Upon wandering the internets for things that involve very hot women wearing next to nothing, I happen to stumble upon Joe Pekar’s fanart drawing of Half-Life’s Gordon Freeman. Joe’s two published artbooks, “Strawberry” and “Naughty Girls!” feature drawings of very beautiful women in different poses and situations. That’s why this particular fanart stuck out even more. Why would a man stop drawing beautiful women to pay homage to Gordon? The text under the picture in his Myspace page tells us why:

“Gordon Freeman from Half-Life. my favorite game .”

Great job Joe. Now, please get back to drawing those hot babes!

Remember that Flash version of Portal that came out shortly after the actual game? Now it looks like the developer behind that, We Create Stuff, has ported the levels from the Flash game into the actual game. That means there are now 40 new maps you can work your way through in Portal,which is probably the closest thing we’ll get to an expansion pack for awhile. Plus, the developers are saying these maps will add up to 3.5 hours of extra gameplay, which is about the time it took most people to beat Portal the first time. To download the new maps, just click the link below, and then be sure to check out the details of the file for instructions on how to get them working.

I can’t even explain how excited I was to have GTA IV and the new Goldrush update for Team Fortress 2 come out on consecutive days last week. Aside from suddenly getting very sick and not being able to play much TF2, the biggest disappointment about the update was the inclusion of cheats that could be entered into the console which would unlock all of the new Medic achievements and, by extension of that, the new medic weapons.

It goes without saying that allowing people to cheat and unlock those achievements is a real bummer. If people want to get their hands on the weapons without unlocking the achievements, that’s fine – just set a small requirement, like play Medic for 10 hours. But giving away achievements was a lame way to do it.

Luckily, Valve issued an update to the game this week which removed the console commands, although players who have already nabbed the weapons still have them. Valve claims they know who used the cheats, so hopefully everything will be straightened out and I can get on with upgrading my bonesaw.

via Steam News

Valve has been amazingly successful at a time when everything it does is against current industry trends. The developer has managed to remain independent while other indie companies have been swallowed up by huge corporations like EA. Valve continues to focus on PC games while some companies have given up on the market altogether. Despite this, Valve is still making their own way in the games industry.

Valve’s VP of marketing, Doug Lombardi lays Valve’s business strategy out on the table; talking about its Steam service, games and the state of PC gaming in this interview with GamesIndustry.biz.

Seeing Valve succeed helps me keep my faith in the gaming industry. Their are so many studios that are consolidating and conforming at this time. Games are increasingly less innovative sticking close to a tried and true formula of sequels and variations on a theme. Valve keeps pushing the envelope to bring gamers fresh dynamic titles. As much as I admire the studio I truly hope they aren’t the last of the independents.

Valve’s marketing director, Doug Lombardi, recently revealed one interesting bit of information when he said that they approached Microsoft to see about placing their hit game, Portal, on the Xbox Live Arcade, and were rejected. According to Lombardi:

“We’d love to do that. Right now it’s something we’d love to do. I’d love to sell Portal on Xbox live. [But] the platform holders aren’t doing that right now. There’s a size limit and all kinds of other things. We’ve asked them, we said we were open to it. So it’s a decision for the platform holder and how they want to make the games available and how much bandwidth they want to [allow].”

Lombardi did indicate however that the game could make it’s way there in the future, saying, “I think it’s a trade-off, we’ll see it one day.” I suppose Portal is short enough that it could fit in with the XBLA library, but it still looks more like a full-fledged retail title at a glance. It might be cool if they really did put the game up on Xbox Live, but I’m betting anyone who was interested in the game has bought The Orange Box already.

Via GamesIndustry.biz

Portal was undoubtedly one of the biggest hits last year, but Valve isn’t in any hurry to rush out a sequel. Doug Lombardi told Eurogamer yesterday that they’re aiming to make the inevitable Portal sequel as revolutionary as Half-Life 2 was to the original Half-Life.

“In typical Valve tradition, it won’t be Portal with different colours,” said Lombardi. “I think that when you hit something like that, you have two choices: you can quickly replicate it and stick it out there – do the opportunistic thing and cash in on it; or you can do the crazy thing like we did after Half-Life was so successful and go off and try and say, ‘Okay, that was revolutionary, so its successor has to be equally as revolutionary.’

“That’s the spirit I think we’re approaching it in,” he added. “You won’t see a new Portal at retail this Christmas because of that. That’s the trade off. People want more, but we don’t want to give them more of the same right away because that would just be boring.”

Props to Valve for standing firm and not cashing in by turning Portal into a yearly franchise. Whether you liked the game or not, you have to respect that decision.

I was such a huge fan of the first four “Meet the …” Team Fortress 2 videos, I couldn’t wait for the next one. It was a long wait, but finally, as Stephany informed us last month, the latest video is now here: Meet the Scout.

The Heavy is by far my favorite video still (cry some more!), I was pleasantly surprised that this one is good. I’m not a big fan of the Scout’s persona in the game, but how could you not laugh at him causing characters to get run down by a train and smacking a Heavy on the head?

So, which is your favorite so far?

See Also:

Meet the Heavy
Meet the Soldier
Meet the Engineer
Meet the Demoman

If you’re looking forward to the new Team Fortress 2 content as much as I am, you’ll want to take out a notepad before you start playing the video above. You’ll be treated to a guided tour of the new Goldrush map, although there’s no audio so you might want to open up Audiosurf in the background and get a TF2 track playing.

This is the first map for the new game mode Payload, where one team escorts a mine cart from one point to the next. The cart moves faster as more of the team’s players are next to it, but stops if an enemy enters the vicinity.

From the video, it looks like this is going to simultaneously be an Engineer’s paradise and hell. There are plenty of great places to set up a sentry gun, but with the nature of Payload, they’re going to have to be ready to abandon their turrets so that they can build new ones further into the level.

For me, as someone who plays mainly as a Demoman and Spy, it looks like this is going to be a great setup for spamming sticky bombs and backstabs.

Planet X Fiction Interactive, a new independently operated game development company, has announced their non-profit PC game inspired by the popular “Cloverfield” movie has hit official production phase. The game, entitled Grayshot, is due for release to the internet November 30, 2008.

“The funny thing was that I wasn’t originally much of a monster movie fan until I saw Cloverfield,” Brad Johnson, owner of Planet X Fiction Interactive states, “I really enjoyed the movie so much that I wanted to assist another group of fans that were originally planning on creating a free fan-created Cloverfield video game.

The law firm for Paramount Pictures contacted me out of the blue while we were making the game and they were surprisingly all in favor of it. But they wanted the domain I had at the time which was cloverfieldgame.com so they could use it for their official Cloverfield video game. So this altered our plans a little bit, but I think in a very good way. The new video game that we are now entering into production stage will be a huge craving for any monster movie fan, especially Cloverfield fanatics.”

The newly converted Johnson has spent a great amount of time and effort polling monster movie fans to create the concept of the perfect video game monster. The game is being developed with the source engine as a mod for Half-Life 2, so interested players will have to pick up a copy if they want to play Grayshot. Since Half-Life 2 is a great game, you’d essentially be getting a two for one deal if you don’t already own it.

Although planet X is already running a mysterious viral campaign on line, official word on the plot and the monster are yet to be revealed. That’s not entirely surprising considering it’s a “Cloverfield” inspired game.

Planet X is going out on a limb with Grayshot, working with a meager budget in hopes of attracting attention and backing for bigger titles.

“I hope this is the road to something bigger,” Brad Johnson states, “I’d like to start making many other exciting video game projects after Grayshot. We’re hoping we can get some financial support from the community through generous donations. This will definitely help us to get the game done on time and also deliver something that the real monster movie fans have wanted to see get developed into a video game for quite some time.”

If the idea behind Grayshot has you intrigued, you can find more information on the title at www.grayshotgame.com.

via OpenPR

Clearly, a lot of thought goes into the content Valve releases for Team Fortress 2. We heard for months that the Overhealer would be one of the new tools at Medic’s disposal in TF2, but it was scrapped when they felt it simply didn’t balance well. Valve finally has announced the final list of new weapons that Medics will soon be able to employ, and they certainly sound like they’ll help make the class more fun to play.

The Blutsaugher
For players that earn one third of the 36 new medic achievements, they will be given a new syringe gun. Called “The Blutsaugher,” this new weapon no longer has the ability to score critical hits against an opponent. Instead it will draw health from enemies each time a syringe hits. Especially useful as a weapon to retreat away from the fight while staying alive.

The Critzcrieg
Once a medic has earned two thirds of the achievements, they will be granted “The Critzcrieg.” This new medigun uses its ubercharge not for invulnerability, but to give its recipient 100% chance to fire critical ordinance. Medics and the player they are charging need to be careful though, because as much fun as it is to fire critical rockets as fast as you can, the other team will see what you’re up to and try to put a quick stop to your plan.

The Ubersaw
For the determined medic that has earned all 36 of the new achievements, they will find themselves the proud owner of “The Ubersaw,” which will take damage done in melee attacks and convert it directly to ubercharge. Four hits with this new weapon will fully charge whatever medigun the medic has equpped.

TF2 director Robin Walker spoke briefly with Shacknews at a Valve party last night, and he explained that, in addition to new weapons for the other eight classes, new maps and achievements are also high on the priority list.

We’re still pushing on new maps as well, because obviously map-makers aren’t terribly involved in this stuff, but our programmers are crushing away on the big new achievements. Aiming for around 35 new achievements for each class, and the three unlockables. We’re also going to be looking at ways that players can get items other than achievement unlocking. We really want everyone to sort of have that fun of choosing that trade-off, and obviously that gets more interesting as you get more items and so on.

And of course, as always, we’ll be seeing how the community reacts to these. That’s another reason why we like doing staggered releases, why we ship as fast as we can get done, because that way we learn as we go, instead of building all these achievements at once and then finding out that our entire achievement design philosophy is broken.

I’ve been on a Team Fortress hiatus as of late (there’s simply too much to play!), but there’s no doubt in my mind that the new Medic gear and the Goldrush map will suck me right back into TF2.