I remember when games used to be obstinate, unyielding creatures. They’d prance through the room, coated in all manner of dust and bugs and glitches, and they just didn’t care>. Now, though, they heed developers’ every beck and call post-launch. The things can practically grow extra arms on command. Case in point: SWTOR’s latest patch, which brings it up to not-quite-light-speed with modern MMOs and, of course, Team Fortress 2′s recent case of Pyromania. So then, let’s have a gander at what’s on the menu.

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Edit: Errrrr, also a massive update for TF2. Details below.

So, that Valve/Adult Swim collaboration. As many speculated, it will be the Meet the Pyro video and, yes, ‘will be’>. It was foolish of us to think that the video would just appear without any foreplay, so instead there’s the image above, which tells us that something else will happen on June 27th. I’m guessing that actually will be the video, unless they choose to release one frame every couple of days, some hidden at secret locations around the world, the precise position hidden in Morse code messages transmitted on secret websites that can only be found by reading tea leaves through a specific kaleidoscope constructed in 1924.

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Ready for something to come out of nowhere and hit you right in the nose? OK, here it comes. Get ready, brace yourself, and… it still hit you. Because that’s how things that defy the law of conservation of energy to suddenly materialize on our plane of existence work. I believe a more succinct term for it is “surprise.” Anyway! Turns out, it’s an announcement – as things we report on often are. Something Valve-related is making its way to famed purveyor of cartoons with curse words>, Adult Swim. But what could it be? WHAT?

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The first time I ever played Portal was damn near magical. Each room I walked into held promise of some diabolical new assault on both my brain and the laws of physics, but I made them look like child’s play. At the time, I was certain it proved I was a genius with an IQ so huge that even my bulging genius brain couldn’t count that high. Of course, I soon came to find out that everyone> experienced Portal that way. So I wasn’t a genius. But the puzzle designers at Valve were.

To this day, Portal stands as the most masterful example of invisibly intuitive teaching I’ve ever discovered. It slowly builds upon itself – sneaking new techniques into your repertoire until you’re snoozing through puzzles that would’ve short-circuited your synapses maybe 20 minutes earlier. Is it a fit for classrooms, though? My first inclination would be to think not. I mean, it’s not exactly a hyper-accurate physics simulation – even with science jokes making up the bulk of both Portal 1 and 2′s brilliantly witty dialogue. That, however, is precisely the point, according to Valve director of education Leslie Redd and designer Yasser Malaika. It’s how> Valve games teach – not what they’re teaching – that could help save a rusty, way-behind-the-times education system.

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Year after year, many schools struggle to teach kids basic math and reading skills. Portal, on the other hand, taught my childlike, directionally-crippled brain a slew of hyper-complex spatial reasoning abilities. In about 30 minutes. So I guess maybe> it could be a good fit for the classroom. And hey, what do you know (aside from a Portal-imbued slew of hyper-complex spatial reasoning abilities)? Valve seems to think so too. The resulting program’s been dubbed Teach With Portals, and it’s just the beginning of Valve’s new Steam For Schools initiative.

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Remember when Valve said it was looking to hire all sorts of people from every walk of life – from lowly programmers to the giant-bow-tie-wearingest of fungineers? Well, one bit in there stood out: “And if you’re a first-class economist,” Michael Abrash wrote, ”please> check us out. You’ll have a sandbox with 40 million users, and I promise you’ll never be bored.” Well, apologies to RPS’ substantial> audience of budding TF2 hat economists. That position, you see, has officially been filled.

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Portal has been a surprisingly prolific source of inspiration for many high quality products, so a short fifteen minute film based on its universe isn’t that big of a deal any more. However, what I love about Synthetic Pictures‘ Aperture: Lab Ratt (as spotted by The Sixth Axis) is how, in making a film based on Valve’s Lab Rat comic, how successfully they portray the evil of GLaDOS.

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The rumors of Black Mesa‘s death have been greatly exaggerated. It has, however, been over three years since Gordon Freeman went for an all-too-brief jog in his shiny new hazard suit. No, gaming’s favorite man of zero words and 1000 crowbar swings per minute hasn’t suddenly affixed a chainsaw to his gun or moved his adventures to an unnamed wartorn Middle Eastern setting, but a lot’s changed.

Once upon a time, this was Valve’s firstborn with a fresh coat of paint. Now, though, the Black Mesa team’s pouring its own blood, sweat, and tears into one of gaming’s most sacred holy grails – for better or worse. Only time will tell. But how much time? One more year? Two? Half-Life 2: Episode 3 (aka, a billion)? And what state is the remake in now? I spoke with project lead Carlos Montero about all of that and more.

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The universe has a weird fondness for improbable coincidences. Name your franchise Half-Life, and it takes half a lifetime to come out. Create a robust mod based around a game in that franchise, and its development mirrors that of its crowbar-wielding, hazard-suit chic father series nearly one-to-one. The lofty promises, the incredibly lengthy periods of radio silence, the incessant cries of “vaporware” and “it’ll probably be a huge letdown” – all of it.

Maybe, though, that part’s not such a coincidence. To hear project lead Carlos Montero tell it, Black Mesa‘s an obsessively redesigned, rebuilt-from-the-ground-up love letter to Valve’s opus. The goal, then, is to improve> on something already considered by many to be perfect. And that, as it’s turned out, has been a lot harder than Montero and his constantly fluctuating team first assumed. So, first up, we’re delving into what exactly has taken so long – especially in light of 2008′s rather stunning trailer that promised a release date of, er, three years ago.

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The appearance of Valve’s Gabe Newell on the inaugral Seven Day Cooldown podcast seems to have generated all the headlines in the world. Apple’s new boss didn’t really visit Valve, DOTA2 will use a brand new kind of free-to-play and, now, why ‘Ricochet 2′ has been so long coming. There is, I’m afraid, absolutely no way that ‘Ricochet 2′ is a veiled term for another game rather than a sequel to weirdo Tron-like jumpy multiplayer mod Ricochet. And doubly-definitely not a game that might have a ‘Half’ in the title. No sirree. (more…)