half-life posts

There's just a couple of days left before Steam ends its massive annual holiday sale event. Remember that nearly every game is on sale on the download site to some degree and that even more savings can be found with special publisher bundles. From now until 1 pm Sunday you can get the following PC games with even deeper price cuts.

Company of Heroes series - Save 75 percent off all games in series
Football Manager 2011 - $26.79
Zeno Clash - $3.75
Medal of Honor - $29.99
Swarm Arena - $2.50
Divinity II The Dragon Knight Saga - $19.99
Half-Life series - Save 75 percent off all games in series or 85 percent if you own Left 4 Dead 1 or Left 4 Dead 2.
The Settlers 7 - $24.99
AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!! - A Reckless Disregard for Gravity - $2.50
Bionic Commando Pack (Bionic Commando/Bionic Commando Rearmed) - $12.49
Mafia 2 - $12.49

Valve generated a lot of hype for its decision earlier this year to port a number of its more recent games like Half-Life 2, Team Fortress 2 and the Left 4 Dead games to the Mac platform. But that's still not the case for some of its older games including the original Half-Life game. But the truth is that there was plans to release a Mac port of Valve's debut game in 1999. In fact it was nearly complete before the game's original publisher, Sierra, pulled the plug.

That's the story told by Rebecca Heineman, who worked on the programming of the port for Logicware. In a new and extensive interview at Gamasutra she states, "We were about three weeks from master. We just had some minor bugs here and there, just a little polish needed to be done." Then pre-order sales numbers came in from stores that totaled about 50,000 copies. While that was huge for Mac games in 1999 that wasn't good enough for Sierra who made the decision to cancel the Mac port. Despite pleas from other publishers that they would publish the port, Sierra also said, "No" to those requests. Heineman states, "As a result, we were told to take the code and bury it. And it's been buried away since."

[Via Blue's News]

Super Meat Boy for the PC finally has a release date. The too-cool-for-school indie platform game from the two man dev studio Team Meat will be out for our platform on November 30. Pre-orders via Steam will be priced at $10 rather than the game's regular price of $15.

Steam owners also get their own exclusive character; the headcrab from Valve's Half-Life games (not quite an indie game but it's still cool). And if you get the non-Steam PC version of the game, don't worry. It gets its own exclusive character; a Goo Ball from 2D Boy's World of Goo game. There's still two more PC characters from the indie world that are yet to be revealed for Super Meat Boy's PC port.

Anyone already pre-ordered and/or pre-loaded Call of Duty: Black Ops for the PC? Or are you getting one of the console versions instead? Just curious ...

• Check out this fan-made Half-Life based animation video. Pretty cool stuff.
• This story reminded us that Metal Gear Solid Rising is supposed to be coming to the PC ... someday.
• One of the worst kept secrets in the game industry will be revealed during Spike TV's Video Game Awards in December.
• You can now listen to last week's oral arguments for and against the California game law from the US Supreme Court.
• More proof of Hitman 5's existence.
• And in the super-nerd category; Minecraft LARPing.

Last July a trailer for a Half-Life universe fan short file called Beyond Black Mesa hit the interwebs and we definitely liked what we saw. The action-packed trailer was made even more impressive by the fact that it was made by a circle of fans for only $1,200.

This week a second trailer for Beyond Black Mesa was released which showed us even more of the fight against the Combine. It also makes us want that Half-Life 2 Episode 3 game even more (how about it, Valve?). The film's official web site says the full short movie has been making rounds on the film festive circuit. Hopefully they will release the full version of this project on the net sooner rather than later.

The team at Gaming Heads have already created two impressive collectible statues based on games from Valve, including the Tank from Left 4 Dead and the Heavy from Team Fortress 2. Today Gaming Heads revealed a new Valve-based statue and it goes all the way back to 2004 for its inspiration.

It's the Half-Life 2 version of the infamous headcrap zombie, built with lots of detail in a 1/4 scale statue. Pre-orders for the new product begin on Monday October 4. Pricing has yet to be revealed but based on the company's previous two releases you can expect to pay north of $200 for the headcrap zombie.

[Via Kotaku]

Just a few days ago, we reported that one of the creators of the long-in-development Black Mesa mod for Half-Life 2 said it would finally be released before the end of 2010. Now a new article previews the mod and states that the Source Engine remake of the original Half-Life is " ... more or less complete - albeit with lots of tweaking to go - right up to the Xen levels."

The web site AtomicPC got a chance to play a build of the mod thanks to the fact that one of its regular forum members works as a texture artist on Black Mesa. While a gallery of screenshots from the mod has since been removed due to a mis-communication with the mod's project leads, the article praises what was seen in the build, saying "The combination of attention to original detail, and new material provided by the modern team is impressive." Hopefully that means the mod will finally be released in the near future.

[Via Kotaku]

Download the Black Mesa HD gameplay trailer at Big Download (104 MB)

It's a known fact that good movie adaptations of PC and video games are almost non-existent. And that's why Valve has decided to turn down tons of requests from Hollywood movie studios over the years to make an official Half-Life movie. But here's the kicker; Valve may decide to make a movie adaptation of their first person shooter franchise themselves.

PC Gamer's web site has posted up a portion of its upcoming chat with Valve's head man Gabe Newell that will be featured in the UK edition of the print magazine. Newell states that when the original Half-Life was released, the developer took meetings with Hollywood writers and directors on Half-Life movie proposals. Newell states, "And their stories were just so bad. I mean, brutally, the worst. Not understanding what made the game a good game, or what made the property an interesting thing for people to be a fan of."

So Valve has decided that it should make any Half-Life movie and Newell says the various Team Fortress 2 "Meet The Team" character class movies they have created, "is us trying to explore that." It should be interesting to see if Valve actually goes ahead with these kinds of plans.

It's perhaps one of the most anticipated mods for any PC game and we've been waiting a long, long time for its completion. It the Black Mesa mod that has been trying to do a full graphical remake of Valve's 1998 shooter Half-Life with the much improved Source Engine.

In late 2008, a truly spectacular trailer for Black Mesa was released that showed that the team was serious in its attempt to bring us a modern looking Half-Life. The trailer promised that the mod would be released in 2009 but that year came and went with no Black Mesa love. However in a forum post on the mod's message boards one of the mod's team members basically wants fans to go into a coma until the "end of 2010". Will this be yet another broken promise or will we finally get a chance to play the original Half-Life with some truly updated visuals? We are not holding our breath but we are still hopeful.

[Via Rock Paper Shotgun]

Download the Black Mesa HD gameplay trailer at Big Download (104 MB)

It's always interesting to see how game journalists picks for the good PC games compare with the regular gamers. This past week the UK edition of PC Gamer magazine revealed both the readers and their own editorial picks for the 100 best PC games of all time.

The team at the magazine picked Ion Storm's classic sci-fi shooter-RPG Deus Ex as the best PC game ever made, followed by a trio of Valve-developed games (Half-Life 2, Team Fortress 2 and Half-Life) in the number two, three and four spots. The poll for readers gave the number one spot to Half-Life 2, followed by Fallout 3, EVE Online and Deus Ex. There were definately some fan-run efforts to put certain games on the readers poll list (Wurm Online in the number 20 spot? We don't think so) but overall its a solid look at the best PC games have to offer.