In the week of Portal 2′s release, it seems apt that Valve’s games should dominate the mod scene’s output. While the range of titles you can mod these days is impressive, and so many of the tools are easy to learn, I’ve still yet to come across a moddable engine that’s quite as intuitive and flexible as Source. I can’t wait to see what people can do with Portal 2 when we’re able to mod that. It’s going to be very interesting to see the results. Onwards, then…
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If you read one article about gaming this week (er – that isn’t on RPS. Actually, even so…), it should be Simon Parkin’s excellent investigation into Axel Gembe, the chap who notoriously stole Half-Life 2′s source code long before the game was released. Not just a document of the before and after, it also explores the young German hacker’s thinking and intentions – which may not be entirely what you suspect. It’s a strangely sad and sympathetic tale which paints those notorious headlines of 2004 in a whole new light. Especially, the suggestion that being arrested by German police before US law enforcement could get to him actually did him a huge favour – in terms of learning his lesson as well as retaining his freedom despite his crime.
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Attention, citizens. After a couple of ooh-missus-I’ve-gone-weak-at-the-knees trailers, the Half-Life 2 fan-film starring Him Out Of Opposing Force has arrived. Twelve minutes of live-action Combine vs Resistance gritty warfare awaits you below. Striiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiderrrrrrrrrrrr! (more…)

The internet has too many wonderful things to look at. Stop it, internet! Stop having too many wonderful things! The sad consequence of this is that we’re sometimes a little late at showing you particular wonderful things, such as this wonderful stop-motion, papercraft animation of wonderful Half-Life and wonderful Half-Life 2 by the wonderful Stepan Yurov. They’re quite wonderful. Wonderfully, you can watch them both below. How wonderful! (more…)

We all like the art mods, right? Good – glad we’re in chin-stroking, beret-topped agreement. Earlier this week, Eddie Cameron got in touch to poke me in the direction of his new Half-Life 2 mod, Tedium, which I finally got round to playing yesterday. And, oh my, it is> interesting. (more…)

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…)

Listen up, near-forgotten supporting character fans: Half-Life: Opposing Force’s Adrian Shepherd is back! Just, y’know, unofficially. I suspect it’s the only way we’ll ever see anything else of the Gearbox-developed add-on’s soldiery hero-mute – and it’s also a snazzy way to see real life human beans interacting with Striders, Combine police et al. Beyond Black Mesa is set during the Combine occupation of Earth, and was made by a bunch of HL2-lovin’ film-makers with $1,200 made from their day jobs. Shoestring, then, but going on the trailer they’ve not done badly considering… Strider! (more…)

And I don’t mean games of The Road – that’s an entirely different kettle of misplaced licensing. I mean this: the road movie is a fruitful, interesting genre for film, and even TV, but what is it’s equivalent in gaming? Could it have one? Or are all linear games basically just that classic story-as-journey? Are shooters our road movies? Maybe, but perhaps there’s something in the nature of travel in videogames that makes it difficult to execute something authentically “road”. More essentially redundant thoughts below. (more…)

Valve has, without comment, released the video you’ll find below to announce Half-Life 2 for the Mac. To do so there’s brand new pre-rendered footage of Alyx, along with other Half-Life 2 familiars, which is clearly something that’s going to be worth a watch. It’s brief, it’s to promote a million year old game, but hey – it’s more HL2. Also, have they hidden any clues in there about anything else? It seems the sort of thing they’d do, and you seem the sort of person who’d be able to spot it.

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