You remember those strange Scientology interviews with Tom Cruise that swept through the internet and media awhile back? Sure, those were kind of creepy, but what could make them even creepier? Well, Tom Hall set out to answer that question by taking the exact same dialogue and putting it into the trans-human mouth of a Combine soldier from Half-Life 2. The result is a disturbing tale told from a Combine soldier that’s actually one a pretty damn good fan video. It makes the idea of a Half-Life movie actually seem like a good one (and even better if it happens to involve Tom Cruise).

Throw a rock in any direction on the internet and you’re bound to hit a Half-Life 2 mod. The majority of them are multiplayer mods, but that isn’t to say there aren’t quality mods for those who like to play on their own. With that in mind, Scott Sharkey over at 1UP has assembled a top 5 list of the best Half-Life 2 single-player mods.

5. eXterminate

This is about as minimalist as Half-Life can get. The maps are essentially big, empty square rooms, and there’s little cleverness to be found in the enemies. But the premise is pure gold: infinite machine gun ammunition and infinitely spawning zombies. The waves keep coming faster, punctuated by the occasional air-drop of a random ridiculous superweapon. Bonus: It’s got a level where you’re swarmed by hundreds of harmless Dr. Kleiner clones. In terms of sheer guilty pleasure, it’s hard to top a burly brawl against hordes of elderly pacifists.

Check out the full list at 1UP and get downloading.

The first piece of concept art for the Half-Life 2: Episode 3 has surfaced thanks to the 2008 IntoThePixel E3 art gallery. Half-Life 2: Episode 3 will be the final chapter in the HL2 series, and it has been rumored that the game would be heading to the PS3 despite the hem-hawing and side-stepping Valve has been doing to avoid the question.

While trying to maintain that they are not “PS3 developers”, IntoThePixel shows information for the game beside the concept art, and the PS3 along with the presumed PC and Xbox 360 is listed. While Valve will only be present at E3 2008 to discuss Left 4 Dead, I am sure they will still get bombard with HL2:Ep3 questions the whole time, especially now that this bit of info has come to light.

The concept art was created by Valve artists Ted Backman, Jeremy Bennett, and Tristan Redford and shows  Gordon Freeman within a large Citadel-like environment with a Combine Advisor looming overhead.

Thanks: Shacknews

NCsoft’s Brian Hudson, a developer on Richard Garriott’s Tabula Rasa, has contributed a developer diary on Velon Hollow. This upcoming instance will introduce two new features for Tabula Rasa; item sets and zombies.

Imagine that an evil alien race has developed a serum capable of suppressing your personality and trapping you in your own mind. The chemicals make you stronger and more aggressive, and the sight of human flesh makes you hungry. As the last of your sanity slips away, you are only slightly aware that your friends and family have become your latest meal!

It’s a great concept but it doesn’t really fit in a science fiction game. It’s definitely in the survival horror genre. It would be a great mod for Half-Life… oh wait that’s Left for Dead. Maybe they should concentrate on developing more of the sci-fi aspects.

Who wants to play I was a teenage zombie… Well I do, but not enough to commit to Tabula Rasa over one instance.

You can download the Tabula Rasa – Velon Hollow Developer Diary“>Tabula Rasa Velon Hollow dev diary courtesy of FileFront.

via FileFront

Rumors that Half-Life 2 Episode 3 will be feature at E3 2008 have proven to be just that. Valve’s marketing boss Doug Lombardi has officially announced that the next episode in the Half-Life 2 franchise will not be at E3 this year. He did promise fans a playable version of Left 4 Dead would be on display at a Valve hosted suite.

The zombie FPS Left 4 Dead has been generating quite a bit of hype of its own. Valve is confident the multiplayer co-op game will be groundbreaking.

Valve managing director Gabe Newell has said, “What Counter-Strike did for multiplayer action games, Left 4 Dead will do for co-op games.”

Left 4 Dead is currently under development by Turtle Rock. Gamers can expect Valve to publish the title this fall.

Get ready to go flame-crazy in Team Fortress 2 this Thursday when Valve releases the second major character update for the masked, flamethrower-wielding class. Three new weapons and a total of 35 new achievements for the class will be included in the update, which will also include two user-created maps.

A website dedicate to the update will be going live Tuesday afternoon at 11AM PDT (2PM on the east coast), so we should hopefully have more information on the specifics then. For some reason I get the impression that the new weapons won’t be unlockable — at least not in the same way the Medic’s were. I really hope that’s the case, but the Medic update really ruined the game for a period of time there. Valve clearly underestimated people’s desire to farm achievements.

If that’s not really your thing, a new “Meet the Team” video will be going live — Meet the Sniper, to be more specific. Be sure to check back tomorrow and we’ll have the video for you to enjoy.

As we reported last week, Valve will be introducing “some significant changes” to the class, regardless of your having the new weapons. No word yet on what those might be, but once again, the new Pyro Update website will hopefully clue us in and get us prepared for the new wave of Pyros we’ll see later this week.

This upcoming weekend will also be a Team Fortress 2 Free Weekend, starting at 11AM PDT on Friday. That’ll give you a chance to try out the community maps and Pyro changes.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FFscNQmCyJQ[/youtube]

Despite being my favorite character from the series (no doubt thanks to The Smoking Man from The X-Files), I always found myself frustrated that I could never kill G-Man when he popped up in various places throughout the Half-Life games. He was always JUST out of reach, which is probably what made it so tempting to try and get him, but it was never possible.

Luckily, that’s why we have Garry’s Mod. It’s not quite the same, but the ways in which you can kill him should provide more than a sufficient amount of satisfaction.

Quite a few maps and mods are used, all of which you can find in this Facepunch Studios forum thread.

The video was strangely satisfying for some reason, but like a commenter on digg said, “That ****er just won’t let go of his briefcase.” Ain’t it the truth.

We know that Valve is raking in the cash from games sold through Steam, but Valve prez Gabe Newell has revealed that within the next several months, they’ll be making more from digital distribution than they do at stores, according to GI.biz.

“We see sub ten per cent growth rates in our core, packaged retail business,” Newell said. “Right now we’re seeing close to 200 per cent growth in the alternative ways of connecting with customers.

“It will actually pass over in the next three months, how much of our business is coming from retail versus how much is coming from other channels,” he said.

Many gamers would still prefer to have a physical copy of the game that they can hold. And who could blame them? A reporter pointed this out, to which Newell said, “At this point, people have had Steam long enough that their experience is that Steam is more reliable than physical media.”

Add in support for Steam Cloud and the ability to access your games and saves from any computer, and it’s hard to really argue with him. Lose or scratch a game disc, or misplace the CD-key, and you’re suddenly out of luck.

Newell also addressed the concept of Steam distributing non-game related media, and how Valve is looking at that in the long-term. “It’s something that we’re looking at,” he said. “Right now we’re focused on games… but I think as we get more mature, there’s no reason that we wouldn’t.”

One thing that got me very excited about that possibility: Newell talked about the potential to distribute Firefox, where Steam Cloud could be used to allow you to access your bookmarks and settings.

Valve has announced that it will be introducing a new feature which will allow remote storage of all game data for games purchased through Steam, its digital distribution platform.

While Steam already allows you to play games purchases through the service on any PC, the inclusion of Steamcloud will extend that service to game data. This means that all progress saves, keyboard bindings and option settings from certain games will be able to accessed as well because all data will be automatically saved to back-end servers and kept forever at no cost to the player.

There are no storage restrictions or quotas and even video replays and screenshots taken from your games will be saved on the servers. For example, say you deleted your games off your computer along with all the save files, screen captures, videos etc, and sold your system. Two years later you buy a new system, log into Steamcloud and voila! All of your game data, purchases and the like are still there waiting on you to pick up where you left off.

The CounterStrike, Half-Life (the full series), Team Fortress 2 and the upcoming Left 4 Dead will be the first games in t he Steam catalog to offer the Steamcloud service.

Steamcloud is part of the Steamworks set of developer tools and Steam’s developer John Cook stated that many more updates are planned for the future such as:

• Auto-updating of your computer’s device drivers
• Social features including events and calendar systems
• Official community pages for games
• Pricing localized to your country’s currency
• Amazon-style recommendations and shopping cart systems
• More payment options.

For more information on this upcoming service check back with us often.

Via: GamesIndustry.biz

PC gamers have been enjoying the new Goldrush map and Medic weapons for awhile now, but it looks like Xbox 360 gamers should be getting their taste fairly soon. Doug Lombardi, marketing director for Valve, recently stated that the company was looking at bringing a content update to the 360 version soon and that details should become available in the near future:

“We’re looking at bringing the Goldrush and the new achievements and stuff out to the 360. How and when is still sort of being determined, on pricing and that kind of stuff. On the PC it’s sort of wide open, you can release stuff whenever you want. On the console there’s a little bit more of a pathway. What we’ve been waiting for is until we had a critical mass of new content to put out. So we feel like we’re kind of there now. We’ll probably be making some announcements pretty soon on what will happen with the 360 stuff.”

Good news for 360 owners. Sadly, if you’re a PS3 owner, you might be missing out on the extra content. Lombardi also mentioned the possibility, saying, “Unfortunately I don’t know that any of that will make it to the PS3.” Either way, I am so glad I got the PC version myself.

Via ShackNews