Since we ran a feature on Duncan Harris, the groovy "video game photographer" behind the website DeadEndThrills, I've been sharing some of his work each week here.

This week has some great stuff, focusing largely on Mass Effect 2 and the Half-Life 2 mod/ghost story Dear Esther. Let's get to it!

First up, at top, we've got one of several shots from Dear Esther, which will see its official Steam release on February 14th. I for one can't wait, and this kind of shot is why.

"This Old House"

From Harris's notes:

Tools and tricks: free camera, custom FOV, 2160p rendering, antialiasing (injected SMAA).

"For Tomorrow"

The first of several Mass Effect 2 shots, this one is simply… space. They say it's the final frontier. I can get with that.

Tools and tricks: free camera, timestop, no-HUD, custom FOV, JeanLuc761′s hi-res character textures, in-world HUD textures blanked, antialiasing (injected max quality FXAA 3.11 w/ texture pre-sharpening), 2160p rendering.

Writings on the Wall"

Alas, poor Veetor. Driven mad by the collector attack. Poor fellow. I hope none of you heartless bastards turned him over to Cerberus for testing.

Tools and tricks: free camera, timestop, no-HUD, custom FOV, JeanLuc761′s hi-res character textures, in-world HUD textures blanked, antialiasing (injected ‘Ultra' quality SMAA + 4xMSAA), 2160p rendering.

"Almost Human"

I call this one "Miranda's Super-Hot Posterior" because, well… I also think of this sequence in the game not-so-fondly because I've seen it many a time after having to re-roll my Shepard after realizing that while he/she looked fine standing still, things got ghastly once the game got going.

Tools and tricks: free camera, timestop, no-HUD, custom FOV, JeanLuc761′s hi-res character textures, in-world HUD textures blanked, antialiasing (injected max quality FXAA 3.11 w/ texture pre-sharpening), 2160p rendering.

"Vulcan"

In a break from the two main games for the week comes one last shot from Star Trek Online, this one of the planet Vulcan. That's a big q-tip that fella's got there.

Tools and tricks: Cryptic demo recorder, 2160p rendering, free camera, custom FOV, timestop, offline antialiasing.

"The Ghost That Walks"

Hoo, buddy. Yet another gorgeous shot from Dear Esther.

Tools and tricks: free camera, custom FOV, 2160p rendering, antialiasing (injected SMAA).

"Highlander"

Another Dear Esther bit of amazingness.

Tools and tricks: free camera, custom FOV, 2160p rendering, antialiasing (injected SMAA).

"In The Temple of Love"

Dear Esther. Don't have much to say for these other than "wow."

Tool and tricks: free camera, custom FOV, 2160p rendering, antialiasing (injected SMAA).

Spirit Level"

Look at that business! Look at it! Man, I can't wait to play Dear Esther.

Tool and tricks: free camera, custom FOV, 2160p rendering, antialiasing (injected SMAA).

Republished from Rock, Paper Shotgun.

Valve have created themselves an interesting situation. Presenting themselves as bastions of consumers, remarkably accessible to gamers, regularly inviting in groups of modders – often to give them jobs – and always being present to offer a quote on how customers deserve to be treated with more dignity, they establish themselves as being our friend. And then from that position, they sure do like to muck about. And as Eurogamer's Tom "Tom Bramwell" Bramwell mentioned on Twitter this morning, it's hard not to sympathise with a growing body of Valve's customers who are asking for better communication.

No one has a clue what they're up to. Games are sometimes announced moments before release, or years in advance and then nothing but silence. Sometimes when they tease it's obscure, frustrating ARGs that eventually end in a new pretend hat. Other times it's a complete open door and everything revealed. They hide clues in so many places that people end up scouring everything they do for a hint, a glimpse, of something that might suggest they'll eventually return to the Half-Life universe proper. They've turned gamers into pseudo-schizophrenics, people frantically trying to find patterns in the random, believing there are hidden messages within their communications. But does anyone have a "right" to know what's going on with the Half-Life series.

Clearly not. It's absolutely Valve's prerogative if they want to never make another Half-Life game again, and concentrate only on adding new hats to TF2. And should they tell us they're doing that? No – why should they? They are a privately owned company, without shareholders to answer to, not required to reveal their plans to anyone.

Should they tell anyone what they're up to? I think it's probably about time they did.

For many years Valve have ridden a wave of remarkably good grace. Developing and releasing extraordinarily good games gets you a long way, and Valve have consistently proven themselves to be the best in the world at what they do. From the astonishing shake up of gaming that Half-Life caused, to the zenith of the FPS, still unbeaten seven years later, Half-Life 2, and then the excellent Episodes, both Left 4 Deads, the Portal games, and TF2… there is no other record like it in gaming. There's a reason Valve has the reputation it has.

But their peculiar secrecy doesn't seem to do them any obvious favours. When they revealed the existence of DOTA 2 or Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, the gaming press was obviously extremely eager to give this as much coverage as possible. They're Valve games, so there's an extremely good chance they'll be very good. (Not guaranteed of course. There's always Ricochet, conspicuously absent from their Games page.) Readers want to know about them, sites want details about them, and Valve wants the coverage. It all works.

So when they go quiet, after two episodes of a promised a three part episodic series of Half-Life games, it's understandable that people get annoyed. No, no one has the right to know – it's absolutely their private business, and they may keep it as underwraps as they wish. But I'd suggest at this point, this many years into what is now appearing quite a farce, it's doing damage to their reputation.

Clearly the actions of Axel "Ago" Gembe were absolutely unjustifiable, and the leaking of Half-Life 2 scarred Valve very badly. Gembe's given motivation was his frustration about the lack of information being released about the game, and his eventual discovery that Valve weren't revealing quite how far from finished the game was. Leaking the code was a stupid and cruel act, and Simon Parkin's wonderful article about his attempts to broker peace between the two many years on shows that Valve are still hugely angry and upset about it. None of it should ever have happened, but what I find peculiar is that Valve apparently learned no lessons about the frustration they generate in their most dedicated fans.

The silence over Episode 3, or what for seemingly no reason most now think will be Half-Life 3, is infuriating. And not because we deserve to know about it, nor because Valve have any obligation to say. But unfortunately, Valve have confused us. They act in an extraordinarily open way in so many cases, with remarkable access via email, and an engagement with the community that's the envy of the gaming world. While they of course receive backlashes, and there is a contingent of Angries who will always hate them, the goodwill they receive is enormous. This, combined with their more recent engagement with complex ARGs and hiding clues everywhere, has given the impression that they want to share what's going on with us. And that confuses us.

If Episode 3 went horribly wrong, it would be fascinating to know. If they developed the game and it was complete arse, it wouldn't damage Valve's reputation for saying so. If it's been in ongoing development, constantly iterated and improved upon, perhaps even morphing into Half-Life 3, everyone would be so excited to hear. If they just ran out of ideas, or got bored of Freeman, we'd love to know why.

So no, of course Valve has no obligation, and we have no right, to know what's happening. But I'm struggling to think of a reason why it would harm them to keep us up to date. Were they a completely secretive organisation, unreachable, who only announce a new game the day it comes out, then our expectations would be somewhere else. But it is the confusion of the contradiction of Valve's surprising openness and closed secrecy that leads to the bewildered frustration of their audience.

If you've got Half-Life 2 and Garry's Mod you should really go and download this free mod called Elevator: Source. It's about being stuck in an elevator with strangers. Internet strangers. And the elevator can take you anywhere.

That really is it. It's like Chatroulette meets Half-Life. You'll end up in an elevator with....well, freaks, and when the doors open, you could be anywhere.

Get it at the link below.

Elevator: Source [Pixeltail, via Rock, Paper, Shotgun]

In the Half-Life series, there are fictional alien parasitoids called "headcrabs". In Katie's house there is Headcrab Cat, aka Sophie.

Headcrab Cat loves to perch on the head of Katie's roommate and Gordon Freeman's doppelganger while he plays computer games.

Hat Cat [YouTube]

Harrison Krix's replica Half-Life 2 gravity gun looked incredible, but it was never destined for his shelf, or that of an international adult collectible retailer. It was built for charity, and it's for charity it was auctioned.

Awesomely, the gun went as part of a Child's Play auction for a whopping $21,000. That'd be a bargain if the thing actually worked.

To celebrate, he's posted a lengthy explanation on how it was built over on his website, along with the above snappy video showing it in action.

Half Life 2: Gravity Gun [Volpin Props]

If you've ever wanted to see a live-action Half-Life 2 movie, these mock posters are only going to make you want to see one a lot more.

They're the work of British graphic designer Sean Keenan, and are, for the most part, wonderfully tasteful and subdued.

He's based them on the posters for Chris Nolan's The Dark Knight Batman movie, if you think the colour palettes and design are familiar.

Sean Keenan [Portfolio, via Elysha]

Every popular video game has its following of wishful thinkers, wannabe designers, and straight-up trolls. None has more hard at work on the next title than Half Life 3. And they've been very busy lately.

There is, of course, this total fakey-fake-mcfakerson website, a goldmine of cognitive dissonance that's not even registered to Valve. Then there was this brilliantly unconfirmable pile of horse dung, later debunked and then disavowed by the friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend who heard from a friend at Valve that Gabe Newell had "authorized" certain people to start leaking about Half Life 3.

That hasn't stopped the I-Want-to-Believe Crowd, so late last night, Valve's Chet Faliszek, co-writer on the last two Half-Lifes (and of Portal 2) did the humane thing and took everyone's hope out behind the woodpile and shot it.

"You are being trolled. There is no ARG," Faliszek wrote. "There has been no directive from Gabe to leak anything. That is all false."

Faliszek also specifically debunked the idea that this speech by Wheatley, the Portal 2 AI, in the Spike Video Game Awards a couple weeks ago, contained all sorts of hints and clues and teasers that Half-Life 3 was coming in 2012. "Wheatley's speech was set in Portal 2 fiction—that is all." he said.

Yeah, well, maybe Gabe authorized him to say that, right? Right? Well, Gaming Bolt pinged Gabe about it. (You can too, I guess; he answers his own email). Answer: No.

People have got to realize how far they've sunk to self-parody here—and I'm not talking about the trolls, I'm talking about the believers. Every year, it seems, we have some crackpot troll tell us he's parsed some new sample of numerology and derived the date of the end of the world; and every year it never fucking happens. Not that I want it to, unlike Half-Life 3. But this process has an analogue in Half-Life 3. Every year people create bullshit websites and issue phony proclamations that the day is coming. And it never does.

"I just want to say this so there is no confusion," Faliszek wrote. "This is the community trolling the community nothing more. While it is nice to see people excited about anything HL, I hate seeing people be trolled like this."

Chet Faliszek from Valve puts an end to all Half-Life 3 Rumours [Gaming Bolt]

Custom LEGO builder Brandon Bannerman doesn't wait for due process to take its course, he makes his own damn LEGO. And this week he's made this wonderful little Gordon Freeman.

It'd look great with that last set of Half-Life LEGO we saw, give those Combine someone to chase after.

You can check out more pics of Lil' Gordon, and some of Brandon's other work, at the link below.

Catsy [CSF]'s photostream (1,103) [Flickr, via Toycutter]

Don't get your hopes up, but there's a website on the internet with a giant Half-Life 3 logo on it that's been doing the rounds today, tugging rudely on people's heartstrings.

It's slick, it goes to the trouble of adding copyright notices and the essential "small logos" that lend credibility to the site, but come on. This is not how video games are revealed.

Well, it might be, but come on. The website's URL is black-aperture.com, with Black Aperture being the name of a blogging theme for video games. And it's registered not to Valve, but some dude called David Hassen.

Why, then, do I point this out? For two reasons. One, that HL3 logo would make one hell of a wallpaper (so I've resized it accordingly). And two, when you crank the brightness up on the thing, you get a little Valve-related surprise that's a cute touch from whichever troll put this thing together.

Half-Life 3 [Black Aperture]

Valve action figures. Based on Half-life, Team Fortress, Portal and Left 4 Dead. It was amazing news back in June, but since then, all we've seen is teases. Nothing final. That changes today.

Figure maker NECA took the wraps off the first Left 4 Dead action figure, the Boomer, which isn't due until well into 2012. NECA's figures can be pretty hit-and-miss when it comes to things like proportions and joints, so it's good to see him looking spot-on.

In addition to the Boomer shots, NECA also showed off a prototype image of a Smoker zombie, which is looking just as good.

Valve's Left 4 Dead Boomer – 1st Full-Color Pic Out! [NECA, thanks John!]