Last night at PAX, Valve released a new collection of co-op screenshots from Portal 2. I got to thinking that you might like to look at them. In response to this thought, I’ve put them up on popular PC gaming website Rock, Paper, Shotgun. They’re below. As usual, click on them for largess. And largeness.
Delirium Wartner altered us to this fascinating snippet. Michael “Braingamer” Abbott’s day job is working at Wabash Liberal Arts college in Indiana. In the new (compulsory) Enduring Questions course they’ll be engaging with a variety texts with a general theme of humanity, across all ages. So we’ll have Gilgamesh rubbing shoulders with Poetics, Donne’s poetry, Hamlet, the Tao Te Ching and… Portal. The full story behind it is fascinating, but the core story is that a long-established (1832) college have decided that it’s worth putting a videogame on the syllabus for study. Abbott also talks about other games he considered – Planescape Torment and Bioshock – but decided on Glados’ star turn. Which does make me think… well, if you were in the same situation, what games would you put on a liberal arts reading list? I suspect I may have made the same call as Abbott. Or Robotron, obvs
Deep in the bowels of Castle Shotgun, in one of the many lost rooms, forgotten testament to Jim’s Escher-like grasp of architecture, a light flickers into existence. It takes a few minutes to fill the scene, the first flutters of red doing little to illuminate, but slowly, as the seconds pass, it becomes stronger, until finally it stays constant. Machinery whirrs into life behind it, something grand, huge, and majestic, returning to operating efficiency.
The RPS TF2 server is back online. And it’s going to be busy. (more…)
This is somewhat inspired. You recall the Golden Wrenches circa the last Team Fortress 2 update? WiNGSPANNT despised his – number 31 – but had a bright idea of how to turn its annihilation into a force for good. In short, he’s using its destruction as an excuse to raise money for Child’s Play. To simplify the whole system, the twenty highest donators will be invited to join him on a server to observe this crushing to powder of a modern day Excalibur. Inspired by this Seven (Count ‘em!) other golden-wrench owners are going to follow suit, with the whole ceremony being recorded for posterity. Hurrah! Anyway, go forth and donate, or watch this video which explains what’s going on in further detail… (more…)
RPS’ ways are mysterious. How do you get us to post about something? You stick 40k figures in it. Or Transformers. Frankly, if you put Impactor in your game we’d probably end up skinning the site in your game’s honour. Anyway – 40k models for TF2. “Coming Soon” says the Youtube-page-notes. “I miss Impactor” cries our inner six-year olds, embarrassingly. Footage follows. (more…)
Listen up, near-forgotten supporting character fans: Half-Life: Opposing Force’s Adrian Shepherd is back! Just, y’know, unofficially. I suspect it’s the only way we’ll ever see anything else of the Gearbox-developed add-on’s soldiery hero-mute – and it’s also a snazzy way to see real life human beans interacting with Striders, Combine police et al. Beyond Black Mesa is set during the Combine occupation of Earth, and was made by a bunch of HL2-lovin’ film-makers with $1,200 made from their day jobs. Shoestring, then, but going on the trailer they’ve not done badly considering… Strider! (more…)
There’s a sixty second set up time before you start a map. Sixty seconds for the defending team to hustle, slapping down sentries at key locations, setting up sniper nests and anxiously sweating as they wait for that timer to trickle down to zero. It’s tense stuff, and it makes the coming chaos so much more powerful and brilliant. (more…)
Catching up with the last few day’s Internet and I wonder how on earth I missed the wonderful dancing TF2 characters videos by Professional Animator James Benson which PC Gamer posted on Thursday. Because I’m drunk, 24-7, that’s why. God knows what Walker’s excuse is (Answer: He Is A Bad Healer). Anyway, better late than never, as Delightful Fiancée put it after the last pregnancy scare. I want you to all stand up while watching these, so you’re ready to give a standing ovation. And… (more…)
The splendid chaps over at Multiplay – who do UK-based servers for all kinds of games – have been kind enough to provide us with an official RPS server for the purposes of The Engineer Update. The IP is 85.236.100.107:27315. And if I am right this will auto-launch from Steam: steam://connect/85.236.100.107:27315
Go shoot people.
We’ve only covered the Engineer Update a little because – oh, I don’t know. When Valve have got as good as playing their community as they are, seems that you’re surplus to requirements. And this one was expertly done, with the whole collection of Golden Wrenches building up to it – with the final heroes enshrined forever in this splendid list. I especially approve of crafter #97 “I Have Very Big Balls”. That you do, my friend, that you do. The full patch notes are here, if you want to get STRAIGHT TO THE FACTS. If you prefer a more scenic route, all the new weapons, achievements and maps are detailed here. And if you prefer experience to fancy-pants book-learnin’, you can just dive into the game and play the bloody thing. And, for a little RPS local colour, here’s the 2007 vintage Go Team! article Alec wrote about the joys of the Engineer. Anyone got any initial impressions?