Between all the running and riding in little boats and more running you end up covering quite a lot of ground in Half-Life 2! What makes this somewhat unique, though, is that you do it all in immediate succession.

There's no cutscenes where you jump in a helicopter and reappear 1,000 miles away, or hitch a ride on a tank for a few days. Every area you enter leads on from the one you just left, meaning it's possible to draw up a map of the entire game.

Like this one! You lose most (well, all) of Half-Life 2's beauty, but that's more than made up for by the sheer scale of the thing.

That, and the dawning realisation that you end up spending the majority of the game going the wrong way.

You can expand the map into a readable size by clicking on it, but to get the full thing you can hit the link below.

HL2_overview [unleashthedog, via PC Gamer]

A is for alien, B is for Bomberman, and C is for Chun-Li. Do you know your video game ABCs?

Artist Fabian Gonzalez knows his ABCs. He's created a series of colorful character-specific alphabets featuring superheroes and Simpsons characters ,and now he focuses his talents on creating 26 video game themed letters for your viewing enjoyment. Can you name them all?

Be sure to check out Society6, where Fabian's creations can be purchased as prints, hoodies, and t-shirts.

Practically anything said institutionally by Valve, or especially by its co-founder, Gabe Newell, is parsed for any potential meaning to the unannounced, eternally awaited Half-Life 2: Episode 3. So when Newell, in an all-access feature charting the development of Portal 2, said the game was "probably" the last one with any isolated single-player experience, Half-Life fans got really jumpy, given how story-driven that game is.

Newell sat down for an interview with a high school student who asked him to clarify those remarks. You can listen to the entire interview in that video above. It touches on many interesting subjects, but regarding single- vs. multiplayer, here is what Newell said, verbatim:

I think what we're trying to talk about is the fact is not that we're not thinking about single-player games-Portal 2 I think is a pretty good example of what we've learned over the years in terms of how to create those [single-player] experiences.

It's more that we think that we have to work harder in the future. That entertainment is inherently increased in value by having it be social, by letting you play with your friends, by recognizing that you're connected with other people.

Single-player is great, but we also have to recognize that you have friends and wanted to have that connected as well.

It's not about giving up on single-player at all. It's saying we actually think there are a bunch of features and capabilities that we need to add into our single-player games to recognize the socially connected gamer. Every gamer has instant messaging, every gamer has a Facebook account. If you pretend that that doesn't exist, you're ignoring the problems that you're taking on.

It's single-player plus, not ‘no more single-player.'

Later on, Newell is asked about the possibility of a direct crossover between Portal and Half-Life, as both games are set in the same continuity. Newell did not directly confirm such a crossover will take place, but he did say that setting both games in the same universe has a purpose.

"When you're thinking about games, you sort of want to think about how characters collide. In their current forms, Chell and Gordon are very similar characters. in terms of the phenomenology of their experiences. ... In terms of having these people coexist at same time and same place, that's ... part of the reason Portal and Half-Life are in the same universe."

Gabe Newell Interview: 5/2/11 [by user theythatare, YouTube]

A Reddit user by the name of vism did, so they emailed Valve boss Gabe Newell. And actually got a response, if not from the big man himself.

The man in question, who is displayed during the opening credits of Valve games (and can be seen in the clip above), sadly remains a mystery, but the story of how he (and the other "intro guy", with a Valve stuck in his eye) got the gig opening some of the greatest video games ever made is still an interesting one.

Valve veteran Ray Ueno explains:

I worked with Gabe and team to develop the "guy in the logo" back when we first named the company, Valve (circa 1995/6), and needed to develop the visual brand vocabulary to go along with it.

Interesting that you should ask about the bald guy. Back then, the casting agencies we were using to find models only had "supermodel"-type talent. We kept requesting "heavy-set", "normal" models, and they kept sending us "beautiful", "thin", "perfect" headshots to review.

So, we finally asked them to just go out on the street and pull "everyday Joes" who were more "interesting", "common", and for the bald guy, "kinda big, heavy-set, and bald".

They went out to the streets of Seattle's Broadway district, took tons of polaroids of the types of folks we were looking for, and brought the shots back to us. We selected the bald guy from the batches of "off-the-street" polaroids-he was literally pulled out of a coffee shop or book store!

A few days later, we brought him into studio and shot the image you now see at the beginning of our games. We also shot a 2nd image of a different guy with a valve in his eye using the same process (you might remember him as well-attached below). The two comprised the "Open your mind. Open your eyes." concept for our initial brand, respectively.

It's been very long since we did that work, so we don't know who the models were. And the fact that they weren't professional models, would make it very difficult to find them-if not impossible for the bald guy (not facing camera).

If by some freak occurrence either of the gentlemen in question (or any of their friends or relatives) are reading this, get in touch! It'd be great to put a name to a face. And see what you look like without large metal valves sticking out of your head.

The guy in the Valve splash screen [Reddit]

From an interview with Valve Software's Chet Faliszek from Beefjack.com:

With regards to the co-op campaign, how does it fit in the Portal universe?

Chet Faliszek: It has its own separate story, with its own characters, and takes place after the single-player game. GLaDOS has a little thing for you to do, and I'll say no more to avoid spoilers! The story in co-op really has to step back a little bit because you need room for people to breathe and talk. They have their own story that's competing against it, you know? They won't go: "Remember when I was playing P-Body and you were Atlas and I pulled the light-bridge out from underneath you?" They're going to say: "Hey, remember when I pulled the light-bridge out from underneath you, and you fell off into the goo?" There's more of a personal story that comes from that.

Of course, no one's quite sure how the overall Portal 2 story will be woven into Half-Life, but there is some speculation (among a few random gamers that I've talked to) that part of the reason we haven't heard anything about Half-Life 3 at all is because events in Portal 2 will heavily affect the Half-Life universe. I'm starting to get a totally speculative hunch that we'll be hearing about Half-Life 3 soon after Portal 2 is on shelves. (Wishful thinking?)

Related: Valve Plans to Bridge Portal and Portal 2 With a Surprise, Keep Gordon Freeman Out Of It [Kotaku]

William "Robotwo" G from Sweden reimagines Half-Life as a Master System game. There's shades of Batman: Caped Crusader here. Which is a very good thing.

A group of hardcore Half-Life fans with a pretty good camera, twelve hundred bucks and years of their lives have completed their short film Beyond Black Mesa, a tribute to Valve's dystopian sci-fi shooter.

If you've seen the trailer, you know what to expect. Explosions. Attractive members of the resistance. It has so much more too: Half-Life gun sounds, Combine soldiers getting their skulls crushed with crowbars and the return of Opposing Force protagonist Adrian Shephard. Twelve minutes of Half-Life inspired action will make the wait for Half-Life 2: Episode Three go by so much quicker.

Beyond Black Mesa [YouTube - thanks, Tom!]