I wouldn’t say ‘boo’ to a ghost. That’s rude and, worse, trite — like saying “Aha!” to Steve Coogan. No, if I e.g. met a ghost rattling chains I might ask “What’s shaking?” Top gag. My problem is a short temper with ghosts. The last time jangling disturbed my sleep, I woke the whole block yelling “Hey! That’s enough of your ghost nonsense! Get outta here, you!” I’m not proud, but come on: it’s well out. With Halloween looming and spirits rising, I’d better practice patience if I’m to stay chill.

Helpfully, Valve have resurrected all past TF2 spooky events (this year’s is still to come). A few scraps with the Horseless Headless Horsemann, a little Ghost Fort, and I’ll be cool as a corpse.

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“Hey, remember Team Fortress 2?” I think to myself, sometimes. I played that game every day for months, squeezing rounds into lunch breaks and evenings till eventually I lost interest. “The big updates slowed,” I explain to myself. “The steady stream of community content made each release feel like less of an event, and eventually time moved on and everyone’s focus moved elsewhere, right?” Right.

What definitely didn’t happen is that the game continued to grow in popularity indefinitely. It certainly didn’t become the third most played game on Steam, with tens of thousands playing it at any moment. Absolutely there is not a regular and regularly excellent series of free comics about it, with a fourth part that went online earlier this month. That’d be mad.

… [visit site to read more]

Whoa. Hey there. Sorry, I’m just coming round following the Saxxy Awards on Wednesday. I don’t even remember Thursday. There I was, seated between Morrissey and Prince, then I have a vague memory of Mozzer whipping out a hip flask that smelt like paint stripper and… nothing. It’s a blank. I don’t even know who won. I awoke in a cemetery this morning.

The Saxxies, of course, are the annual fan-voted awards for short films made in Valve’s Source Filmmaker. They’re short flicks about TF2, Portal 2, and Dota 2, but with the care Valve puts into developing characters and recording odd edge-case lines of dialogue, folks can be jolly creative.

… [visit site to read more]

Whoa. Hey there. Sorry, I’m just coming round following the Saxxy Awards on Wednesday. I don’t even remember Thursday. There I was, seated between Morrissey and Prince, then I have a vague memory of Mozzer whipping out a hip flask that smelt like paint stripper and… nothing. It’s a blank. I don’t even know who won. I awoke in a cemetery this morning.

The Saxxies, of course, are the annual fan-voted awards for short films made in Valve’s Source Filmmaker. They’re short flicks about TF2, Portal 2, and Dota 2, but with the care Valve puts into developing characters and recording odd edge-case lines of dialogue, folks can be jolly creative.

… [visit site to read more]

Each year, the Saxxy Awards rally the Source Filmmaker community together to make funny, dramatic, wonderfully-animated short films. The best time to watch those videos is when the winners have been announced and the list of submissions has been whittled down to the very best. The second> best time to watch those videos is right now, when all the submissions are in, viewable, and you can be one of the people to decide which are the very best.

… [visit site to read more]

Super Time Force launched on Monday, while we were off enjoying the holiday (I sat in a park in St. Albans in torrential rain with a bottle of wine, because reasons), so have a reminder that it’s out.

The time-twisting shooty platformer’s port from Xbox is fancied-up, as one would hope. Capy Games bunged in a new mode and more levels, renamed it to make a most entertaining acronym, and also teamed up with some other folks who play loose with time, Valve. See, Super Time Force Ultra (what wags!) on Steam also has Zoey from Left 4 Dead and TF2′s Pyro and Saxton Hale.

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Team Fortress 2‘s Steam Workshop is a font of creativity, introducing all manner of new models and maps to the now seven-year-old multiplayer shooter. But what if you’re tired of new guns in-game and instead want more real world materials you can stick to your wall or wrap around your meatform?

Valve are now accepting Steam Workshop submissions for proposed TF2 merchandise. Anyone can submit a design, the community will then upvote/downvote as is their wont, and then Valve will swoop in and select the most popoular few for production and distribution via WeLoveFine. As always, the original creator receives a cut of the profits, and players get new dresses to wear like the one above.

… [visit site to read more]

Every year Valve hold the Saxxy Awards to encourage and round-up the very best Source Filmmaker creations, and every year the submissions are almost solely set inside the Team Fortress 2 universe. That’s perhaps because they’re Valve’s most expressive characters and because TF2′s manic world is most easily bent towards drama and comedy, but for the just-announced 4th annual Saxxy Awards, Valve are encouraging submissions from other games. Mainly: Portal 2.

… [visit site to read more]

Early Access? For a game that’s been out since 2007? Yes, that is, in fact, a thing that can exist. Valve has decided to leave Mann Corp’s doors ever-so-slightly ajar so that fans might run around on Team Fortress 2‘s magical murder playgrounds before they officially hit live servers. So it’s a series of test servers for maps, essentially. Details below.

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It’s day two of Team Fortress 2′s latest hyper-elaborate update, Love and War. Yesterday we got love in the form of dances and other taunts/expressions, but today, well, I’ll just let Futurama handle this one. This isn’t just any old regular war – the sort you might find at the bottom of the bargain bin at your local War Mart – though. No, no, this war has, um, bread. Oozing green teleporter-mutated bread, because Team Fortress 2′s sense of humor is nothing if not incredibly> specific. You will find deet meats for this information sandwich below.

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