Branching storylines have become quite the thing in games lately, but most games don't take the idea much farther than "choose option A to get ending A, choose option B to get ending B."
That's not the case with The Stanley Parable, a smart, twisty new Half-Life 2 mod by Davey Wreden. The first time I played it, I finished it in a few minutes and thought, "Well, that was neat."
Then I played it again, just to see what would happen if I did things differently. And that was when I figured out what The Stanley Parable is actually all about.
There's a lot more to say about this mod and the many fun ways it experiments with video game storytelling, but I'll save that for later. For now, you should really just download it (link is below) and see for yourself.
Just remember: when you finish, you're not finished.
The Stanley Parable [ModDB]
Starting today, Steam is celebrating id and Bethesda's Quakecon with deals on their games. Sales will change daily from now until August 8th. Today's deals include discounted games, free-to-play Brink, and in-game specials for TF2.
Quakecon 2011 Steam Sale [Steam]
The latest update to multiplayer shooter brought with it a few secret surprises, in the form of unique items inspired by those used in games like Quake, Fallout, RAGE and Brink.
OK, so with QuakeCon this week it's a Bethesda marketing stunt (having published the last two Fallout games and owning id Software, the creators of Quake and RAGE), but these are cute enough to walk right on by that.
There are five items in total: the Sniper's Anger (based on the Resistance in Brink), the Soldier's Original (based on the rocket launcher from Quake), the Engineer's Pip-Boy (based on, well, the Pip-Boy from Fallout) and Wingstick (based on a weapon from RAGE) and the Heavy's Tamrielic Relic (based on a helmet from Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim).
No word yet on how you actually get hold of the items.
August 3, 2011 Patch [TF2 Wiki, thanks wtfisthisidonteven!]
The very talented Ellen McLain, a singer by trade but best-known to you lot for her voice-acting work in Valve games, is apparently returning this week to her most famous role: that of bitchy artificial intelligence GlaDOS from the Portal series.
A tweet from McLain's husband, John Lowrie, reads "Ellen is going in Tuesday for a new game and more Portal work".
We could read a ton into that brief sentence, but that would be both premature and highly speculative! Which when it comes to Valve games is downright pointless. Instead, we'll just warn you: that new game could be anything (she's a Valve favourite after all, working on more than just Portal), and more Portal work could be anything from DLC to a cartoon to an upcoming line of ringtones and talking bobbleheads.
Still. It's Portal something, and for most of you, that'll be good enough!
John Lowrie [Twitter]