Half-Life

Update: And now it's official: The full Half-Life Collection is, for awhile at least, free to play. "Half-Life: Alyx is coming in March, and we are celebrating early by making all games in the Half-Life Collection FREE to play for Steam users, from now until the day it launches," Valve said in announcement.

"Half-Life: Alyx is set before the events of Half-Life 2 and the episodes, but the games share characters and story elements. The Half-Life: Alyx team believes that the best way to enjoy the new game is to play through the old ones, especially Half-Life 2 and the episodes, so we want to make that as easy as possible."

The Half-Life Collection includes Half-Life, Half-Life 2, Half-Life 2: Episode One, and Half-Life 2: Episode Two, as well as the spin-off games Opposing Force and Blue Shift, and the multiplayer Team Fortress Classic.

Original story:

Some Steam users received a notification yesterday that advertised a Half-Life: Alyx event before vanishing. The notification claimed that the Half-Life Collection would be free until the launch of the VR spin-off, except there is no such thing as the Half-Life Collection, and right now all the Half-Life games have prices. 

While there are no bundles known as the Half-Life Collection, there's The Orange Box and the Half-Life Complete bundles, but neither of them are free. And despite the notification, which links to an error page, Valve hasn't made any announcements. 

It looks like the notification was sent out too early, but that doesn't explain why the bundle has a different name. It could simply be a mistake, so the notification could just be referring to Half-Life Complete. It could also be that Valve's going to release a third bundle, which will eventually contain Half-Life: Alyx. 

I've reached out to Valve to find out more about the event, so keep an eye out for updates. 

Left 4 Dead

The klaxons sounded earlier today when HTC China president Alvin Wang Graylin shared a few slides from his recent talk on the future of VR, including one that said, "Valve HL Alyx/LFD3 will drive consumer and AAA studio interest." The acronym isn't quite right, but the reference to Left 4 Dead 3 was obvious.

There was an initial jolt of excitement—surely a highly-placed executive at HTC would have an inside track on this kind of thing, right?—but it was all very thin and out-of-nowhere, and people quickly began to theorize that Graylin's source was actually the highly-speculative Valve News Network site, a theory bolstered by this tweet from December 2019.

It seemed weird to me that an HTC president would go out on a limb like that based solely on a VNN report, but some of his other bullet points were pretty pie-in-the-sky too: "AR/VR connected 24/7 to AI Cloud will make humans super intelligent," for instance, or "Elderly will use VR to re-enter work force and travel the world." 

However accurate or inaccurate those predictions prove to be, we can say for sure that the one about Left 4 Dead 3 is way off the mark.

"We’ve seen rumors to this effect for the last couple of months. We did briefly explore some Left 4 Dead next opportunities a few years ago. But we are absolutely not working on anything L4D related now, and haven’t for years," Valve said in a statement sent to IGN

"It’s clear some people are having fun creating misinformation to spin up the community and other outlets. Unfortunately, for now a new L4D game is not something we’re working on."

Sorry, everyone. But if leaks and rumors are your thing, we've got a roundup of all the Left 4 Dead 3 scuttlebutt we've run across over the years that you can dive into right here.

Dota 2

Counter-Strike: Global Offensive has now reliably pushed past Dota 2’s peak and average player counts, making the shooter the more popular of Valve’s big online games and the top game on Steam. For December 2019, CS:GO posted peak users of 767,000 while Dota 2 reached nearly 628,000.  Though CS:GO started to pull ahead of Dota 2 last year, CS:GO has now claimed the top spot for four months in a row—it’s not a fluke, but a trend, and we can officially pass the symbolic crown. Dota 2’s all-time player peak was 1.2 million in January 2015, with a return to that number in January and February 2016. Counter-Strike: Global Offensive’s all-time peak player count was 850,000 in March 2016. Both have been enduringly popular games with multiple famous eSports moments. CS:GO in particular has produced many amazing plays over the past decade. 

Dota 2’s player counts for 2019 peaked at over one million in February, but have experienced general decline, with a drop in December after the huge Outlanders update. That’s not too surprising, as Outlanders thoroughly reworked many of Dota 2’s game systems. That drop is comparable to the drop in overall users social media platforms suffer every time they rework the user interface. Dot Esports reports that Dota 2’s average player counts are the lowest they’ve been since 2014, when it was still a relatively new and growing game. Many in the Dota 2 community attribute the slow drop in players to the game’s infamously bad new-player experience.

None of this analysis would be possible without the magic of Steam Charts. All of these numbers, of course, are small in comparison to the world’s most popular PC game: League of Legends’ peak player counts are well into the millions. 

Portal

Shortly after the release of the famed Orange Box, Valve embarked upon a series of "Directed Design Experiments" that Gabe Newell hoped would spark a new wave of creativity at the studio. One of them, as explained by the Half-Life Wiki, was called F-Stop, and it was enough of an internal hit that it was tapped for full development as a prequel to Portal. For reasons unknown, that prequel never came to be, and the whole thing sunk into obscurity—another Valve mystery, to be occasionally whispered about in Reddit threads.

One of the reasons so little is known about F-Stop is that Valve simply refused to talk about it, apparently out of hope that it would actually turn it into a proper game someday [Half-Life: Alyx stares directly into the camera]. Valve seems to have had a recent change of heart, however, as an upcoming YouTube series called Exposure, being made by indie studio LunchHouse Software, will not just explain how F-Stop was intended to work, but actually show it in action.

"The mechanics are not based on speculation or hearsay. Instead, Exposure uses the original, official code from Valve's own F-STOP, or as it was properly named, Aperture Camera," the video description states. It also notes that Valve has given the studio "explicit permission to continue with our project using their original code."

The "gameplay" in the clip bears more than a passing resemblance to Superliminal, a perception-bending first-person puzzler released in November—a similarity that didn't go unnoticed on Twitter. That may be why Valve is suddenly willing to let this cat out of the bag: There's not much point in keeping your special mechanic a secret if someone else has already turned it into a game, after all. 

And while an unused game mechanic might seem like a thin basis for a multipart video series, LunchHouse's Tristan Halcomb told USgamer that there's enough to it to make more than a dozen videos, although they're aiming to keep it to five or six.

A full release schedule hasn't been set yet: Halcomb said LunchHouse wants to "discuss the future of the project a bit more with Valve to see what opportunities we may have going forward before committing to a follow up, so we're working based on their schedule to some extent." For now, you can follow along with the project at exposure.lunchhouse.software.

Counter-Strike 2

The decade in Counter-Strike truly began on August 21, 2012, but the seven years since made up for its late start. In the 2010s Counter-Strike grew to become one of the largest esports in the world and arguably Valve's flagship game, depending on how you feel about Dota 2. And though its future is uncertain, Counter-Strike is in a far better place now than it was 10 years ago.

Let’s look back on the evolution of Counter-Strike by examining the biggest moments in the series of the past decade.

Counter-Strike: Global Offensive launches

It's easy to forget that in 2010, Counter-Strike was in a tough spot. The community was split between the Counter-Strike 1.6 and Counter-Strike: Source for years, and Valve had given neither game the level of attention and updates we now expect from competitive games. By 2011, Valve announced a sequel, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. CS:GO aimed to unite both 1.6 and Source players, but interestingly, one of the initial goals of the project was also to bring the series to the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 before a new generation of hardware appeared. 

Longtime fans of the series didn't immediately switch over at launch, however, thanks to bugs and mechanical changes (for example, absence of flinch animations). For a time, CS' population was almost evenly split between three games, something I don't think we've ever seen in a competitive franchise. Fortunately, thanks to a number of quick updates in the early months of the game (and the addition of an item economy one year later), CS:GO began to stand on its own and unite Counter-Strike players new and old.

Ninjas in Pyjamas domination 

87 wins. Zero losses.

That is the longest match winning streak on LAN in CS:GO history. And it is held by the game’s very first superteam: Ninjas in Pyjamas.

When CS:GO launched, the Swedish organization brought together many of the stars of both 1.6 and Source and formed a squad that was unmatched. Even when their match streak was broken in 2013, NiP continued to win tournaments throughout the remainder of the year and into 2014. This culminated in a Major championship at ESL One: Cologne 2014, the team’s only Major victory in five Grand Finals appearances. Their success helped raise the standard of play and the profile of CS:GO.

All things must end, however, and NiP began to decline later that year. But in its period of dominance, the team spurred fellow CS:GO players and teams to greater competitive heights.

Valve adds a new gun, experiences instant regret 

Over the development of its most successful multiplayer shooter before CS:GO, Team Fortress 2, Valve had figured out a playbook for keeping the game interesting: make guns and items that subverts players' expectations, pulling the rug out from under them.

On December 8, 2015, did exactly that when it introduced the R8 Revolver to CS:GO, but the effect it had was instantly harmful.

What made the R8, dubbed the Revolvo by the community, so notorious was its unparalleled power-per-dollar. It could kill unarmored and armored targets alike with a close range body shot, was more accurate at a longer range than an AK-47, and could be fired while defusing a bomb. All of this in a sidearm, meaning it could be carried alongside an AWP.

When the update was introduced, matches quickly devolved into 5v5 shootouts where everyone used the R8. In what is one of the fastest response times from Valve in its history, nearly every aspect of the R8 was nerfed within three days after it was originally introduced. It instantly fell out of use, and it’s rarely seen nowadays. But for a brief time, the Revolvo was king. 

The rise of skins (and skin gambling)

While CS:GO was popular, the addition of weapon skins made it skyrocket to the top of the Steam charts. With their introduction in August 2013, a virtual economy formed that saw players trading the skins they had acquired, be it from weapon cases, watching competitive games, or random in-game drops.

But as the skin economy grew, the economy behind it began to move outside of the more regulated confines of the Steam Marketplace. Websites that used Steam’s API created skin gambling, where players on competitive matches by using their skins as currency. Scandals quickly followed; players were banned for match fixing using skins, lawsuits were filed over underage gambling, and governments opened investigations into how Valve handled the practice.

In a way, the controversies over skin gambling parallel the loot box scandals that would come in 2017. While Valve has done much to combat it, skin gambling remains active to this day.

An American team finally wins a Major

The most important tournaments in CS:GO are the Majors, which feature the biggest prize pools and the best teams. And while every Major has compelling storylines, the ELEAGUE Major: Boston 2018 stands a cut above the rest thanks to the David vs. Goliath saga of Cloud9.

With most of this era dominated by Europe, the American team was an underdog heading into the 2018 tournament. Cloud9 had never finished in the Top 8 at a Major, and recent performances left a lot to be desired. Against all odds, Cloud9 surpassed several of the best teams in the world and found itself squaring off against the superstars of FaZe Clan in the Grand Finals. Ultimately, Cloud9 upset FaZe in a double-overtime final map to win the Boston Major.

It was the first time an American team won a Major—on home soil, no less. Though the roster broke up before the players could defend their title, Cloud9’s win in Boston stands as one of the greatest moments in CS:GO.

CS:GO goes free-to-play

CS:GO’s structure forever changed in December 2018 when Valve made it free-to-play after six years and added a new battle royale mode called Danger Zone. Considering both moves came at a time when the battle royale genre had taken the video game industry by storm, it was clear that both decisions were made to shore up CS:GO’s playerbase.

One day after the change was made, over 14,000 negative Steam reviews hit its store page decrying the move to free-to-play, citing the lack of reward for players who paid for the game and the changes to matchmaking as two prime factors. Despite player unhappiness, the days immediately following the transition saw CS:GO reach its highest player count in nearly two years. 

Team Fortress 2

Back in 2015, the announcement that Star Wars: Battlefront would launch with skill-based matchmaking instead of a server browser felt newsworthy. Today, a game releasing without custom server support is just business as usual. Gradually, over the last 10 years, the server browser has fallen out of fashion. Battlefield 5 is perhaps the only game I've played this year that offers one, and it's a shadow of what was once a major feature of of the series. With only limited configuration options, it exists simply as lip service to player expectations.

You just need to look at Team Fortress 2's menu to see how much things have changed. Where once the server browser was front-and-centre, now it's buried below a suite of matchmaking options.

Perhaps this sidelining of custom servers was inevitable. After all, it's harder to sell map packs when players can download an endless stream of player-made alternatives. And it's hard to make players care about your persistent progression system if player-run servers can offer decentralised leaderboards. The systems designed to keep players coming back into multiplayer—many of which were popularised in the early 2010s in response to the perceived threat of pre-owned sales of console games—don't work if players have all the control.

That's not to say matchmaking is bad. There are obvious benefits to matching players based on their level of skill. It's easier for new players to get to grips with a game, for one, but also gives those with more experience a more interesting challenge. Stomping newbies may be fun for a while, but it's destructive to the long term health of a game.

Matchmaking also lets developers tailor playlists based on the size of the playerbase. It's a relatively benign way to keep a game feeling populated, even after its initial popularity has waned.

The downside, for me at least, is that matchmaking misses out on a key component of what felt like such an important part of the PC gaming ecosystem throughout the '90s and '00s.

Mod squad

I took an unintended break from PC gaming in the early 2000s, during a period when I could only afford a laptop that threatened to go nuclear if I so much as looked at C&C Generals. When I returned around 2007, I had almost a decade of 3D gaming to catch up on. In doing so, I fell in love with the wild and chaotic world of first-person multiplayer shooters.

I arrived late, but it didn't matter—the party was still raging. The FPS scene was a hotbed of creativity, as modders and mappers filled the most popular games of the day with strange, delightful curios. As someone who'd spent the late-'90s sampling every Tiberian Sun mod I could get my hands on, it was beautiful to see, and it was all made easy thanks to PC gaming's support for custom servers.

The server browser became a shop window into an infinite number of candy stores, promising everything from the mundane—24/7 de_dust—to the sublime. Race maps. Prop hunt. Mario Kart. Instagib. Achievement farming. RP. Laser death cat. A new map, a new mode, a new chance to see something you'd never seen before, and, sometimes, would never see again. Just double-click on a map you'd never heard of before and you'd be transported into a brand new world.

I regularly dipped into a Half-Life 2: Deathmatch server that disabled everything but the Gravity Gun—forcing players to fling toilets, radiators and circular saws at each other. I spent more time than I care to admit playing TF2 in an instant respawn server that featured special power-ups, no time limit, and a set of rules that all-but-insured nobody would ever complete the objective. I once wasted an afternoon in GMod as a watermelon, rolling around a race course with other players. I never found that server again, but I didn't really need to. Ephemeral weirdness was part of the charm.

To be clear, PC gaming isn't any less weird or wonderful in 2019. The chaos is still here, and still just as glorious, but now it's found in Minecraft mini-game servers and through GTA5's FiveM mod. It's found on the front page of Itch.io, or as a standalone project from the makers of some beloved mod. In some respects there's less need than ever for custom servers, because—also this decade—game making tools became more widely available and easier to use. The fact that creators can more easily make their own game rather than relying on blockbuster releases as the base for their creativity is ultimately a net positive.

Curtains up

But if custom server mods where what tempted me into exploring a game, it was the personalities of my favourite servers that kept me coming back. It was the specific map selection, or the perfect combination of settings, or just the atmosphere created by the regulars. It was dropping into a favourite TF2 server and knowing that sometimes everybody in it would be duelling with the Heavy's finger emote—with bans immediately issued to anybody who dared shoot an actual gun.

Player-run servers are a hangout. You join—often mid-way through a match—and play around until you've had enough. The stakes can be as high or as low as the server's culture dictates. You have your regulars, but also a rolling procession of transient visitors that help keep the place feel active—like tourists stopping in at a local pub. And, yes, servers can be toxic or hostile or just generally not worth your time, but it always feels special to discover one that you want to come back to.

Matchmaking, meanwhile, is a performance. You queue up, load in and you're on—playing with unknown people to complete an objective and win the match. If something out of the ordinary happens—if a dance party breaks out in a Destiny 2 survival match—it's almost always because something has already gone wrong (usually half of your team deciding to peace out mid-round).

There are pros and cons to both methods, but I think it's a shame just how completely the pendulum has swung in favour of matchmaking. There are games that experiment with both; that separate out custom servers and matchmaking, much like the current version of Team Fortress 2—which, at its best, is still incredibly weird. And there are still games that fully embrace the spirit of '00s multiplayer shooters, like Warsow or Xonotic—both free and worth checking out. But these feel like the exception rather than the rule, and, inevitably, that's reflected in the number of players populating their servers.

Instead, the very idea of decentralised communities has migrated out of individual games and become broader and more freeform. Maybe I just need to find a good Discord server instead.

Dota 2

Void Spirit and Snapfire, the new Dota 2 heroes that were revealed in August, are now live in the game as part of the big Outlanders Update that rolled out today. Known less poetically as the 7.23 gameplay update, Outlanders also adds a new neutral building type called Outposts and neutral item drops, increases hero levels to 30, and makes major changes to core gameplay.

The first new hero, Void Spirit, is the fourth and eldest of Dota 2's "spirit brethren," which also includes Storm, Earth, and Ember. "Able to step into and out of the mortal plane at will, he easily outmaneuvers opponents to strike from wherever he desires, calling upon the powers of the aether to shield him in times of need," the update page says.

Here's what he brings to the fight:

  • Aether Remnant - Void Spirit dispatches a remnant aspect of himself to stand sentinel over a small area. The remnant peers in a single direction, waiting to pull in and damage enemies that cross its gaze.
  • Dissimilate - Void Spirit temporarily fades into the aether, creating a number of portals through which he can reassemble himself and cause damage to enemies in the area where he reappears.
  • Resonant Pulse - Void Spirit wraps himself in a protective shield that absorbs physical damage and emits a single damaging pulse around him. The shield gains increased damage absorption for each enemy hero the pulse hits.
  • Astral Step - Void Spirit consumes a charge to rip through reality into the astral plane, damaging all enemies along the rift path and inflicting a void mark that slows and detonates for significant damage.

More interesting, I think, is Beatrix Snapfire, a goblin grandmother on a dragon toad named Mortimer who will bake you cookies or blow your face off, as the mood strikes: "The Outlands are littered with the bones of bandits and ne'er-do-wells who thought to take advantage of her small stature and propensity for kindness."

This is what she can do:

  • Scatterblast - Snapfire unloads with a wide blast from her trusty scattergun that damages and slows enemies. Particularly effective at point-blank range.
  • Firesnap Cookie - Snapfire feeds a potent cookie to Mortimer or an ally, causing them to hop a short distance. The hopping unit stuns and damages enemies in the landing zone.
  • Lil' Shredder - Snapfire unleashes a volley of fixed-damage attacks with her lizard-mounted battle cannons, gaining rapid fire and bonus attack range while slowing the attack speed of enemies she hits.
  • Mortimer Kisses - Snapfire rears up on Mortimer, guiding his aim as he launches burning globs of firespit that damage on impact and linger on the ground to slow enemies and cause more damage over time.

Outposts, the new neutral buildings, are located where Side Shops used to be, and can be controlled by right-clicking for six seconds, although more players channeling will hasten the process. Capturing an outpost grants an immediate XP bonus, followed by further bonuses at five-minute intervals, and holding them also grants an unobstructed view of the surrounding area. They cannot be captured during the opening ten minutes of a game, however, so plan accordingly.

Unique new items may now drop from neutrals that can be shared with allies but not sold. Five tiers of items will drop over the course of a game, and each drop within a tier will halve the odds of subsequent drops: There's a ten percent chance that a Tier 1 item will drop during the 5-15 minute window, for instance, and if one does, the odds reduce to five percent for the next drop, and so forth. There are 62 unique neutral items in total, and only one of each item type will drop for each team.

Taken altogether, the changes represent a major overhaul of Dota 2, to the point that some fans, and pros too, have taken to calling it Dota 3.

Others had comparable reactions:

Yeah, Virtus.pro got two, I couldn't make up my mind. 

Not everyone is as enthusiastic about the changes. Reactions on Reddit and to the Outlanders Update tweet express concerns about the extent of the changes, the heightened difficulty it presents for new players, and—as always—the general sense that the game isn't what it used to be (and thus isn't as good as it used to be). But the overriding feeling seems to be one of excitement for a major shakeup of such a well-established game.

Here's the full rundown of general gameplay updates. Full details on the Outlanders Update are at dota2.com.

Courier:

  • Each player now has their own courier automatically
  • Courier now gains levels when your hero gains levels
  • Courier movement speed reduced from 380 to 275
  • Courier health reduced from 75 to 70
  • Courier now provides 85 GPM while it is alive (this replaces the base 91 GPM that previously existed)
  • Courier passively gains +10 movement speed, +10 health and +2 GPM increase per level
  • Courier gains flying movement at level 5
  • Courier gains Speed Burst active ability at level 10 (6-second duration +50% MS, 120 CD)
  • Courier gains ability to use wards at level 15
  • Courier gains Shield active ability at level 20 (2s duration, 200 CD)
  • Courier gains ability to use items in general at level 25
  • Courier vision reduced from 350 to 200
  • Courier team bounty is now 25 + 5 * Level, xp is 35 + 20 * Level
  • Courier respawn time changed from 120/180 ground/flying to 50 + 7 * Level
  • Courier Return Items ability will now cause the courier to return home even if it doesn't have items

Economy:

  • Observer Wards no longer cost gold
  • Heroes now start with 3 Town Portal Scrolls
  • Gold earned from killing an Observer Ward will now always be given to the player that bought the true sight
  • Heroes that have recently applied damage or a debuff on an enemy hero that dies are now considered part of the area assist gold even if they are no longer alive or in that area
  • Assist gold distribution multiplier for Net Worth ranking factor in the area is changed from multiplying based on the heroes in the area, to globally.
  • Net Worth Ranking factor for Gold changed from 1.3->0.7 to 1.6->0.4

General:

  • Map layout redesigned
  • Heroes can now level up to 30. Once you get to level 30, you unlock the entire talent tree. XP requirement for the levels are 3500/4500/5500/6500/7500. Respawn time does not increase past 25. XP bounties max out at level 25 bounty values.
  • Spell Immunity no longer grants 100% Magic Resistance (this means that all spells that are able to pierce spell immunity now deal damage as well)
  • Removed Side Shops
  • Bottle has been removed from the Secret Shop
  • All Secret Shop items are now exclusively in the Secret Shop (this means Ring of Health and Void Stone are no longer in the base)
  • Tier 2 Towers HP increased from 1900 to 2000
  • Tier 2 Tower Armor increased from 15 to 16
  • Tier 2 Tower Damage increased from 152 to 175
  • Tier 2+ towers night vision increased from 800 to 1100
  • Tower Glyph multishot targets increased from 2 to 4
  • Glyph duration increased from 6 to 7
  • Improved input processing to feel snappier, as well as fixing some rare input drop bugs
  • Denied towers now give half of the bounty to the team that denies it and half to the other team (instead of 0 to both teams)
  • Siege damage against heroes increased from 85% to 100%
  • Fountain damage increased from 230 to 275
  • Fountain now has 20% Accuracy

Neutral Units Balance:

  • Neutral Cloak Aura no longer stacks
  • Neutral Harpy Stormcrafter: Max mana reduced from 400 to 150
  • Neutral Harpy Stormcrafter: Mana regeneration increased from 1 to 3
  • Neutral Mud Golem: Hurl Boulder damage reduced from 125 to 75
  • Neutral Ghost: Frost Attack move slow from 20 to 25%
  • Neutral Ghost: Frost Attack attack slow from 20 to 25%
  • Neutral Vhoul Assassin: Poison debuff now applies 35% Regen Reduction
  • Neutral Centaur Conqueror: War Stomp cooldown reduced from 20 to 12
  • Neutral Dark Troll Summoner: Ensnare cooldown reduced from 20 to 15
  • Neutral Dark Troll Summoner: Raise Dead cooldown reduced from 25 to 18
  • Neutral Ancient Thunderhide: War Drums Aura no longer provides attack damage bonus
  • Neutral Ancient Thunderhide: War Drums Aura now provides 40% Accuracy
  • Neutral Ancient Thunderhide: War Drums Aura attack speed bonus increased from 15 to 25
  • Neutral Ogre Frostmage: Armor bonus reduced from 8 to 6
  • Neutral Ogre Frostmage: Slow now works against ranged units as well
  • Neutral Ogre Frostmage: Attack slow increased from 20 to 30
Half-Life

Back in 2013 an alpha build of Half-Life called version 0.54, a version first distributed to game journalists in 1997, was released to the public. Its six chapters included one called The Office Warrens, which would eventually evolve into the finished game's fourth chapter. It served as the inspiration for the In Deep mod, which you can try an early version of now.

"In Deep takes you through the scrapped version of Half-Life from 1997," as the description says, "re-imagined and revamped. What awaits you is a surreal, fast-paced, and action-packed journey through the old Labs once again!"

The mod tweaks the alpha version by simplifying some of its more obtuse puzzles and making the combat feel a bit closer to that of the finished game. It's Half-Life as it might have been, if some of its early ideas had been polished rather than scrapped and replaced. You can download it from ModDB.

Half-Life 2

Great moments in PC gaming are bite-sized celebrations of some of our favorite gaming memories.

While the Half-Life series has a lot of iconic moments, from the lab accident that started it all to learning why we don't go to Ravenholm, none stand out for me as much as leading the resistance to retake City 17 near the end of Half-Life 2.

Gordon's journey does a great job of making you want to get back at the Combine from the very beginning. They're jerks. They hit you with sticks. They make you pick up trash that isn't even yours. Much of the first few hours of the game are spent showing you how bleak and oppressive life has become for humanity since the invasion, with Breen's smug face proclaiming it a paradise. And then you get little glimmers of hope as you're reunited with Barney and start discovering pockets of resistance.

This all culminates when you return to City 17 as the fabled "Anticitizen One", the Combine's most wanted. You've become more than a scientist thrown into extraordinary circumstances at this point, more than a bearded videogame protagonist with a gun. You're an inspirational figure. Alongside you, facing the same daunting odds, are ragtag freedom fighters in weathered jackets and fingerless gloves showing that, for all our faults, we humans refuse to go down fighting when you try to take over our cities with flying knife robots and giant tripod walkers.

As I fought brutally through the streets I felt proud of my resistance comrades. They didn't have plot armor or a gravity gun but they followed me into danger anyway. When I took down a stalker with a rocket launcher, they cheered and surged ahead to press the hard-won advantage. And while at this rate we may never see how the war ends, we won the battle. We at least showed the Combine that Earth doesn't bow to brain bugs without giving them a black eye.

I look forward to bumping into some of these brave men and women around a fire barrel again in the upcoming prequel, even knowing some of them won't survive what's coming. Gordon became a symbol, but they were the real heroes.

Well, OK, that’s not exactly true. Gordon was still the real hero. But they helped!

Portal 2

Valve has been on a bit of an update spree of late: after years of torment, Half-Life 2 NPCs can finally blink again thanks to a recent fix. Now it's Portal 2's turn, and while the improvements and fixes aren't quite as weird, they are probably more useful.

The biggest fix comes in the way of new local cooperative tweaks. It's now easier to have one player on a controller and another on mouse and keyboard, which was previously only possible with a few workarounds. Local coop support is now available from the community coop map queue, too.

Meanwhile, with the newly released Remote Play Together functionality, it's possible to play split-screen Portal 2 with a remote Player 2 who doesn't even own the game. That's not in the patch notes, but it's worth making note of. Portal 2 has online cooperative support, but both people need to own the game.

Here are the full patch notes:

Windows- Fixed an issue where in-game audio caption language would use the system language setting instead of the Steam language setting.Controller support- Improved camera control through Steam Input – the sensitivity scale has changed so you may need to increase your configuration’s sensitivity.- Add local coop support for one controller player and one Mouse/Keyboard player.- Add local coop support from the community coop map queue. Quickplay is still not supported.- Fix XInput related options being hidden when connecting a Steam Input enabled controller using a Gamepad configuration.- Fix the challenge mode screen not having enough footer buttons available through Steam Input.- Fix several more bugs where the incorrect action set could be set in Steam Input.- Fix several cases where having a controller connected but not active would affect the glyphs and settings screen options.

...

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