The reveal, and subsequent beta release of the Source Filmmaker has ushered in what may be a new age of machinima film-making. For now, it might only seem like an endless onslaught of Meet the Heavy parodies, but very soon, we’ll start seeing the good stuff coming to light. Unless it’s already happened. In which case… well, read on!

Portal 2 isn’t the biggest game around – it has a length of 6-8 hours, which some fans were initially disappointed by (compare it to HL2’s length of 10-15 hours). But by and large, P2 is a pretty huge game, considering its puzzle game heritage, and especially when it is compared to its 2007 predecessor, which barely clocked in at 4 hours.

And it has such an intricate game structure, that the average player is likely to miss many aspects, and perhaps hidden details of the experience, on… well, just about every playthrough he embarks upon.

But as it turns out, there is a way to see exactly what makes Portal 2 tick. Read on!

Ever since the NECA got involved with producing Valve-licensed merchandise in June of last year, they’ve been releasing a steady stream of swag, taken straight out of the Valveverse. But there hasn’t really been anything of note – anything that really captured my attention. Until now, that is.

After over one year in development, the release of Left 4 Dead 2‘s next official (and free) DLC pack, known as Cold Stream, is close at hand.

Mother of god. Oh – be sure to watch Meet the Pyro before you read this.

At long last!

[UPDATE 2: The Picasa portfolio has apparently been taken down, but we’ve still got all of the original images, right here. Check them out below.]

[UPDATE: We’ve managed to track down the original images to Valve artist Andrea Wicklund’s Picasa portfolio. The images are real, and they were all uploaded in mid-March 2008.

We have now uploaded high-quality, watermark-free renditions of the concept art, including their original, unmodified filenames, given by Andrea herself. Check them out below!]

Well, isn’t this turning out to be an eventful week.

What’s next in Team Fortress 2’s three-day Pyromania Update, set to be released tomorrow? Read on!

Oh, snap.

[UPDATE 3: In a suspicious new blog post written on the official TF2 blog by the Pyro, Valve cleverly uses Morse code to convey a simple message: “Monday“.]

[UPDATE 2: The codes have been deciphered, and the mysterious image has been revealed to be a 2-page transcript of a discussion between Saxton Hale and 4 United States Senators concerning America’s reserve of Australium, and the whereabouts of Poopy Joe – for the time being, it appears that this phase of the mystery event has ended. Check out the image, and find out more from this event summary, on the Steam Forums.]

[UPDATE: A third update just came out for TF2 earlier today. Crafting together 2 Banana Peels will yield an intentionally placed error message, that contains special numeric values (including hex codes), unique for each player. It is believed that by getting enough of this unique data together, we can assemble a PNG image.

In conclusion, get playing TF2, and get two Banana Peels through random drops (they’re very common, so just play a bit and you will get them). Craft the peels together, write down the resulting error message, and then send your unique error data to this data dump. The future of TF2 might just depend on it!]

When it comes to TF2, is Valve ever not up to something?