Welcome to October, via more zombie drama for Friday morning. The Sacrifice, the latest DLC for both Left 4 Dead and its sequel, is arriving on PC on 5th October. Rather looking forward to this one, I have to say. (more…)
So with the biff and swish of an amusing comic, a reason to use the Steam Wallet is born: The Mann Co. Store. It’s going to allow players to trade TF2 inventory items in-game using their Steam Wallets. So hats and stuff can now be sold off or purchased for real cash. Here’s another thing: “Additionally, community contributors will receive a percentage of sales on items they’ve created!” Ooh, you say. Hmm, I mutter, my beard aflutter.
What does it mean? And why? Well it doesn’t look like it will change the game much, aside from people being able to get the kit they want for cash. It seems to be a way of generating a bit of extra cash with purely cosmetic items, essentially allowing the completely capitalist Valve Corporation to have a reason to keep developing TF2′s free updates, aside from being nice. FAQ here. Also PCG point out the prices. That’s a pricey knife.
Quick one: the third and penultimate part of the rather impressive Left 4 Dead gap-filling online comic The Sacrifice has arrived. It’s rather gory, gore fans. Also peanut-buttery, peanut butter fans. Francis takes the spotlight this time around, though I maintain that his hair’s drawn a bit too long.
Valve also explain that these words and pictures are “the official version of events”, compared to the choose-your-own-fatal-adventure morbid giggling of the upcoming Sacrifice DLC. So there you go, crazy Wikipedia people.
Do you remember pro-animator James Benson’s dancing Team Fortress 2 characters? Of course you do. You commit everything RPS publishes to memory and, if your feeble mind fails, tattoo it onto your body. Anyway, you may remember they were all work in progress. James has finally finished the whole thing, which can be viewed below… (more…)
But which safehouseman? Or safehousewoman? That’s your problem, bucko. Your problem to solve as you play the latest DLC for Left 4 Dead on October 5. Or! As you play the latest DLC for Left 4 Dead 2 on October 5. Yes, yes, they’re doing that. >All is fair in love and released-slightly-too-soon-zombie-sequels. (more…)
That rather confusing title being a reference to the second part of The Sacrifice, the continuity-plugging comic which describes the events that lead up to recent L4D2 DLC The Passing. We posted about the first part here, and now we’re posting about this one here. It’s a 40-page tale of the original Left 4 Deaders, soldiers, and vampires. Sorta. Once again, Michael Avon Oeming takes to the pencils for this big old chunk of survivor chatter. This one includes backstory, and tragedy.
Read it! Read it with your reading organs! Then be mildly frustrated that part three doesn’t land until the 28th.
With Valve talking about making the Half-Life movie themselves, you have to wonder whether they might be well advised to hire this chap for the process. His trailer for short film I’m The Freeman looks about as good as we could hope a Half-Life movie to be. Assuming it was to CG, in the spirit of the TF2 shorts, of course. Go take a look, if you’ve not seen it already. Hell, go watch it again. I can’t wait for the full thing. (And the other movies on the guy’s site are quite something, too.) (more…)
The first part of the previously announced Left 4 Dead comic is out. It’s coming out in four weekly parts, leading up to the release of the actual The Sacrifice pack. It’s also a hefty creature. The first part is over forty-pages, so the whole thing should be getting on for 160 and actually includes details to the background of the plague itself. It’s also drawn my Michael Avon Oeming, who’s a fantastic visual storyteller and worth looking at generally. I especially like the BLAM! apocalypse. If you want to investigate further, I’ll suggest the first Powers trade. Anyway, you can read the first part of The Sacrifice here. Go! do so!
Game endings, then. They’re crap, aren’t they? Even games that tell engaging and creative stories have a habit of foundering abruptly instead of providing a satisfying finale. Maybe it’s because statistically, developers know less people will see the ending than any other part of their game, and a finale is a lot of work. Maybe it’s because creating closure is an entirely different discipline to holding someone’s attention.
We could have sat theorising in the RPS chatroom all day, but instead we collaborated on something far more proactive and arrogant: rewriting the endings of five of our favourite games. Check out our maddened riffing on Borderlands, Half-life, The Longest Journey, Morrowind and System Shock 2 after the jump. (more…)
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.