Steam has seen a lot of changes take place over time, progressing from a simple store to buy games, to somewhere selling software and movies. From this coming Friday, 30th September, you will be able to read the first graphic novel to launch on Steam. The first chapter of the Half-Life themed comic, Half-Life A Place in the West has been available online since 2015, but will be coming to Steam with new pages. …
I was browsing pop-culture standout, Rolling Stone and the top article on their ‘Feature Wall’ was a piece about Half-Life 3, the MIA continuation of Valve’s premier series. You know the legend of Half-Life 3 is serious when a site like Rolling Stone takes a look. …
There was a moment in the new (and awesome by the way) Doom which instantly reminded me of Half-Life. The moment came when I entered the core of the Argent Energy Tower, and I was sent back in time to Anomalous Materials in Half-Life. Bear with me, and I will explain all after the break. …
Nick has been talking a little bit about horror games recently, it’s made me think about my struggles with horror games, or even just mildly scary games.
It all goes back to 2004, twelve years ago and three different games. There are stories I could share about some games that have been released this decade, but I’ll leave you with these tales for now… …
The all new Call of Duty sub-series, Advanced Warfare lands next Tuesday (or Monday if you have a super-special Day Zero edition), and as is the way with the modern gaming world, we’ve already had the launch trailer. All that is left is the wonders of the live action video. Hit the break to see Taylor Kitsch and Emily Ratajkowski (who and who?) fight through Lagos in 2059 with some scenes that remind me of Half-Life 2. …
I’m not a fan of machinima – what little I have seen has a tendency to consist of crude jokes and internet memes filmed in the medium of Half-Life and Halo. But this week, however, someone brought my attention to something that completely changed my outlook on what combining filming and gaming can do.
It emerged on the Steam forums a few weeks ago that there was a mysterious project known as ‘Ravenholm’ or ‘Return to Ravenholm’ that was being worked on by Valve and Arkane in 2006/2007. To put a stop to any wild theories about what this game was, Valve’s Marc Laidlaw spoke to Lambda Generation to clear a few things up about the title. Read on for more details. …
After seemingly hours spent fighting my way through Combine Metro Cops and manhacks I was glad to see those cute little headcrabs launch themselves up towards my face. It was something of a relief to see these, the most basic of alien life form you find in the Half-Life universe. By the time they made their first appearance in Route Kanal I was tired of the usual Combine tricks of throwing exploding barrels at me and sending manhacks down tunnels to cut me up.
I was starting to feel that I was stuck in a world inhabited purely by Combine, humans and the occasional enslaved Vortigaunt. Of course the barnacles don’t really count, they are the most impassive of enemies you are likely to encounter in a game, by the time I came across my first headcrab, and almost immediately after my first zombie I was relieved. I knew that I was still in the Half-Life world and that I wouldn’t have to spend the remaining ten or so hours of the game fighting those bloody robotic Combine and their manhacks!
Going back in time to the original Half-Life I noticed things unravel in a similar way, just this time you go from fighting headcrabs and zombies to fighting the marines who are probably some of the best enemies in any FPS yet. You will always remember the first time you come accross the marines when you witness one gun down a helpless scientist. That is an awesome moment. Like with Half-Life 2 I always feel relieved that I am done fighting just one type of opponent.
In the similar vein to Half-Life 2 I always feel relieved and excited to find my first enemy which isn’t an alien or a Combine. However, rather than being relieved simply because of the change in who you are fighting, I think this feeling emerges for altogether different reasons. I would put it down to a sense of familiarity.
In the first game you start without knowing what these alien creatures are, once you are told by the scientists that help is on its way you start to expect help from the military, as we all know they don’t help you one bit. But they play an important role in your enjoyment of the game because you are able to identify with one of the enemies you face.
By the end of the original Half-Life you have come in some way to accept the role of the Xenian life, you are then thrown into the world of Half-Life 2 staring up at the face of Breen, observing Vortigaunt’s being used as slaves and the dreaded Combine Metro Cops. In Half-Life 2 it is the aliens which are the creatures you identify with first having battled them back in Black Mesa, you see the Combine, a faceless entity with which you cannot relate to.
Now though, I am heading back to Black Mesa so I can fight those marines one more time.
The Purchase Brothers have put together a 6 minute film set around a group of rebels escaping City 17 after Good Ol’ Freeman blew up the Citadel. The really interesting thing about it, is that this video is mind-blowingly well produced. Allegedly only on a $500 budget, I hate to think how good these guys are with their CGI knowings to be able to do most of it for free or through favours. What they did for those favours I won’t even dare to speculate, but if this is just the first of many little shorts, I’m going to be one happy gamer.
Dystopias have been around for a long time. The idea wasn’t even all the new when George Orwell first thought up Winston Smith and the rise and fall of his freedom in 1984. Or indeed when Aldous Huxley told the tale of the plight of John, the ‘savage’, in Brave New World. There is something very alluring about a dystopia, despite the very nature of the word. And we’re seeing a rise of them in games, from classics such as Abe’s Oddysee to the soon-to-be-released-on-PC Mirror’s Edge. However, I don’t think this is a particularly good thing.