Isn’t it always the way – you have no Half-Life 2 maps to play and then nine come along all at once!

What exactly is The Stanley Parable? It is an indie remake of a Half-Life 2 mod of the same name, but what was that? A story? A game? A serious commentary on the nature of free will, or just an amusing mod? Even the developers make a point of not explaining themselves, preferring to provide one whimsical contradiction after another. One thing that is certain about The Stanley Parable is that it is coming soon on Steam, and you can download a demo right now.

Zombie Panic: Source will most certainly live on as its successor, Contagion, because its Kickstarter campaign has surpassed its goal! Thankfully, Contagion has joined the ranks of the 50% of campaigns that actually succeed on Kickstarter and should be ready for release this fall. But just because the game has reached its goal, doesn’t mean the adventure’s over.

So you’re playing some Team Fortress 2 when all of a sudden you turn into solid gold. You were just killed by a player wearing a tuxedo, holding a small golden statuette of a shirtless, hairy Australian man. You may say to yourself “I hate my life and everything in it”, or you may ask yourself “wait, how can I get one of those things”?

The answer, my friend, is to win the Saxxy Awards.

Update: Due to a loophole with JIRA and Google Cache, people were once again able to access Valve’s project tracker. NeoGAF user ekim managed to snap some pictures of the tracker before it was closed, showing that the Half-Life 3 group have increased in members (to a total of 46), and reveals a new group called Half-Life 3 Core, with only 10 members.

Update 2: The trademark has been removed, and we can safely assume the whole thing was a fake. As fellow writer Dhel says, there is no trademark for either Half-Life 2 nor Left 4 Dead, which further fuels the assumption.
But hey, at least we got some delicious hype out of it, didn’t we?

It hasn’t been long since the leak of the internal changelog at Valve, which confirmed the existence of Source 2 and Left 4 Dead 3.

Ignoring the leak however, we’ve gone long without any news on both Ricochet 2 and Half-Life 3 (the former which I’m personally more excited for). Well, it’s time to quench some of your thirst for news!

Ever since developers got their hands on the Oculus Rift developer kits earlier this year there has been a steady stream of incredible videos appearing on the internet showing what this piece of technology can do for video games, it was only a matter of time before someone would start working on a Half-Life mod that utilised the new kit.

I’ve seen a couple of videos of people playing Half-Life 2 with the Rift but this latest show case by Nathan Andrews has some very important differences that really change the experience from simply playing Half-Life 2 with a Rift, to actually experiencing Rift VR in Half-Life 2.

We’re currently in the process of wrapping up the latest release of Half-Life VR, which will include HL2: episode 1 VR support. This video was made in a single playthrough with my oculus rift dev-kit and razer hydra, I cropped the video to make it easier to view for those who currently don’t have a rift so keep in mind that the vertical field of view is probably twice what is shown in the video when wearing the actual rift.

Interested in giving this a shot? Check out the official web page for the mod here.

It’s been a while since the last trio of “Ville” mapping competitions ended over at PlanetPhillip.com (Beginning, Middle and End Ville) and Phillip has been busy collecting feedback about the events and making changes to enhance future competitions. The competitions charge level designers with creating a single player Half-Life 2 level in a set time period which Phillip then packs up into a handy mod for everyone to download and play. The freshly announced 3×10 mapping competition, with three separate competitions running for ten days each, will start on the 11th October 2013. Details after the jump…

This week Valve introduced us to a trio of living room orientated products that will be entering the Steam Universe in 2014.

The announcements took place as a series of countdowns which occurred on rather peculiar and cryptic webpage on the Steam Store. The page, titled as The Steam Universe Will be Expanding in 2014, presented three small circles which individually became available on Monday, Wednesday and Friday respectively.

Over the years we’ve seen some truly stunning fan-made movies, based on pretty much every major Valve game. Everything from low budget Counter-Strike videos in first person to live action masterpieces like “Portal: Outside Aperture”. One of the more famous ones, when it comes to Half-Life related films, is the Purchase Brothers’ “Escape From City 17”, a guerrilla styled short released back in 2009 as the first of two episodes, both made on a $500 budget.

Now the creators have surprised us, with a teaser for a new episode.

Two years in development, a jump from the Portal 2 branch of Source to Alien Swarm, and six months of voting by eager fans, this total conversion mod has been given the Greenlight from Valve to go on Steam!

Infra is a self described “gun free exploration game” where your goal isn’t to fight off monsters or some shadowy organization hellbent on world domination. No, you take on the role of a pencil-pushing, structural analyst fighting the war on poor construction…..whilst being trapped beneath a city with a collapsing infrastructure. As you attempt to stay alive, you will explore through the city’s underbelly and solve puzzles that will force you to make a choice: will you restore the city’s structural integrity, or ensure your own survival?