Gamer, geek, Israeli gay teenager, high school student, C#/Java developer and poet.
Catching Elephant is a theme by Andy Taylor
Team Fortress 2’s The Heavy sings Baby so much better. Honestly, I think the chorus and Scout’s rap bit are the best parts. ^^
This is the trailer to Beyond Black Mesa, an awesome, fan-made short film inspired by Half-Life. This is done with a budget of no more than $1,300. (Pick up your jaw off the floor, you’re drooling everywhere. Oh, you didn’t drop it? Watch the video first.)
This is one film I can’t wait to see, and one I’d definitely pay to watch in the cinema. The quality is top-notch and the effects are great.
Valve’s Source Engine Gets Depth-of-Field And Improved Dynamic Shadows
Valve have just announced a new free game called “Alien Swarm”, which was developed by a group of talented designers who were hired from the modding scene. According to Steam, “…the game thrusts players into an epic bug hunt featuring a unique blend of co-op play and squad-level tactics.” The game looks pretty interesting, but the part that caught my eye was the rather quiet announcement of several new features for Source, including Depth-of-Field, improved dynamic shadows and a (real) third-person camera.
These new features will be part of a new version of the Source SDK. In addition, the game will include the full code base for the game and the code for the updated features for Source. Neat, huh?
[Source: Valve’s official Twitter account and Alien Swarm’s Steam store page]
I forgot to share this a few days ago! I can’t wait for Portal 2!
Half-Life 2, Episode One and Episode Two now on Mac with Cloud support and Achievements!
EDIT: Valve just made the Orange Box on sale for 30% off! If you have yet to get Portal or if you’re interested in Team Fortress 2, I recommend you to get the entire Orange Box package for $20.99. If you get the three Half-Life 2 games separately, it comes down to $18.17. So it’s your call: “Should I pay an extra $2.72 or shouldn’t I?”
Good news! Half-Life 2 and the two episodic sequels: Half-Life 2: Episode One & Half-Life 2: Episode Two have just been released on Mac with brand new Steam Achievements for Half-Life 2 & Episode One and Steam Cloud support for all three! Start your game on one platform and continue it on the other! In addition, all there are sold for 30% off their original price for a limited time! That means: $6.99 for Half-Life 2 and $5.59 for Episode One and Episode Two each.
I recommend you to buy all three installments right now. Half-Life 2 is a very, very good game and so are Episode One and Episode Two.
In fact, 4 games out of 5 in Valve’s Orange Box package have been ported to Mac so far. Now all that’s left is Team Fortress 2.
Congratulations Mac gamers! Half-Life 2, the sequel to Valve’s highly-successful debut title, is coming to Mac OS X today. Expect a whole other bunch of games to come as well, seeing as it’s a Wednesday and each Wednesday a bunch of Steam titles get released for Mac.
Note that even though Half-Life 2 is a sequel, you do not need to play the original game to understand the plot. I played Half-Life 2 without playing the original Half-Life and had no problem whatsoever. But I suspect Valve may even release the original Half-Life as well, since they’re supposed to release a bunch of new games for Mac today.
Steam’s Early Holiday Sale
See Steam’s Early Holiday Sale page, containing each day’s deals.
Steam, Valve’s great content delivery system for games, is having a five-day sale of games for the holidays. Every day 6-8 other games are discounted for 25%, 50%, or even 80%. I personally adore Steam (I’ll write my opinion blog post in the coming days) for its ease-of-use and great prices, since games are usually sold for 150% their U.S. cost here in Israel, and because Steam has great weekend and midweek deals. Today’s deals are Left 4 Dead for a mere $7.49 instead of $29.99, Resident Evil 5 for $24.99 instead of $49.99, SPORE for $19.99 instead of $39.99, Ghostbusters: The Videogame for only $9.99 instead of $19.99, Trine for just $9.99 instead of $19.99, Borderlands for $33.49 instead of $49.99, Order of War for just $9.99 instead of $39.99.
Of the above, I personally recommend Left 4 Dead (4.5 stars), Trine (4 stars) and SPORE (4 stars). I’ve played those three and can definitely say they’re great games: Get Left 4 Dead if you like action-packed shooters that unlike the other 80% don’t take place in a military environment. Get Trine if you like puzzle platforming games, and have a thing for retro sidescrollers. (It’s a beautiful ”3D sidescroller”.) Get SPORE if you like smart simulation games.
(This post has been redone from a link with a description, since my theme apparently does not support link descriptions. I’ll add it in myself later. >.>)
Store your game progress in the cloud - for free
Valve introduced a sub-service of their content delivery system Steam last November called Steam Cloud, which is basically a system to store your saved games on Steam servers as well, so that you could pick up where you left off on any other PCs you might have, without needing to do anything. The service sounds well, but sadly, only supports a limited number of games, most of them from 2008 and later. Games like Half-Life 2 and Portal were excluded with a notice from Valve that they will be supported in the future. In addition, Steam Cloud only supports games purchased and/or activated through Steam. But with a little willpower and about 5 minutes, one could make his own Steam Cloud without repurchasing games or even paying a single dime. You don’t have to be a computer expert, too; you just need to have an advanced knowledge of computers and not have the irrational fear of black-background-white-text console windows many people have.
