There are few things in my life that make me smile more than Podcast 17. While that sounds suspiciously like a toothpaste advertisement, I can assure you that Podcast 17 is no mere toothpaste! No, sir – it is a terrific podcast! That I happen to co-host. Which makes it even more terrific when Podcast 17 interviews Merle Dandridge, the voice of the one and only Alyx Vance. It’s a pretty lengthy interview, and Glenn manages to get a VERY interesting reaction regarding EP3 out of Merle at one point. It’s really informative, so go check it out!
Category: Half-Life 2
At their core, video games are essentially entertainment - designed to be fun. They accomplish these two objectives through all sorts of ways, within the various genres of the gaming world. Most of the games we play are mere entertainment, created to be fun. But recently, many have debated whether or not video games are truly art. But this debate goes beyond gaming itself: for instance, can we classify the Roundhay Garden Scene as art? While we’re at that, can we classify the Mona Lisa as entertainment? Is all entertainment actually art, or is all art somehow entertainment? It’s a multifaceted argument that might be going on for a very long while. I, personally, am of the conviction that, yes, video games are art. Of course, there are some games that simultaneously represent both entertainment and art (Portal 1, Half-Life 2). There are also some games that lead more towards the art side, but they still maintain the basic framework of a video game. If they didn’t, we’d have a tough time calling them video games.
But in comes something that might shake up the way we look at video games. That something is Dear Esther. Originally designed as a free HL2 mod in 2008, Dear Esther was a terrific, if flawed experiment regarding interactive, non-linear storytelling conveyed through a video game. Almost 4 years later, the same team, plus one master level designer, have returned to remake and reimagine Dear Esther, almost from the ground up, as a independent Source game. That which was primitive is now beautiful, and a whole new audience could be exposed to this interesting creation. But is it more than just an experiment, or, perhaps, is it more than just a video game? Well, read on to find out!
Black Mesa. The place where the world went to hell. In the original Half-Life, we only see a relatively small part of it, but even so, what we do see amounts to an underground complex the size of a small city. Even though HL1 was never really known for its logical level design, many fans have tried to put together a cohesive map of the complex (such as this top-down overview by “Sterd”; this composite model by “Ripa”; and this realistic 3D map by David Dryburgh). But no one has ever tried to put a map together completely by memory, and by hand! What’s that? They have? Christ, is there anything the community hasn’t done in the time it took Valve to make HL3?
Call For Communication’s “A Red Letter Day” Is Successful, With Over 13,000 Fans Playing Half-Life 2
Late last month, the Call for Communication announced “A Red Letter Day”, a group event that would bring tens of thousands of Half-Life fans together in playing Half-Life 2, for half an hour on the 4th of February. That was yesterday, and it turns out… it did!
Erebus here, folks, letting you all know about some of the new updates over at PlanetPhillip, including the release of another one of his Ville mappacks, and the announcement of a new one!
The world of digital distribution business is a wild one indeed. You know… “Dog Eat Dog”, and all that good stuff. And all that dog food s**t is starting to affect the brick-and-mortar game industry as well. Which is why in March of 2011, GameStop acquired Impulse, a digital distribution platform previously operated by Stardock. And now, Impulse is doing pretty well for itself, and in certain departments, it performs far better than Steam. But I can assure you I’m totally not talking about pricing. Steam is doing really well with pricing - I mean, who could ever say that Steam pricing sucks; and that Impulse has pricing which is… well, better? It’s ludicrous!
But I digress: there’s loads of digital distribution platforms. Some have come and gone, some are still alive after years in the business, and others have just been born. Which is why it’s so surprising that Impulse has just entered an interesting business arrangement with Valve. For the first time ever, Valve games can be purchased on a digital distribution service that’s not Steam. Read on!
![Black Mesa Source’s Soundtrack To Be Released Alongside Website Redesign “Soon Enough”, Mod Release To Follow 14 Days Afterwards [UPDATED]](http://lambdageneration.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/bm2010naawwwttt.jpg)
[UPDATE 2: Chris "StormSeeker" Horn, also on the Black Mesa team, says we "might be surprised at just how short" of a time we'll have to wait for Black Mesa. Still think nothing's going on?]
[UPDATE: Anthony "OnboardError" Stone, currently doing level design for Black Mesa... says the mod is coming "very soon", in an e-mail exchange not even one day old, courtesy of Reddit. Interesting, to say the least.]
Black Mesa (or Black Mesa: Source, if you’re old-fashioned) is a mod that needs no introduction. But we’re going to give it one anyway. It’s a complete remake/reimagining of the original Half-Life, in the modern Source engine. Best of all? It’s a completely free Source modification. It’s been in development since late 2004, and it’s only ever had one projected release date: “2009″. As we all know, they missed that date, and since then, they’ve “submerged” with regards to their PR practices, and they have reverted to the classic ”When it’s Done” release date.
Last year, back in 2011, Black Mesa’s composer and sound designer, Joel Nielsen, announced that the Black Mesa soundtrack had gone gold. This meant that work on it had been completely finished, but it didn’t mean that the soundtrack was to be released any time soon. Instead, it was stated by the developers that the soundtrack would eventually be released prior to the mod’s release, and that the mod itself would be released exactly 2 weeks after the soundtrack is released. Obviously, 2011 came and went, and while the Black Mesa devteam is still active on their forums and their Wiki, the soundtrack has, obviously, not been released. However, turns out the soundtrack’s release, and the mod’s release… might not be too far now!
June 2009 was expected to bring a Half-Life 2: Episode Three reveal by many. Instead, it brought… the announcement of Left 4 Dead 2. Outraged, numerous fans joined the now-infamous L4D2 Boycott group. And in one month, the Boycott group had rallied nearly 37,000 members, although most of them would later go on to… buy the game. As we know now, the Boycott didn’t work out… at all, although many thought it would never work out, from the start.
Now, the slumbering Half-Life fanbase has awoken. And it’s been one month since the “A Call for Communication” movement moved outside of the Steam Forums, and got its own Steam Group. Unlike the Boycott, this is a peaceful, polite, and intelligent way of doing things. And it might just work. Well, let’s see how many members they’ve got, shall we?
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