In the approach to the 10th anniversary of the release of Half-Life 2, a mass community playthrough of the game is being organised.

“Gamma Energy” is a mod for Portal which revisits the troubles of Aperture Science.

Originally released in 2010 by Christopher Dollard, the mod contains almost 30 Test Chamber levels which each feature unique and intricate puzzles, complete with turrets, acid pools and lazers.

The popular “XboxAhoy” YouTube channel, which is a member of the Machinima.com gaming network, just uploaded an excellent retrospective video analysis that explores Valve’s success with the original Half-Life.

Written by Stuart Brown, the video analysis highlights the early influences of Half-Life, such as Quake as well as the affect that Half-Life’s release had upon the FPS in genre, including the modding scene as well as Valve’s later developments with Team Fortress, Steam and the Source engine.

If you have a spare 20 minuets, it’s well worth a watch!

As Halloween approaches, PlanetPhillip.com has today announced a new single-player mapping challenge for Half-Life 2: Episode 2 entitled “HorrorVille”.

The challenge will run from 12:00am Friday 17th October to 12:00pm (GMT) on Monday 3rd November, lasting 17 days.

The theme is obviously horror orientated and entrants are encouraged to make their maps as creatively scary as possible. The rules also require submissions to feature at least one weapon and enemy or one puzzle scenario, using only assets from the Half-Life 2 series of games.

The winner will be decided by a public vote and all maps submitted to a decent standard will have the chance to be included in a free HorrorVille mod after the challenge ends.

HorrorVille follows PlanetPhillip.com’s series of “ville” mapping challenges and competitions which compile publicly submitted single-player maps into free mods.

For more information, check out PlanetPhillip.com’s announcement post.

A new crowdfunding campaign called “We Want Half-Life 3” is attempting to raise money to create an advertising campaign which will be targeted at Valve employees.

As a result of the recent public release of Steam Music, which also saw the release of the Half-Life and Portal soundtracks as free DLCs on the Steam Store, this week’s Community Spotlight features the work of DJ Anton Dubrovin (known online as “Thonidy”) who has created an awesome hour-long musical mix of the work of Kelly Bailey.

We will be doing a Q&A with the team behind upcoming fan film “Half-Life:The Downfall of Evolution”, if you have any questions about the movie that you would like the team answer, please feel free to ask in the comments below, via @lambdagen or alternatively email [email protected].

Thanks a new mod you can now play the original Half-Life with subtitles.

“Half-Life: Subtitles Mod” was only just released in July this year and enables you to play though the original Half-Life with subtitles, just like in Half-Life 2.

For this week’s Community Spotlight we wanted to feature a project known as “Steam Database” or “SteamDB” for short.

Essentially, SteamDB is an online tool which catalogues information about games and applications on the Steam Store. It acts as a one-stop shop for pretty much everything and anything that you need to know about every single release on Steam, from technical data such as “AppIDs” and “depot configurations” to sales information such as DLC listings and worldwide pricing, it even gathers live player statistics.

An animator known as Tim Hijlkema recently uploaded an amazing short film that reimagines scenes from a list of 15 popular video games, including Half-Life, Left 4 Dead and even spin-off Source mod The Stanley Parable.