Given what some games could smell like (blood, dirt, hellspawn hordes), this is far better than you'd think. Over on Etsy, a haven for geeky goods, seller Bubble and Geek has created a lovely line of fan-favorite home goods. These scented candles draw inspiration from fan-favorites like Doctor Who, Star Wars, and, yes, video games.
I have to admit, I'm glad the Game of Thrones-inspired "Khaleesi" candle smells of the orange and cinnamon one might find in Qarth and not the, um, rich scent of a horse-riding horde galloping under a desert sun.
A single button push takes a Portal 2 cube on an incredible journey through Ben Perry's astounding Rube Goldberg-inspired custom level.
Portal 2's brain-twisting puzzles prepared players perfectly for creating their own convoluted level creations. The recently-released level editor has been getting a strenuous workout by some incredibly brilliant minds.
Ben Perry took a couple of hours to put this all together, limited only by his imagination and the number of objects the editor allows players to work with.
And to think this is only the early days of the tool. It's almost scary to imagine what's still to come. I'm all tingly.
Portal 2'slatest DLC doesn't just include the chance to create your own maps, it includes the chance to run around them hearing the delightful JK Simmons - aka Cave Johnson - command, dictate and berate you senselessly with almost half an hour's worth of new content recorded just for the level creator.
If you think sitting and just listening to this for 25 minutes is boring, boy, you're about to miss out.
WARNING: There's technically some spoilers in here.
Two of gaming's best and most beloved video game studios are no longer squabbling about the word DoTA. The makers of World of Warcraft and the creators of Half-Life jointly announced in a blast to the press today that they have reached "a mutual agreement regarding concerns over names of upcoming products."
Peace in our time!
The agreement: Valve will still be making a game called DOTA 2 and use the DOTA term commercially (translation: on things you can buy). Blizzard will keep using the term non-commercially for Warcraft III and StarCraft II maps.
Blizzard is changing the name of its planned Blizzard DOTA custom game in StarCraft II, which will now be called Blizzard All-Stars. That name, Blizzard's Rob Pardo said, "better reflects the design of our game."
This resolves what was becoming an ugly trademark dispute between two fan-favorite game studios.
The DoTA term, short for "Defense of the Ancients", was a fan-made mod that was made in 2003 for Blizzard's Warcraft III. It involved a specific multiplayer game-type that involved players protecting opposing waves of minions. DoTA games have been surging in popularity thanks to games such as League of Legends and Heroes of Newerth. Valve entered the fray in 2010, raising eyebrows with their intent to team up with a top DoTA developer to make a game they'd call DoTA 2. They began pursuing a trademark of the DoTA term. Blizzard objected and recently tried to block the trademark, a few months after announcing that it was making its own official Blizzard DoTA game featuring characters from the companies popular series like World of Warcraft and Diablo.
It was getting awkward. Valve was issuing complaints like this to the U.S. government's trademark office: "Valve seeks to appropriate the more than seven years of goodwill that Blizzard has developed in the mark DOTA and in its Warcraft III computer game and take for itself a name that has come to signify the product of years of time and energy expended by Blizzard and by fans of Warcraft III."
Now it seems resolved between these two heavyweights.
Blizzard's Pardo: "Both Blizzard and Valve recognize that, at the end of the day, players just want to be able to play the games they're looking forward to, so we're happy to come to an agreement that helps both of us stay focused on that."
Valve's Gabe Newell: "We're pleased that we could come to an agreement with Blizzard without drawing things out in a way that would benefit no one. We both want to focus on the things our fans care about, creating and shipping great games for our communities."
The update live now for Super Monday Night Combat introduces Steam Trading (among other upgrades and fixes), which means you can pickup crossover costume items in both this title and Team Fortress 2 for the super low price of nothing.
Four items kick off the "Friendship is Sharing" campaign for Uber Entertainment, two for each game. You unlock the hats and uniforms by reaching certain levels in Super Monday Night Combat. Here is the lowdown.
• The Gunslinger Hat, worn by Sniper in TF2, is unlocked when you get Agent Level 5 in SMNC.
• The Engineer Uniform, worn by Combatgirl in SMNC is yours when you get Agent Level 10.
• The Soldier Uniform and Rocket Launcher is Megabeth's in SMNC once you get Agent Level 15.
• Finally, Pyro will get the Assassin Helmet if you can reach Agent Level 20.
More details, plus full update notes, at the link.
Man. I do like a good Portal 2 remix. This one, however, is on another level.
It was created by Will Bedford, and I've been listening to it all day. For real. Maybe it's the happy pop chord progression. Or the kicky beat. Or the triumphant Cave Johnson breakdowns. Or the double-time section.
Or I don't know, the whole thing. Give it a whirl, you'll see what I'm talking about.
Here's another quick one, called "You Monster." Excellent. Sing it, Cave!
It was almost four years ago that we first saw that incredible trailer for Black Mesa: Source, which looked like a full update of Valve's classic PC game Half-Life. It truly was incredible—hell, I rewatched that trailer just now and I still feel incredulous about it. It basically looks like the first game redone with the graphics, animations and visual effects of Half-Life 2.
I like Valve's official Half-Life: Source, but it sure doesn't look anything like what the folks behind Black Mesa: Source were showing.
That trailer, however, aired back in 2008. Since then, it's never quite been entirely clear the state of the project—and it certainly hasn't come out.
Over at Rock, Paper Shotgun, reporter/superhero alter-ego Nathan Grayson's got a great two-partinterview with Carlos Montero, the project lead of Black Mesa: Source.
Talking with Montero at length, a picture begins to emerge: a picture of a talented team that perhaps bit off more than they could chew, overpromised early, and then realized that what they were attempting was much, much more difficult than they'd even guessed.
As Montero points out, Black Mesa: Source can't actually be a straight-up port, since that is illegal—instead, it's become a full-fledged remake, featuring over 2,000 custom models, 2,000 choreographed scenes and over 6,500 lines of dialogue, by Montero's reckoning.
"We have always wanted Black Mesa to be Valve-quality," Montero tells RPS. "Turns out that is very tough to do from every angle of development. Imagine that!"
I shudder to think of the challenges presented by doing this—it's like trying to recreate a symphony not just by transcribing and re-writing the parts, but by re-making every instrumental performance one by one. No, you know what? It's much, much harder than that. It's like doing a shot-for-shot remake of The Godfather, but first you have to build the cameras Coppola used from spare parts. Then, you have to build the actors in a lab.
Montero says that they made a mistake by overpromising early, by hyping people up with that incredible trailer. "If I could go back in time and prevent us from releasing the media and hyping up the public the way that we did," he says, "I would. In the end, all of that hurt us more than helped us."
He's quick to assure people, however, that they are still working on the project, and they haven't turned their back on anyone. They've just learned not to promise release dates or overhype their product. Here's Montero:
This hasn't been about polish for polish's sake; it's been about learning all there is to know about how to make great games, and using it to make a great game. There aren't any shortcuts there. We just had to learn by doing, by making mistakes, by screwing things up and starting them over again. Sometimes along the way we have learned things that fundamentally changed our way of thinking, and sometimes we have gone back and fundamentally changed parts of the game to reflect that.
So no, I don't think it is tempting to over-polish at all. We are all eager to get the game out. We are dying to get this game out and show everyone what we've been working on, but we aren't so eager that we would sacrifice our values and what we believe will make this game great. We aren't going to put out something that isn't good enough for us.
Hmm, that actually sounds a bit like another game developer I can think of… maybe Montero's team has more in common with Valve than even they know.
And when, pray, will this incredibly ambitious project finally come to some sort of playable fruition? Montero will only go so far as to say "soon-ish."
Hey, it's more than we've got to go on with Half-Life 3.
This has to be the coolest thing I will see today. I need at least two to stand guard by my apartment.
Not only does this currently uncased Portal turret track its victims with a camera, but it can even shoot (non-lethally) at them. And it'll inquire after you if you've left its sights. The only thing left for this Penn State University student is to create a stock of them so they can sing in unison. How cool would that be?
We've seen some ridiculous creations in games where level editors are involved. Portal's version of this that was released yesterday is already beginning to show some interesting level designs of its own.
This Portal 2 player managed to construct a binary adder using the familiar in-game items. The DLC's item limit forced him to end the project with a binary readout, though he was hoping to take it further with a numerical display.
This might not be as monstrously complex and powerful as some more ambitious Minecraft projects, but I imagine this is just the beginning.
You know those really cheesy songs that you're not supposed to like, but they're too catchy not to? Jason's familiar with the concept. For him, it involves his obsession with "Call Me Maybe." And he's not even embarrassed by it.
Although the context is something I can totally stand by—namely, anything and everything Portal—I'm not too terribly keen on the musical stylings. But it's just...too...damn...catchy.
