And I thought finding Tabula Rasa for a buck was strange.

Valve has announced that the original Half-Life is officially 10 years old today. In honor of the game that essentially drove them to their status as one of the most dependable developers around, they’ve decided to drop its price down to 98¢. Of course, this offer is only available on their video game download service, Steam, and it will only last until Friday. But now anyone can check out the game that continues to top numerous “Best of” lists even to this day. Unless you’re really hungry for a Double Cheeseburger, that is.

I realize its been awhile since the last installment of The Analog Gamer and there have been a few big changes in the tabletop gaming market – Wiz Kids, one time golden goat of the plastic collectible miniature market has been shuttered by its parent company Topps, Wizards of the Coast announced it was making substantial changes to the D&D miniature product line and miniature company Rackham SA (producer of sci-fi battler AT-43) disappeared into the dust.

Things are tough all over but there is some hope on the horizon. Wizkids, the owners of the Shadowrun and Battletech intellectual properties recently signed a two year deal with Catalyst games to continue producing pen-and-paper titles in both series and apparently that will continue even after the death of Wizkids. Also there is a lot of interest from other miniature makers to acquire the HeroClix line and to continue the property at another corporation.

The refocusing of Wizards of the Coast on semi-random miniatures aimed at role playing gamers is a compromise tactic that will hopefully please both the hard core players/collectors of the miniature game and people like myself who are dedicated to the pen-and-paper RPG and prefer the ability to buy the minis we need for our campaigns rather than roll the dice and pray we don’t get too many random packs containing the Farmer and Pig mini or its equivalent.

Amongst all this doom and gloom however I find some respite in my love of the undead (I know that was an odd segue but stay with me…). The recent PC release of Valve’s Left4Dead has my gaming time filled with
hordes of the rampaging undead and with grim news impacting the tabletop hobby its hard not to feel a sense of dread. Read the full article »

Valve and Turtle Rock Studios’ four-player co-op zombie slaughterfest Left 4 Dead is now available in stores and on Steam in North America today. Players outside of the U.S. will be able to get their copy when the game launches worldwide on November 20.

In case you have not played the demo on your Xbox 360 or PC, you seriously need to download it from Xbox Live or Steam and try it out. I have not had the opportunity myself, but from everything I have heard about it from the folks around here– it is a helluvalot of fun, and that is just from people playing the PC version.

Those modders certainly are an efficient bunch. The full Left 4 Dead game isn’t even out yet, and someone’s already fused it together with Valve’s more recent online game, Team Fortress 2, to create the mod shown in the video above. Basically it allows you to play through TF2’s Dustbowl map as if it were a level in Left 4 Dead, complete with random zombie hordes, various weapon pickups, and numerous shouts of “Reloading.” I think I’d prefer the dark corridors of a subway tunnel, but this is still a pretty cool idea. If you want to give the mod a try for yourself, you can download it through this link.

With the release of Fallout 3 rapidly approaching, gamers have a few choices to make if they haven’t already pre-ordered.

Valve’s Steam News has announced Fallout 3 is now available for pre-order on its Steam digital download service. If you need the PC version and didn’t want all the swag that is coming with other pre-order bundles this would be a good way to go. The price is a straight $49.99.

Best Buy is hosting Midnight Launch parties Monday, October 27, 2008 at twelve stores across the U.S. The lines start forming at 3:00pm local time for those of you who want to practice for the Black Friday Christmas Holiday kick off. Parties are being held at stores in these locations:

Washington, DC area

• Rockville, MD – 1200 Rockville Pike
• Tysons Corner, VA – 8449 Leesburg Pike

New York Area

• New York, NY – 44th And 5th
• Westbury, NY – 1100 Old Country Rd.

Los Angeles area

• Glendale, CA – 2909 Los Feliz Blvd.
• Pasadena, CA – 3415 E. Foothill Blvd.

Chicago area

• Chicago, IL. – 1000 W. North Ave.
• Downers Grove, IL – 1432 Butterfield Rd

Dallas area

• Plano, TX – 2800 N. Central Expy.
• Fort Worth, TX – 6750 West Fwy.

Minneapolis area

• Roseville, MN – 1643 Country Rd. B2
• Richfield, MN – 1000 W. 78th St.

If one of these stores isn’t in your area or you just detest waiting in lines for several hours, Game Stop has also announced Fallout 3 Midnight Launch parties. There are 1,600 stores participating nationwide with the festivities begining at 10:00pm local time. Check www.gamestop.com to see if your local store is one of the chosen.

According to a post over on Shacknews, Valve has recently issued a slightly different set of PC requirements for their upcoming zombie slaughter-fest Left 4 Dead. The list is almost exactly the same, but if you do not have a 256MB video card installed on your system, take note because that hefty requirement has been lowered to 128MB.

• OS: Windows XP, Vista, Vista64
• CPU: 3.0 GHz P4, Dual Core 2.0 or AMD64X2 (or higher)
• RAM: 1 GB for XP / 2GB for Vista
• Disc drive: DVD-ROM Drive
• Hard drive: At least 7.5 GB of free space
• Video: Direct X 9 compatible video card – Video card must be 128 MB or more and should be a DirectX 9-compatible with support for pixel shader 2.0 (ATI 9600 or high. Or, Nvidia 6600 or higher)
• Sound: Direct X9.0c compatible sound card

In addition to the new requirements for the PC, Valve has also released some screens of the Xbox 360 user interface, one of which is posted above and the others can be viewed via the Halflife2.net forums. Left 4 Dead is expected to infect retailers and Steam on November 18.

Valve extended a tremendously helpful hand to the mod community recently when it announced that Steam would begin carrying full mods for gamers to download. Aside from making mods more readily accessible to the masses, this is also incredibly useful to gamers as Steam would keep those mods up-to-date. While the first batch of five mods were all games that required a Source-based game to run, it was announced today that mods for Red Orchestra: Ostfront 41-45 will be made available through Steam.

Tripwire Interactive’s World War 2 shooter will be on sale this weekend for just $5 (down from $20) to celebrate. Make sure to grab it before Monday so that you’ll be able to play the game’s mods at this temporarily lowered price.

The first mod to be released for Ostfront 41-45 on Steam is Mare Nostrum. It adds new weapons, maps, and vehicles, as well as new nationalities to play as. The best bit, of course, is the part where it’s free, although even if you have to buy Ostfront, you’re still getting a tremendous bargain for just $5.

Many fans of Team Fortress 2 were taken aback when Valve revealed the newest character in their series of “Meet the…” videos was in fact a sandwich. But what you might not know is the story behind the movie, which involved trimming down a four-hour epic to a minute-long short. The writing staff at Valve had devoted much of their time and effort into crafting an original script (with their names on it and everything!) only to have the whole thing scrapped be the powers that be. In this lengthy blog post, the writers re-enact the meeting between them and “the suits” that ultimately led to their master opus being destroyed:

“Could you explain to us how your script is in any way different from Predator?” asked one of the suits.

“Predator takes place in Guatemala,” Erik Wolpaw explained, using his I’m-explaining-something-idiotic-to-a-child voice. “Meet the Sandvich takes place inside a refrigerator in Guatemala.”

“Where you can hear Predator happening outside of the refrigerator,” clarified Jay Pinkerton.

“Also, Predator is two hours long,” Erik continued. “Ours is four hours long.”

“Right,” said a suit, “but only because the script includes the first half of Predator…”

We nodded.

“… then all of Road House, and then the rest of Predator.”

The whole film was meant to be a allegorical sandwich in itself! Brilliant! That’s the sort of thing they’d invent an Oscar category called “Best Use of Someone Else’s Script for a Web Video Promoting a Video Game” specifically to give the writers one.

It seems like we’ve officially hit the holiday video game surge, and Microsoft isn’t taking that lightly. As if next week weren’t going to burn our wallets enough with games like Fable 2 and Far Cry 2, Xbox Live will be getting one old and one semi-old favorite added to the list of games. The most interesting of these is probably Portal: Still Alive, which is essentially a standalone version of the hit title bundled in Valve’s Orange Box, but with some added bonuses. The XBLA version will include the original game, plus 14 extra challenge maps and six advanced maps for your extended enjoyment. The game will become available for download on Wednesday, Oct. 22.

Before that though, Xbox Live subscribers will be treated to an old favorite that once turned the term “hot coffee” into a dirty sexual innuendo. Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas will join the Xbox Originals to remind you what GTA was like before impressive physics and online multiplayer were introduced. It was a simpler time, when a man could get his character eat enough fast food to turn into a waddling mass of gangsta flesh; a time that Niko Bellic wouldn’t be able to replicate. Also, bicycles! GTA:SA will be hitting Xbox Live on Oct. 20.

Oh come on, video game companies! I’m still in the middle of Dead Space and Saints Row 2! At this rate, I’ll be stuck in front of my TV until next year just to play all the games getting released this month. Or I’ll probably just keep playing TF2 as usual…