Category: Half-Life 2

Never-Before-Seen Valve Ad For The Orange Box Is Unearthed

April 2nd, 2012 · By Vic · 23 Comments

Back in 2007, the launch of The Orange Box was a pretty big deal. You had Episode Two, the long-awaited TF2, and the very intriguing Portal – all in one box, for just $50. So Valve went above and beyond in promoting the thing. They partnered up with EA for the retail release and for promotional activities. And only last year for Portal 2, did Valve start handling its own promotional stuff. But it seems like their earliest experiments with it go all the way back to the time of The Orange Box. And only now can we actually see what they were up to.

A Call For Communication’s “Mosaic for Valve”

March 13th, 2012 · By Vic · 18 Comments

The Call For Communication movement’s “A Red Letter Day” event was a pretty significant success. Getting over 13,000 fans playing Half-Life 2 almost 8 years after its release in the hope that Valve will notice is no easy task. But now they’re moving on to bigger things – with a pretty big, ingenious and impressive event that Valve will notice. Because it’s something we’re going to hand over to them, as a part of Half-Life history.

New Half-Life Choreography Files For Doctor Magnusson, Found In Portal 2

March 1st, 2012 · By Vic · 20 Comments

There’s been a couple of times when we spotted references towards EP3 content within another Valve game’s content. In fact, the Combine OverWiki has an entire article on the subject. It hasn’t happened in a while, though. It was getting a bit dull - exploring the depths of game folders in hopes of finding… whatever, can be surprisingly enjoyable. And it turns out it’s happening again!

Jack “Gauss” Monahan’s “Valve Portfolio”: Fantastical Visions Of The Half-Life Continuum

February 28th, 2012 · By Vic · 10 Comments

To call Jack “Gauss” Monahan a mapper or a modeller would be doing him and his skillset a grave injustice. He’s an artist, a game designer, and I can only assume, a few others. He occasionally posts his thoughts on his blog, Gausswerks: Design Reboot (as well as the Gausswerks forums), and his very own Twitter. Back in 2009, he served as the level design lead for the time-travelling cult hit Darkest of Days, and at the moment he’s cranking away on Animal Memory, an indie shooter of his own design, built on the Unreal engine.

He’s also a Valve enthusiast. He once did an excellent dissection of Left 4 Dead and TF2′s character designs, and long ago he created a delightful little design reboot of Half-Life, titled: ”Doctor Ivan Just Won’t Die”. But we’re going to take a look at something he once cooked up way back in 2005 – a gallery of artwork and game designs based on the Half-Life 2 universe. These constitute his early “Valve Portfolio”, which represented a section of a larger job application he sent to Valve.

As you can tell from the enticing feature image, it looks really good. Well, let’s take a closer look, shall we?

Operation Black Mesa And Guard Duty, The Two Gearbox Expansion Remakes Join Forces And Merge Into One Team

February 28th, 2012 · By Vic · 13 Comments

If there’s one thing Source modders love to do, it’s develop Source Engine remakes of… well, just about everything, including the original Half-Life 1 series. We all know about Black Mesa Source, the HL1 remake/poster boy for vaporware development - but there are two mod remakes in development for Gearbox’s classic HL1 expansions as well: Operation Black Mesa (in development since mid-2007) and Guard Duty (in development since early 2009).

Courtesy of PlanetPhillip, we now have an official reveal from the teams behind OBM and Guard Duty – they have joined their forces, pooled their efforts, and merged into one development team: Tripmine Studios. Let’s check it out!

Podcast 17′s Interview With Merle Dandridge – The Voice Of Half-Life’s Alyx Vance

February 18th, 2012 · By Vic · 7 Comments

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!

Vic’s Thoughts On: Dear Esther, Or Why A Video Game Can Be Much, Much More Than Just Entertainment

February 14th, 2012 · By Vic · 16 Comments

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!

An Entire Map Of Half-Life 1… Drawn From Memory; And More Half-Life Cartography

February 7th, 2012 · By Vic · 4 Comments

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?