world where air resistance is a myth and wrist strength reaches mutant levels.

Shadow Warrior 2 - Springchester

A lever-action flip might be passé by now, but Shadow Warrior 2’s Springchester exaggerates the pull-flip sequence so strongly that it's a wonder Wang isn't ducking for cover on the backswing. 

(gif via PC Gaming Videos)

Squad - M4

With all the arsenal acrobatics, it's nice to sometimes plug some realism back into restoring ammo to a weapon. This M4 reload from Squad reinforces the no-frills approach and the professionalism of the soldiers you play as therein, particularly with the confident-looking hand movements and double-check of the ejection port for a clean mag transition.

Titanfall 2 - 40mm Cannon

The Titans of Titanfall 2 are massive robots shooting equally massive guns, but their reloads pleasingly mirror human hand movements at a bigger scale. I love the small gears spinning open the ammo box housing and the slight jiggle of the barrel cover responding to the charge handle slamming forward.

Some of the best games I've ever played aren't games at all. That is to say: some of my fondest gaming memories have come courtesy of total conversion mods—modifications which take some of the best and most well-known classics and radically transform them into new and exciting things. I imagine most of you will have played at least one total conversion at some point in your gaming careers, but Chris' list of the best total conversion mods ever gathers a large number of my own favourites and may point some of you towards mods you haven't yet played. 

The benefits of total conversion mods are probably pretty obvious. First and foremost, they extend the time spent wandering our favourite game worlds; and quite often offer players the chance to visit new realms and arenas tied to the games in question. These scenarios tend to be dreamt up by hobbyist modders—people who, like you, are fans of the relevant series. The best total conversions therefore portray likely circumstances and credible characters which complement their source material. 

What I love most about total conversion mods is tied to that last part. As hobbyists, the folk behind these projects create them for free—at times designing worlds similar in scope and size to big budget games, fitting development time around full-time employment among other real life distractions. Many have went on to earn cash from their endeavours eventually, but the vast majority of developers start out driven by passion alone. Over the years I've chatted to a few of the devs responsible for some of my favourite total conversions and it's their stories which have been among the most interesting I've ever heard. 

Minh Le is a name some of you will know well. Le, who otherwise goes by the pseudonym Gooseman, is a freelance programmer, modeller and designer for Facepunch Studios' open-world survival game Rust—however also co-founded the one-time Half-Life mod Counter-Strike with Jesse Cliffe in 1999. 

As I'm sure most of you are aware, Counter-Strike has gone onto become pretty popular, however it wasn't until last year that I discovered Le and Cliffe spent the first three years of their respective Valve careers without actually meeting in person. When Valve approached the duo about acquiring the mod they'd crafted using the original Half-Life GoldSource engine, Le moved from Canada to Valve's Seattle HQ while Cliffe spent the next few years finishing school. It was only after this time that Le and Cliffe were ever in the same room together. 

Valve's GoldSource engine and its Half-Life 2 Source engine have been responsible for a number of other total conversion success stories. Garry's Mod celebrates ten years on Steam this year and has seen its community grow exponentially—not to mention its multitude of user-made game modes—in that time. Unlike Counter-Strike's more focused beginnings, Garry Newman designed the sandbox game which would eventually allow him to take up game development full-time as a result of messing around with the Source engine and a desire to see how far he could push it. 

Newman learned coding on the job and in a chat earlier this year told me that without Source Control pre-release, GMod game crashes meant he was forced to bin all previous work and start the entire game from scratch every time he encountered bug-related problems. Further crashes meant repeating this process and then hoping for the best in the next run.

Other total conversion stories of intrigue include Sven Co-op, another Half-Life mod which, although created in 1999, was continually developed and iterated on before finding its way onto Steam for free earlier this year. The prolific and super efficient work of Elder Scrolls enthusiasts and hobbyist modders SureAI has seen the likes of Nehrim and Enderal come to be—both hugely impressive Oblivion and Skyrim mods which are arguably as good, or at least equally as ambitious, as their source material. 

XCOM: Enemy Unknown's ultra-challenging Long War total conversion mod is another of my own personal favourites about which creator John Lumpkin told me back in July: “Last September, I went to the Firaxis offices when they were in the fairly late stages of polishing XCOM 2. I met Jake Solomon there and showed him what XCOM: Enemy Unknown modding looked like. He wondered aloud if I had closets full of chains and leather.”    

He doesn't, it turns out, but Lumpkin's story—not to mention those touched upon above—is but one of thousands of interesting anecdotes behind some of the most outstanding mods-cum-games I've ever played. Furthermore, the dedicated communities these mods have inspired make the mods themselves even more inspiring in my book. Again, Chris' 'best of' list is well worth checking out, and I'd love for you to share your own favourite total conversion stories in the comments below. 

Counter-Strike: Classic Offensive is a remake of Counter-Strike being made inside a remake of Counter-Strike.

Yesterday the modder Z00L released a launch trailer for his curious mod, a project that aims to reproduce the look and feel of the original Counter-Strike (version '1.6' as it's more colloquially known) inside CS:GO. "The main goal of the mod is to get the gameplay from 1.6 right into CS:GO including weapons, sounds, movement, all the old stuff you've dreamed to see in CS:GO," he writes on ModDB. "As you can see, I'm pretty near."

The mod is built within CS:GO's version of Source, and it'll require CS:GO to play. At launch, planned December 25, Z00L says that retro versions of Dust2, Italy, Mirage and Inferno will be playable. Each of these maps exist in the current version of CS:GO, of course, but they've since been aesthetically and structurally reimagined in small or significant ways. 

As stated in August, Z00L's goals with the project are to make weapons that behave similarly to 1.6, remove 'GO'-specific guns, replace all sounds, and remove skins. He also outlines what he is not able to do as a result of the engine:

• Wallbangs as in 1.6 (even if I change it it won't penetrate more than 32units)
• Remake the crouching jumping bug (no I won't edit the dlls)
• Playermodel selection (a plugin could fix that though)
• See inside smoke particles (the game don't draw the world when inside, so nope..)
• Bring back the tactical shield
• Change flashes, smoke time, nade physics
• Add buying ammo

So although the project is appetizing to folks like me who grew up playing 1.6 in internet cafes, it does seem to be operating under some fundamental constraints that might make it impossible to include certain movement quirks and 'desirable' map bugs what were buffed out over Counter-Strike's different iterations. It's hard to tell from the in-game trailer exactly how well Classic Offensive captures the movement and weapon feel of old CS, but to my eyes it resembles the higher-fi Counter-Strike: Source more than anything. I guess that isn't unsurprising, considering it's the link between 1.6 and GO.

Which version of Counter-Strike was the best, the most pure, or the most tactically interesting remains a hotly debated topic by FPS players. For the year following its release in 2012, CS:GO wasn’t even the most popular version of Counter-Strike—some players were still actively arguing the merits of GO against its thirteen- and nine-year-old predecessors.

Left 4 Dead developer Turtle Rock Studios has released its final, unfinished campaign for the zombie shooter, and you can play it right now. All you need is Left 4 Dead and an internet connection to download the files.

Co-founder Chris Ashton posted a link to the campaign on the Turtle Rock forums, saying that the studio had "just finished putting the Dam campaign ... into a L4D add-on."

"It's gray box, and some code features are missing, but it's playable from beginning to end," he wrote. "It also includes two standalone survival maps that never shipped."

You can download the Dam It campaign here. There are two ways to install the addon, with the "automatic" way consisting of unzipping the .vpk file and double clicking it to launch. The "manual" way, on the other hand, requires you to unzip the same file and copy it over to Left 4 Dead's "addons" folder.

The add-on's page says, "Dam It stitches Dead Air and Blood Harvest together." However, because it's an add-on, code changes are not included. This results in a number of issues, including explosions not triggering panic events in the hangars, zombies not crawling consistently in the orchard, and the covered bridge not collapsing with explosions. In addition to the full issue list, you can see a map of the campaign on Dam It's webpage.

Turtle Rock was recently taken off of development of 2K's monster-hunting shooter Evolve. Despite its ceased development, its servers could still stay active, as long as 2K wants to keep them up.

"[Keeping servers up will] all be up to 2K on out, the same as anything Left 4 Dead related is in Valve's hands," Ashton wrote to a fan on Turtle Rock's forums.

It's been over ten years since the Half-Life series last showed life, with the shocking conclusion of Half-Life 2: Episode Two. And surely, we thought, Valve wouldn't leave such a stunning cliffhanger untended for long. Surely, that heart-wrenching finale meant that Valve had a proper finish already cooked up, and the infamously long Valve-time waits between games would be a thing of the past. Surely.

The decade since has not resulted in Episode 3 or a proper Half-Life 3. But much has happened: through both official channels and clever hoaxes, our hopes have been raised up and then dashed on the rocks, again and again. The most recent information comes from a 2017 Reddit AMA with Gabe Newell and some major revelations from an interview with ex-Valve writer Marc Laidlaw.

Here's every Half-Life 3 hoax, rumor, and leak we've collected.

May 2006 – Confirmed 

The fun begins not with a hoax, but an actual, official announcement: Half-Life 2: Episode 3, in time for Christmas 2007! There was even talk of Episode Four! Because sure, why not? Gabe Newell said episodic releases would be "pretty frequent," ideally spaced out by six to eights months. By my calculations, that means we're just about due for Half-Life 2 Episode 16.

January 2008 - The faking begins

Half-life 3 fakes started pretty much as soon as The Orange Box was out the door. Just a few months later, this screenshot began circulating. It was obviously a fake, but it was a sign of things to come: the years of hoaxes, leaks, rumors, and wishful thinking that led to this article today.

October 2008 - Two million copies?

Just as things were getting into full gear for the 2008 holiday season, Valve's Doug Lombardi told Videogames Daily that Valve "may [show Episode 3] at the very end of the year." Emphasis on "may," obviously, as Valve ultimately had nothing to say. He also expressed worry about over-committing to Half-Life 3, saying that if the studio got too deep into it, "We have to sell two million copies or else we're fucked." Two million copies, you say? I suppose that seemed like a lot back then.

July 2010 – The blob shake

Half-Life 3 references are found in the Alien Swarm SDK, in object properties like "Ep3 Blob Shake Position," "Ep 3 Fire Cover Position," and "Ep 3 Blob Brain Cover Position." It obviously wasn't proof of anything, but we were so hungry for a new Half-Life by this point that it was taken as rock-solid evidence that Gordo and co. would be making their return any day now.

May 2011 – Bad advice

"Combine Advisor Roaming" code is found in the Portal 2 SDK. Advisors had previously appeared in Half-Life 2, primarily in Episode Two, but that particular slice of code was not in the Episode Two SDK. It was new! And then Valve removed it! Clearly there was something to hide, although by now probably everyone involved has forgotten what it was.

July 2011 – A small, strange room 

A brief, very strange video clip containing a hex string led to the discovery of a small Half-Life 2 map on Megaupload. Hidden in the tiny, decrepit room is a heavily distorted image of a face and an audio file that, when fed into a spectrograph, revealed... well, not a hell of a lot of anything, really. The Half-Life connection at that point was pretty thin but that's the conclusion everyone jumped to because we were all so desperate for some crumb of hope, and it did have the distinct look of an ARG in its early stages. Alas, Valve kiboshed the idea in short order, and that was that.

 December 2011 – T-shirt guy 

Some guy, who some other guy said works at Valve, wore a Half-Life 3 t-shirt to a "local game development event." The wearer of said shirt was cool with having a photo of the shirt taken, although not his face, which is perhaps telling although whether it's telling us that the over-sharing Valve employee wanted to keep his identity on the downlow, or that he was just some rando who dropped a fiver at a t-shirt shop, is impossible to say.

December 2011 – Wheatley gets involved

Valve whipped up a video for the 2011 VGAs featuring Wheatley of Portal 2 fame, complete with Stephen Merchant's voice, and also some science-y looking guffola in the background. Among it was a spot of Russian text which translates in part to "Lanthanum," derived from the ancient Greek "lanthanein," meaning "to lie hidden," and written, " ." That first character look familiar to anyone? Sadly, Wheatley didn't win his award, and we still don't have the game.

 December 2011 – Black Aperture 

The last month of 2011 was a big one for Half-Life 3. A couple of weeks after t-shirt guy made his appearance, a mysterious site appeared at black-aperture.com bearing a very similar logo, along with branding for Valve, Steam, and the Source engine. Alas, the hoax effort didn't even stand up to the cursory inspection of a domain whois check, but it's to the credit of the owner that the site is still up, now bearing a blurry ".../3" image.

April 2012 – P-powered

Proving that simple is sometimes best, an April Fool joker caused millions of fans to momentarily go nuts when he posted a Half-Life 3: Now Available image at store.steamppowered.com. (The URL now leads to a potential phishing site, so we've disabled it.) Some legitimate news sites fell for it, so excited were they by the prospect of Half-Life 3 being honest-to-God real that they failed to notice the extra "p" in the URL. The site remains up to this very day, although it's now tagged with a notice that it is in fact an April Fool's joke.

April 2012 - Ricochet, too?

Valve honcho Gabe Newell confused everyone when he discussed the development of Episode 3 in the context of Ricochet 2, the hypothetical sequel to the Valve-developed battle frisbee game.

"We'd like to be super-transparent about the future of Ricochet 2," he said, "but the problem is that the twists and turns that we're going through would probably drive people more crazy than being silent about it until we can be very crisp about what's happening." I can't say that I'm really with you on that one, Gabe, at least not here in the year 2016. The good news, Newell added, is that "everyone who's working on Ricochet 2 continues to work on Ricochet 2."

And so now we sometimes refer to Half-Life 3 as Ricochet 2, and may forever.

June 2012 - Concept art slips out

This leak came to us through the bad luck of artist Andrea Wicklund, whose Picasa portfolio ended up spilling concept art all over the net. Images included Alyx in various get-ups, a crashed helicopter in the Arctic, and pictures of the alien world Xen. Interestingly, while the art was dated from 2008, it didn't slip out until mid-2012.

August 2012 – No responsibility is taken

The 2012 edition of Gamescom promised to be an exciting one: Games scheduled for exhibit that year included Dragon Age 3 and Half-Life 3! Before we could line up for plane tickets to Germany, though, a correction was issued. Eurogamer asked three separate times why the titles had been listed, but Gamescom would only say that it was "a mistake."

June 2013 – Jira leak, stage one 

Data from Valve's project tracking tool (Jira) leaked to the public, revealing that 42 people are attached to a Half-Life 3 mailing list. Obviously, there was no way to verify that the leak was real, and even if it was, determining the age or status of the mailing list in question was impossible too. Maybe 42 people were working on Half-Life 3, or maybe 42 people are just too damn lazy to unsubscribe from the list. (I don't judge. I have two Felix the Fish plushies, because it was easier to let Big Fish Games sock my credit card for 7 bucks a month than to figure out how to make it stop.)

June 2013 – It was just a joke, we swear

A motley crew of yuksters manages to "accidentally" convince people that Half-Life 3 is in development in a segregated section of Valve's studios, and that a reveal of the project was finally imminent in the pages of their own magazine, no less! Which gang of comedy doofuses cooked this one up, you wonder? I cannot tell a lie: It was us (but it was meant to be an obvious joke, not a hoax).

August 2013 - The pen is mightier

A Steam dev posted an announcement of the beginning of a Half-Life 3 internal beta on the community announcements page. Real developer, real community post but fake announcement, as a close look at the list of updates makes clear. The dev in question quickly copped to it, saying he didn't "expect it to show up everywhere." Because when has that ever happened before, right?

August 2013 – Mr. Overwatch causes a stir 

John Patrick Lowrie, voice of Odessa Cubbage and husband of Combine Overwatch and GlaDOS voice actor Ellen McLain, caused a stir when he explained that Half-Life 3 wasn't moving forward because of challenges with motion capture which of course implied that he had some insight into the situation. He even said that overcoming mo-cap limitations was "one of the things they're working on," meaning that it was gasp! being worked on. Progress! Except, four days later he took it all back, saying that he doesn't know nothin' about nothin', and nobody can prove otherwise.

September 2013 – Jira, part deux 

Jira leaks again! This time there was a new "Half-Life 3 Core" group listed, and the number of people on the project had grown, too. That's practically an official announcement, right?

October 2013 – European trademark 

A trademark filing for Half-Life 3, owned by Valve, appeared in Europe. Trademark filings are a great way to get an early heads-up on new game projects: Deus Ex: Mankind Divided and Gwent are two high-profile examples of games that came to light first as a result of a trademark filing. Half-Life 3 trademarked? Half-Life 3 confirmed!

October 2013, one week later – European disappointment 

Half-Life 3 de-confirmed. Fake filing. Why does this keep happening?

May 2014 – Minh Le has seen things 

Counter-Strike mastermind Minh Le told goRGNtv that he'd seen Half-Life 3 concept art, and the game is in fact being worked on! Sort of, anyway. More precisely, he said he saw something "that looked kinda like in the Half-Life universe," although he seemed surprised that anyone would be interested in such a thing. It also wasn't clear when he'd seen the material in question, since he'd left Valve several years prior to the interview. He was also clearly far more interested in Left 4 Dead 3 than anything to do with Half-Life. Thanks for nothing, Minh.

October 2014 – A bad idea 

The "We Want Half-Life 3" Indiegogo campaign wasn't a Half-Life 3 hoax or broken promise, just a monumentally bad idea. Basically, a couple of advertising types decided to crowdfund a harassment campaign to let Valve know that people really want them to make Half-Life 3. You know, in case that wasn't clear. They asked for $150,000 for their campaign (which, in their defense, they later clarified was meant to be a one-day lark rather than concerted stalking); they closed with a little shy of $1600.

June 2015 – Another fake site 

Sweet Aunt Petunia, a Half-Life 3 logo actually appeared on the Valve.Software website. Unfortunately, that site is not actually related to Valve Software, but for a few delicious hours (or minutes, depending on when you heard about it and how innately suspicious you are of such things) we could let ourselves believe that the light was finally shining. The site is still up and the HL3 logo still there, but the fine print makes it clear that it is "just a joke site." Half-Life 3 hoaxes are no joking matter, Timmy.

October 2015 – Dota 2 discovery 

A file named hl3.txt was found in a Dota 2 update, containing references to "Combine Pulse Ceiling Turret" and "NPCs that are in the same squad (i.e. have matching squad names) will share information about enemies, and will take turns attacking and covering each other." That's straight out of a Combine soldier AI script, but what's with the hl3 filename? Valve maintained its usual stony silence, but I think it's worth noting that a year later, Gordon Freeman still hasn't appeared in Dota 2. That has to mean something.

Jan 2016 – Confusion on Reddit 

Drama in r/HalfLife, billed as "possibly the first legitimate Half-Life 3 leak." What's interesting about this one is that as far as I can tell, nobody is entirely, 100 percent certain that it was a hoax. The information provided was deep, detailed, and not at all flashy in the way of most other gag teases, and its veracity was backed, in ways he couldn't or wouldn't make clear, by the forum mod. Eventually, the whole thing just fizzled out, without the usual "lol suckers" flourish at the end, which could be seen as further "proof" that the leak was real. But probably not.

 February 2016 – Virtual teasing 

The innocuous-sounding SteamVR Performance Test software, an app intended to determine whether or not your rig is up to the strains of virtual reality, is found to contain some Half-Life secrets in its code, including a high-quality 3D model of Dog, the super-strong, ball-fetching robot from Half-Life 2. Half-Life 3: The VR Experience, perhaps? Not likely: The software contained material from other Valve games too, including Left 4 Dead and Dota 2, and writer Chet Faliszek was quite clear on the point when asked about it last year. (He said "No.")

August 2016 – Gamescomedy 

Right there, large as life and side-by-side with Titanfall 2, was a poster proclaiming, plainly and boldly, Half-Life 3! And some fine print underneath, which might have been missed at first because the poster said Half-Life 3! Except it was actually Half-Life: 3, as in, "Half-Life: 3 editors who played it back then." It's not so much a hoax as a lazy gag, but we all spasmed reflexively and so it gets the credit.

And that brings us to today, at least until the next joke, leak, hoax, apparent ARG, or off-hand comment. We give it at least 24 hours before that happens.

January 2017 – We never promised you a rose, Gordon 

"There is no such thing as Half-Life 3," an anonymous Valve developer tells Game Informer. "Valve has never announced a Half-Life 3. The closest they’ve come is after Half-Life 2, they said there would be three episodes. We only got two of those. That is arguably an unfulfilled promise. Anything else that we might think about as a full game or sequel has never been promised."

In other words, who ever said you were getting Half-Life 3 in the first place?

January 2017 – Ask no questions, hear no lies 

Valve top banana Gabe Newell takes part in an AMA in which he acknowledges the existence of questions about Half-Life 3. When asked about the status of HL3 or Half-Life 2 Episode 3, he says, "The number 3 must not be said." And all those rumors that just won't go away? "I personally believe all unidentified anonymous sources on the internet."

February 2017 – Kids will be kids 

Newell lays the blame for some of the persistence of Half-Life 3 rumors at the feet of Valve employees, who he says get a kick out of messing with people—although he's above such things himself, of course. "Some of the more childish members of our company have worn Half-Life 3 t-shirts to GDC," he says (via VentureBeat). The appearance of an HL3 icon in a photo of a monitor at Valve was, Newell adds, was "news to us."

(Click the upper right corner to enlarge the image above, and squint at the icon above the recycle bin on the monitor.)

July 2017 – "I have no interest in going back." 

Half-Life and Half-Life 2 writer Marc Laidlaw, who left Valve in January, tells Arcade Attack that he has no idea if Half-Life 3 will ever see the light of day, and doesn't much care anyway. "I had ideas for Episode 3. They were all supposed to take the series to a point where I could step away from it and leave it to the next generation," he said.

And even if it is released someday, he doesn't think it will actually bring with it any sort of proper resolution: "My intention was that Ep3 would simply tie up the plot threads that were particular to HL2. But it would still end like HL1 and HL2, with Gordon in an indeterminate space, on hold, waiting for the next game to begin. So one cliffhanger after another."

August 2017 – Gertrude Fremont gets involved 

This one also comes courtesy of Mr. Laidlaw, who shares what is apparently a twisted-up synopsis of Half-Life 3 on his blog. Eli Vance is confirmed dead, Dr. Mossman tracks down the Borealis, Gordon and Alyx travel to Antarctica to handle the situation, and of course the plan falls completely apart before it even begins. What's especially interesting about the story is that it's basically "gender-swapped fan fiction," as we called it: Male characters are female and vice-versa, names are changed up slightly, but remain close enough to the originals to be recognizable by fans.

Assuming Laidlaw didn't make the whole thing up to mess with people (as Valve employees like to do, remember), Half-Life 3 would end with Alyx Vance murdering Dr. Mossman, after which the G-Man takes her away in place of Gordon; Gordon escapes his seeming inevitable doom with the help of the Vortigaunts, and by all appearances his role in the series is over, as Laidlaw had intended. How much validity there is to Laidlaw's tale is impossible to judge, but it does have one thing going for it: You can play (kinda, sorta) play it. 

November 2019 – Half-Life the third 

It isn't exactly Half-Life 3, but Valve has just announced a prequel to the series called Half-Life: Alyx coming in March 2020. You'll be able to play it with any PC-based VR headset when it releases. Although it doesn't actually have a "3" in the title, this is very much a third Half-Life game, clocking in at a similar playtime to Half-Life 2. It is reportedly the biggest team of developers that Valve has ever had working on a single game. Check the link above for all the other details on the prequel.

In a followup interview, The Verge asked designer David Speyrer if this was a full return to Half-Life and if we could expect more games in the series now that Valve has finally brought it out of stasis. "It’s probably no surprise that many people at Valve have been wanting to get back to the Half-Life universe for a long time," Speyrer said, "and this experience has only reinforced that." He elaborates, explaining that Valve has explored new ways to tell stories in the Half-Life world and new gameplay experiences it can create for players.

"Of course, we’ll have to wait and see how people react to Half-Life: Alyx once it’s out, but we’d love to continue pushing forward," Speyrer said.

People celebrate Halloween in different ways. Some dress up as their favourite character, some turn their houses into haunted dwellings, and some light firecrackers and scare my dog. For modder Yogensia, however, Halloween is a time to celebrate by creating iconic horror movie weapons for use in Left 4 Dead 2.

Since starting four years ago, the talented creator has made more than 40 weapon mods for Left 4 Dead 2, which include a candy cane shotgun, Harley Quinn's Suicide Squad bat, and a Rickenbacker 4001 bass guitar. This Halloween, he modeled and textured the The Shining's iconic axe and the machete of Friday the 13th's Jasoon Voorhees, which was a collaboration between him, Rafael De Jongh, Maksymilian Genewicz, and Renato Carvalho. Yogensia told me that while he's done with the Halloween-specific creations for this year, he still has a few projects in the works.

"I still enjoy the idea of adding new [mods]," he said. "It's all about finding something that piques my interest and matches my skills, then finding free time to work on it.

"I'll most likely work on Negan's baseball bat 'Lucille' from The Walking Dead in the next few weeks."

The work Yogensia puts into each mod can take anywhere between a few hours to several weeks depending on how ambitious the project is. He tells me that the "workflow is not set in stone," and that every modder has a different way of doing things. His method starts with him modelling a high-polygon version of the featured weapon, making sure to focus on as much detail as possible.

"After that, I simplify the model to make it low-poly and usable in games, making sure the general shape still looks relatively good," he continued. "Then I do a process called 'Baking,' which transfers the details of the high-poly model to the low-poly one as textures.

"This makes the low-poly look almost as good as the high-poly from a normal viewing distance. Then I start texturing the low-poly model, and finally I convert the model to the game's format, make sure it works properly, and upload it."

Before actually modelling and creating the weapons, Yogensia says he spends a lot of time doing research and looking at pictures for reference. He tends to stick to shots from the movie itself since "Google searches tend to show a lot of cosplay props or replicas with missing details and inaccuracies."

"Axes and machetes are relatively simple, but sometimes you just want to be sure you aren't missing any small details," he explained.

Of all the iconic weapons created by masters of design and armory, Yogensia singled out the M41A Pulse Rifle from Aliens as his white whale. He's worked on a model of it for the last couple of years, taking his time and care to make sure it's as accurate as possible.

"Sci-fi rifles are, of course, more complicated than melee weapons, and if I ever release an Aliens-related mod, I'd like it to be up to the standards of the first two movies," he said.

You can check out Yogensia's work on his website and the Steam Workshop.

In the original Half-Life, as Gordon Freeman makes his way to work on that fateful day in the Black Mesa Research Facility, you find a break room. A scientist sits at a table drinking from a coffee cup, and another paces the room. Then you see it. A microwave with a container of some unidentifiable food within, begging to be interacted with. There s no button prompt on the screen telling you to do so, but you just know that if you press the use key next to it something will happen. Something incredible. Something messy.

So you press it, and it beeps. Nothing. You press it again, and this time it beeps at a slightly higher pitch. A clue that you should keep pulling this thread, even though it looks like nothing is going to happen. So you hammer the use key until, suddenly, the dish explodes. The microwave is covered in yellow gunk and the pacing scientist rushes over. My God! he exclaims. What are you doing? He sadly observes the mess you ve made, but Freeman says nothing. You walk away, no apology, no remorse. Classic Gordon.

Valve knows what we re like. If we see something, we re going to try and interact with it. Doubly so if it looks like it was never meant to be interacted with, or if it s out of reach. And it s great that games like Half-Life reward this very human curiosity. There are few things in videogames more satisfying than hitting the use key next to some prop, and something happening in response. When it doesn t, it s always a disappointment. It makes the game world feel somehow more lifeless, more artificial. Like you re in some kind of cardboard film set rather than a real place. If I ever move near a hand dryer in a videogame bathroom and it doesn t roar into life, my immersion shatters into a thousand twinkling pieces.

I feel for the developers, though. They have to dedicate time and resources to modelling, texturing, animating, and creating sound effects for the most mundane objects. But it s work that s always appreciated. In the latest Deus Ex game, Mankind Divided, Adam Jensen s apartment is a funhouse of stuff to switch on and mess with, from the flushing toilet to the washer and dryer that start rumbling when you power them on. Eidos Montreal didn t have to do any of this stuff, but it makes all the difference that they did.

Flushing toilets, incidentally, have become the go-to test of a game s interactivity. There are even websites cataloguing all the games that feature them. Because it s the internet, and of course there are. Be honest: the first time you encounter a toilet in a game, you try to flush it. You probably even do it without thinking, instinctively hitting the use button when you re near one. And if nothing happens, and you don t hear that familiar rush of water, you wonder if the game s even worth your precious time.

In the years since Half-Life was released, the exploding microwave is still perhaps the best example of this kind of interaction. But there are others. Human Head s 2006 shooter Prey opens in a brilliantly interactive bar, boasting a TV with channels you can switch, playable gambling and arcade machines, and a jukebox with tracks by Judas Priest, Blue Oyster Cult and other classic rock groups. It s completely unnecessary, and doesn t reflect the rest of the game, but it speaks volumes that people still mention it now. In fact, I can t really remember anything about Prey except the bar scene.

Some games even make a feature out of switching things on. In Hitman, turning a radio on or getting a sink to overflow is a frequently invaluable way to lure a guard away from his post. But often you need a certain item to turn said thing on, such as a wrench or a screwdriver. IO Interactive has cleverly looked at how people love interacting with objects in games and designed a system around it.

Environment artists are doing incredible work these days, giving you increasingly detailed, atmospheric worlds to exist in. But no matter how complex the geometry is, how high-res the textures are, and how gorgeous the skybox is, it won t matter if we approach that toilet, press the use key, and it doesn t flush. As games get more expensive to develop and assets get more time consuming to make, I hope developers never forget that, above all, people just love turning things on. The toilet must always flush.

Hero shooters are the latest gaming trend, team-based competitive multiplayer shooters featuring objective-driven game modes and large casts of colorfully designed characters sporting fantastical weapons and abilities. That s a serviceable but still somewhat shortsighted definition. The hero shooters we have today already cover a range of styles and goals. They re all shooters, so we see a lot of overlap in how they actually play, but each one approaches things differently and has something distinct at its core.

Basically, hero shooters are like the Powerpuff Girls, so let s talk Chemical X.

We ll start with Blizzard s Overwatch, seeing as how it has become the poster child for the genre. Overwatch is popular for many reasons, but primarily because of its heroes and their diverse playstyles and personalities. Game director Jeff Kaplan said it best when we spoke with him at BlizzCon 2015: the heroes are the content of the game.

More than any other hero shooter, Overwatch puts individual heroes first, not overarching classes. This wasn t always the case, though. In an April interview with GameSpot, Kaplan said the Overwatch team started with a class-first perspective. It was lead hero designer Geoff Goodman who eventually proposed making as many classes as we could come up with and simply turning them into highly specialized heroes.

Overwatch heroes are roughly grouped into four classes, but hero-specific strengths are stressed more than in, say, Team Fortress 2. In Overwatch, you pick a hero based on who your team needs and who the situation calls for, whereas in TF2 you have more room to choose a class based solely on how you like to play, illustrating the subtle difference between team-based and class-based gameplay. A skilled Heavy can fill several roles and always be useful, but you can only do so many things with Roadhog or Reinhardt, which brings us to hero switching.

Instead of making individual heroes more flexible, Overwatch made all hero switching available on the fly. You can choose from several suitable heroes in any situation, but you can t take the same approach with all of them, at least not effectively. Reaper and Tracer, for example, are both offense heroes who can make short work of enemies, but they play very differently and have different counters.

This creates the type of rock-paper-scissors meta we see in MOBAs like Heroes of the Storm, which is a noticeable influence on the way Overwatch heroes interact, both as allies and as enemies. There s also a bit of fighting game spirit to Overwatch. The way they use huge casts to segment fundamentally similar gameplay forms an interesting parallel with games like Street Fighter V and Tekken 7, which also live and die by their rosters.

Heroes are obviously central to all hero shooters, but careful character design is of unmatched importance to Overwatch because each of its heroes must not only serve a unique purpose but also mesh well with tightly clustered teams. Everything starts there, and anything that encroaches upon the fun hero gameplay, as Kaplan puts it, is swiftly changed. Furthermore, Kaplan told Kotaku in July, maps and modes are quite deliberately designed to promote hero interaction by bringing teams together. This lines up with what assistant game director Aaron Keller told us in September: "if and when we release a new game mode in the future, it will be about teams pushing on a single objective.

At the opposite end of the spectrum and it is a spectrum, this genre-hopping blur of a genre we have Gearbox Software s Battleborn, which doubles down on MOBA elements while turning Overwatch s character design on its head. Overwatch is about selecting and re-selecting the most suitable hero, but Battleborn is about building a hero that does what you want.

In Battleborn, hero abilities aren t static. Heroes bring the same skills into every round, but through the game s helix system of A/B upgrades, these can be tweaked to fit the play style you prefer. Characters fall into designated classes like healer and skirmisher, but they can still wield a mix of offensive, defensive or supportive abilities, just not all at the same time. So, rather than which hero to play, the question becomes how to play your hero.

You can further customize heroes through gear which augments stats like cooldown reduction and maximum health. Gear functions like the items in Dota and League of Legends: earn currency and buy pieces as the match progresses, with the added kick and progression of collecting gear through loot boxes and, from your collection, building character-specific loadouts. The influence of MOBAs is even more obvious in Battleborn s waves of minions and its base-destroying incursion game mode.

This should also sound familiar to Borderlands fans. Tailoring skill trees to suit different play styles? Boosting your most relevant stats with equipment? Hoarding gear? That s a day in the life of a Vault Hunter if I ve ever heard it. And come to think of it, Alani could pass as a sister siren to Borderlands 2 s Maya. There s plenty of Pandora in Battleborn, that s for sure, just as Overwatch s focus on individual hero characters can be traced back to Warcraft.

Beyond prominent MOBA elements, Battleborn brings some promising ideas to the still-developing hero shooter genre. For starters, it has a story mode. It isn t a particularly spellbinding tale (though the stellar opening cinematic helps) but it does provide welcome context for the game s world and the motivations of its heroes, not to mention a more in-depth tutorial and testing ground. Meltdown, Battleborn s take on payloads, is also noteworthy. In it, teams defend their minions as they march toward the goal and try stop enemy minions from doing the same. This means players have two objectives and can choose to defend or attack in every round, which ties into the game s split hero development.

Overwatch and Battleborn alone illustrate some of the balancing acts hero shooters have to manage. Through the strict limitations it places on game modes and character abilities, Overwatch gains the freedom to create characters like Mercy and Symmetra, who aren t at all suited for offense roles. Battleborn is all about customization, so it s possible for players to consistently play the hero they re most attached to rather than the hero their team needs right now. There are pros and cons to each approach: I can t see incursion working in Overwatch, but Battleborn heroes tend to run together a bit, and there s no doubt as to who s winning the sales race. Somewhere between these two extremes lies Paladins, Hi-Rez Studios free-to-play contender. Lead designer Rory Drybear Newbrough described Paladins as half shooter, half MOBA when we spoke with him last December, and the current state of the game backs him up.

Although still in beta, Paladins foundation is well established, including its much-vaunted deck system. For each hero, you can build equippable decks of five cards which, once acquired mid-match, buff various abilities and help fine-tune your play style. It isn t as open-ended as Battleborn s helix system, but that s not necessarily a bad thing. The goal of decks, Newbrough said in a recent interview with PaladinsWorld, is to give players multiple build options without warping characters to the extent that they are difficult to identify or play around. This preserves the concept of instantly recognizable characters a cornerstone of hero shooters since Team Fortress Classic while creating greater room for player choice.

Paladins also pursues new combinations through its heroes, which, according to Hi-Rez COO Todd Harris, are predominantly rooted in the studio s own Global Agenda despite similarities to Overwatch. Some heroes overlap more than others, but even familiar abilities can be interesting when rearranged. For instance, Androxus wields a defensive deflection ability, generous jumps, a six-shooter revolver and a rocket-powered ultimate. Similar abilities are seen in Overwatch but the combination is novel, and Paladins is not devoid of originality. As Blizzard grapples with Symmetra s place in the meta, Ying offers a good example of how to combine turrets and teleportation in a way that s powerful and satisfying.

Even so, and even for a beta, Paladins has yet to hit its stride. Everything checks out on paper: it takes inspiration from the most successful hero shooter yet, the biggest genre in esports and lessons learned from Global Agenda. It s also free, which is a good thing to be in an increasingly competitive market. The trouble is that it doesn t yet have an identity of its own. Overwatch is a dynamic team-based FPS, and Battleborn, while a bit of a commercial flop, is firmly a first-person MOBA with added objectives. Paladins isn t quite there yet. It seems to know what it s made of but not what it wants to be, and in this it echoes the state of the hero shooter genre as a whole.

The good news is that the concern is not what hero shooters can t do, but what they haven t done so far. Creating new and interesting heroes is great, but they stand the best chance of finding an audience if they do something we haven t seen in hero shooters before. The only guiding principle seems to be to build game modes that intuitively support your heroes abilities, something Overwatch and Battleborn both managed despite being wildly different. There s no limit on what those game modes can be, only on what type of heroes suit them.

Overwatch makes a good argument for hero-driven design, and Battleborn shows that unconventional elements can be folded in without upsetting the core FPS gameplay loop. More importantly, Overwatch s 22 heroes can t do everything, nor can Battleborn s 25. Meanwhile, Paladins is still trying to figure out what its heroes are best at, something its forthcoming new mode, which Newbrough describes as a co-op experience against challenging AI, may answer.

This is perhaps the most valuable lesson for budding hero shooters like Gigantic, Lawbreakers, Battlecry, Dirty Bomb and who knows how many games to come. I don t want to see this genre become a race to dethrone Overwatch by way of character design. That s a loser s market, and hero shooters have the potential to revive and improve so many game types. It s all a matter of finding a niche and creating a good-sized roster of heroes who really synergize with it.

For one, objective-based multiplayer goes way beyond 'defend the thing and push the thing', or in Paladins case, 'defend the thing then push the thing'. Where s the fast-paced capture the flag hero shooter that promotes mobility and map awareness using heroes couched in creative movement? Lawbreakers definitely has a shot at filling that slot, but it often feels like more of an arena shooter that happens to have five classes which is fine, by the way. The point is, CTF is another classic game mode that could benefit immensely from a broad cast explicitly engineered with it in mind.

Then there s the big, white elephant that seemingly nobody is talking about: where is the hero shooter that shamelessly apes the original Star Wars: Battlefront? With droidekas, shock troops, engineers and plenty more unique classes, it s already half a hero shooter. Just imagine a modern spiritual successor, divorced from the tapestries of Star Wars but informed by the years of MOBA refinement on display in Battleborn. Sprawling, ever-changing battlegrounds peppered with command posts and crawling with NPC squadrons led by heroes I have a dream!

Future hero shooters should also consider options outside PvP. Players can work as a team without fighting other players, and PvE-focused games like Left 4 Dead are crying out for hero shooter cousins. Overwatch proved this in its recent dalliance with horde mode, the Junkenstein s Revenge brawl. As our own Evan Lahti said, that brawl didn t really work because Overwatch doesn t have the maps or heroes to support it. Where is the hero shooter that does?

For once, the bewildering vagueness of the term hero shooter can be called a positive thing. This cockamamy genre could become a nearly boundless formula for reinvigoration, a way to explore and experience familiar game modes from a refreshing new perspective via dozens of fun characters.

Team Fortress? More like Scream Fortr oh, I see Valve already did that, as it's the name of TF2's annual Halloween event. Joe brought the slightly disappointing news that there would be no all-new giant spookathon this year; instead, the game is getting a few new titbits, while all the old Scream Fortresses will be returning, as with last year.

The TF blog announces that Scream Fortress VIII has just kicked off, bringing with it "three new Halloween maps! All classic Scream Fortress Maps! All-new contracts! New taunts! And a Creepy Crawly Case with the chance to get our newest unholy Halloween creation: a taunt Unusualifier!" Yeah, that's right, an Unusualifier look it up in your Lexinomicon.

What's more, for the duration of Scream Fortress VIII, "all unusual cosmetics that you unbox from any case or crate will have a Halloween 2016 unusual effect, and the chances of receiving an unusual cosmetic across all cases, even old ones, will be DOUBLED," says Valve. Double-things are almost always good news whoever heard of Single Fine, for example?