Quite a lot of mod news this week, apparently, even though there’s very little for you to actually play. There’s a long-awaited update from Jurrassic Life, as well as plenty of other gubbins related to Half-Life 2, Crysis, Stalker: Clear Sky, Portal 2 and Dirt 3. That’s a lot of games! Read on to find out what’s what.
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(I was going to title the post Gordon ‘The Body’ Freeman, but I figured people would just think it was porny fanfic). james Benson, the chap behind the splendid Dance Fortress video has gone for a rather different tack for his next project. He’s cut a new trailer for the original Half-Life, demonstrating how the game might look if Freeman was a real physical presence rather than just a hand with a gun. The first-person perspective remains, but it’s now augmented with believable arms. Arms that open doors, climb ladders, prise open vents, raise to protect the face from leaping Head-Crabs and even pick up and don a certain pair of spectacles that have fallen to the floor. I would like to play this non-existent videogame.
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The extraordinary labour of love that is the Source-powered Eve Online fan movie Clear Skies has now reached its third episode. You can download that in full here. This work of machinima is one of the most extensive and dedicated I’ve seen, and it’s awesome to see that it’s still going. The incongruity of the Half-Life 2 characters in space hasn’t really lessened, however… I’ve posted a stream of the original first episode below, so those who are unfamiliar with it can get a taste. Go take a look.
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It’s been an unusually quiet week in the world of mod news. Perhaps all our humble developers have been scurrying away in front of their PCs actually getting some work done, and that’s why we’ve seen very few items of news but another collection of new releases and updates, ready for you to play right now. This week: the first Portal 2 mod, a new version of Action Half-Life 2 after several years, fan creations for Oblivion, Fuel, Battlefield 2 and – goodness me – a bunch more below the jump.
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Depending on how much fibreglass you ate as a child you may or may not remember that the last two weeks saw Valve encouraging people to use Team Fortress 2′s new editing suite to submit videos in a whopping twenty different categories. The deadline for this competition is long gone but the fun is just beginning, as now anyone with a Steam account can start judging those videos via this very link.
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I played a lot of Action Half-Life back in the day- it’s a mod which adds leaps, rolls, kung-fu and so on to Half-Life multiplayer, as well as a small collection of colourful weapons, each of which is (in theory) the equal of any of the others. It also boasted some of gaming’s most legendary map secrets. You can read my love letter to AHL here, or read my account of an expedition into one of those secrets here.

It therefore fills me with a delicate, Monday morning joy to announce that Action Half-Life 2 version 2 has been released. If you own Half-Life 2 you can get the installer here, a Linux server binary here and read some details as to what’s new and watch a trailer after the jump.
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A bunch of folk seem to have become convinced that Valve would be revealing something at E3 next month. Each and every rumour about Valve does of course involve Half-Life 3/Episode 3, and this one was no different. The long-awaited next slice of Gordonery would finally be shown at E3, whispers claimed. People became excited, but they shouldn’t have done. Valve will not> be revealing a Half-Like game at E3. They won’t be showing off their other known project, DOTA 2, either. They won’t be revealing any> kind of anything, in fact, as a mass mail-out by Valve has just confirmed that “we are not showing any titles at this year’s show>“. That doesn’t, of course, mean they won’t be showing something later in the year, but if there is anything to show it certainly won’t be then. So that’s that. Got it? Good.

Oh, I do regret writing this post now. “News: there won’t be any news.” HOT SCOOPS Y’ALL.

Where were you all last week? I turned up and no one was here, honest! What’s that? No, I’m not crossing my fingers behind my back, and you definitely didn’t see him heading off on holiday. What nonsense. Anyway, to make up for it, here’s an extra-long edition of Mod News to cover the past two weeks. This time: Crash Bandicoot, a Warcraft III art mod, a surprising number of trailers and a bizarre remake of Deus Ex…
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It’s out! It’s here! If you a) loved Portal 2 and want more and b) were one of the lunatics who claimed it was only five minutes long or c) felt it didn’t get as hardcore as it might have done, you may in one or all of those cases be very pleased to hear that the official modkit has been released – a flurry of fan-made extra game content hopefully awaits. (more…)

I remember the game that inspired Portal, Narbacular Drop, looking a bit like Minecraft, so you could say that Extreme Portalcraft – a Minecraft mod that offers new Portal puzzles, featuring everything from the portal gun to pressure plates – takes Portal back to its cube roots>. That’s a science joke! Sort of.

You can download chapter one of the mod here, and chapter two here. You can also watch of trailer for chapter one after the jump, if only to admire the craftsmanship that’s gone into this. Thanks to RPS reader Matthew “Fingers” Jones for the tip.
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