Posts Tagged valve
Perils of Summer: wallets will be eaten
Mind = blown. Not even a week after Steam’s EA week finishes, Valve announce, starting today, a massive summer sale going on until the 4th July with sales on pretty much everything in the Steam Store. There are developer packs ranging from 25% off to 75% off, two indie packages of 5 games each, and separate sales on a bunch of great games.
From the looks of it, there will be daily deals throughout the duration of the sale, so it’s going to pay to keep and eye on the Steam Store page for the best ones. These are the best deals I can see currently available.
Company Of Heroes (+ 2 expansions)
Metro 2033
Warhammer 40k (+3 expansion)
Warhammer 40k II (+1 expansion)
Titan Quest (+1 expansion)
+ more
£26.49
Call Of Duty (+1 expansion)
Call Of Duty 2
Call Of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
Call Of Duty: World At War
£21.99
DiRT
DiRT 2
FUEL
GRID
£16.99
Blueberry Garden
Bob Came In Pieces
Crayon Physics Deluxe
Plain Sight
Saira
£14.99
Darwinia
Multiwinia
Defcon
Uplink
£5.00
Individual Titles
Trine £3.40 (today only)
Bioshock 2 £9.99 (today only)
Killing Floor £3.75 (today only)
DiRT 2 £7.50 (today only)
Borderlands £14.99 + DLC (don’t get Mad Moxxie) £4.72
The Witcher: Enhanced Edition Director’s Cut £4.41
Beat Hazard £3.49
Men Of War Gold £7.49
King’s Bounty Gold £8.74
Updates coming tomorrow. Take a look at the whole sale here.
Update: Added The Witcher, Beat Hazard, Men Of War, and King’s Bounty
Counter Strike: Source gets Valve love
Posted by Sam in Gaming, Multiplayer, Shooter on 24 June 2010
Late last night yesterday, Valve released an update for their hugely popular team shooter CSS. The major aspect of this patch updated the engine used to a later version of Source, the one used by Team Fortress 2 and Half Life 2: Episode 2, that’s a lot of two’s. This new engine gives the game the framework for achievements, kill cams, dominations, and statistics a lot like (exactly like) TF2. In addition to this, it improves the visuals of the game, in particular the shading, which now has full HDR lighting which does make the game look gorgeous, especially in the outdoor maps, though at a slight frame rate drop. Gameplay aside from that is unchanged, and Valve have done a good job in making sure not to alter the feel or power of the guns.
Of course, the engine is also compatible with the Mac OSX, which doesn’t affect PC gamers a whole lot unless you also have a Mac (or a Macbook), apart from giving us some ‘noobs to pwn’ (sorry). The statistics recorded are very detailed, including which maps you’re best on, which guns you are most accurate with, number of windows you’ve shot out, et-cetera, which could prove interesting once you’ve been playing a while and racked up a large amount of data. There are 144 new achievements added, ranging from getting a number of kills with each gun, winning rounds, and earning money, most of which are achievable through normal gameplay, except maybe one which has you and 4 friends on the same server buy the same loadout.
Most of the community seem to be receiving the patch positively, with the occasional 12 year old yelling at Valve for destroying their game. Most changes don’t affect gameplay at all, and most of the additions can be turned off in the server config, including kill cams and dominations (and most servers I’ve been on turn kill cams off). Valve’s usual perfection has been swept aside for some reason when creating the GUI for the new menus, but that’s only a minor point.
A few real negative points to the update come in the fact that the updated engine has reduced frames by a rather large percentage for some players on lesser specced machines, which is a fair complaint. Even with the new HDR lighting turned off, people are reporting losses of up to 50% FPS, presumably because they have an ancient graphics card that can’t handle the new shaders. I couldn’t say for certain the performance loss I’ve had, but it’s still running comfortably at over 150 most of the time so I’m not complaining.
Finally, the updated engine has broken all surf servers for the time being, because of the small changes to the physics used, on which surf was so reliant. I’m unaware if this is permanent or a workaround could be found, which is a shame because I did like a quick game of surf now and again. Other mods such as GunGame should be working fine with possibly a quick update.
A fantastic update then, thanks Valve. We can but wonder which game is next on Valve’s update list, Half Life 2: Deathmatch perhaps? Oh, and CSS is 66% off for two days, but I hope nobody still needs to buy it *evil look*.
Update: It seems like Surf servers are back, though they don’t feel as fast as before.
E3: Portal 2 in-depth
Posted by Sam in Gaming, Preview, Single Player on 17 June 2010
Valve announced Portal 2 for the PS3 on during the Sony Press Conference at E3 this year, and to my disappointment it seemed to be Valve’s ‘surprise’, leaving us all hanging on information about what’s going on with the Half Life series. While I hope for some sort of announcement from them on the third and final day of E3, lets take a look at some of Portal 2′s new gameplay features and story, because it does look fantastic.
The game itself is split into two parts, firstly you have the singleplayer mode. This will carry on from the first game, with GlaDOS dead (or as dead as a sentient AI can be), and Chell returning for an unknown reason to find the ruins of the Aperture Science laboratories overgrown with vegetation, and GlaDOS attempting to rebuild it. The single player mode will, according to an interview with Erik Wolpaw and Doug Lombardi, be twice as long as the original Portal’s singleplayer, so an estimated 5-6 hours of gameplay. Valve will no doubt flesh this out with challenge modes of the different rooms, with leaderboards and achievements to encourage replayability.
On top of the singleplayer mode, there will be a co-operative mode of similar length, but instead of the same puzzles as in singleplayer, there will be whole new puzzles specifically designed for two players (or more?), which could turn out to be incredibly challenging. Imagine the possibilities of having two players attempting to solve the same puzzle, one player laying portals for the other to fly through, I really hope Valve make the best of this.
It’s also good to see in the videos that Valve has retained the humor of the first game, and now not only does it come from GlaDOS, but from the different personality cubes you will meet as you progress through the story. The first character you meet wants to help you escape, and for you to take him with you. He accidentally wakes up GlaDOS, which you can see in the first of the video below.
Valve have fleshed out the original Portal with a whole host of new gameplay mechanics and objects you can use to keep the puzzles fresh and entertaining. Probably the most important new mechanic is gel. Gel is, as it’s name suggests, a liquid, which is dispensed in the typical Portal fashion, and can be moved around using portals. Two ‘gels’ have been shown so far, a blue one that lets you jump further and a red one which speeds you up, both demonstrated in the videos below. In addition to gels, there are a number of new objects you can interact with, including Tractor Beams, which can be moved around with portals and used to levitate yourself, companion cubes, turrets, anything that can move. Aerial Faith Plates are similar to jump pads you find in games such as Quake and Unreal Tournament, which propel you and other objects in a certain direction when you jump on them. There are more in the videos below.
Finally, I’d just like to mention how incredible the game looks. Portal 2 is obviously using an advanced version of the Source Engine, and the art team has done a fantastic job recreating the look and feel of a destroyed and overgrown laboratory. Natural light pours in from the top of the levels, opened up by the explosions at the end of the first game, now overgrown with vegetation creating beautiful shadows and ‘god rays’ all over the levels.
This was a triumph.
Steam client beta: UI upgrade
Posted by Sam in Gaming, Technology on 24 February 2010
This was unexpected. It was something that Steam users have been crying out for for a while, and last night the opt-in beta for this redesigned UI popped onto our Steam accounts. Taking part in the beta and trying out the new UI is simple, just go to your settings and in the beta dropdown select ‘UI Update’ (if for some reason Steam now doesn’t load for you, add ‘-clearbeta’ to your Steam shortcut).
Almost every feature of the client has been changed for the better. The store now runs on a WebKit based rendering system which replaces the slow cumbersome IE integration of the previous version. The library now shows a lot more information on your games, for example who on your friends list have the game and who are playing it, as well as your achievements. Strangely, the community tab remains unchanged, which to me was one of the clunkier parts of the old client so it seems strange Valve have decided not to update it.
Not everything is hunky-dory though. It seems the new UI suffers from a bad strain of consolitis. Icons are bigger, fonts are bigger, and in general it feels like a lot of space has been wasted. Take the store for example, I keep my Steam window quite small and with the previous UI the store page generally took up twice the vertical space available in my window (e.g. not much scrolling). The new store however is at least five times as big as the window, causing a lot more scrolling. This isn’t the only case, two of the three new library views consist of huge icons which make it a nightmare for users with many games (admittedly, you can now organize your games into categories, but the interface for doing so is less than optimal at the moment).
Watch this space because no doubt Valve will be improving the UI based on user feedback.
Wallet Crippling; Could sales be a bad thing?
Posted by Sam in Development, Gaming, Technology on 23 December 2009
Christmas has apparently come early for a lot of us in the form of a massive Steam Sale that will be going on for the best part of a week. Notable games include Grand Theft Auto (£4.99), Stalker (£1.39), and Mirror’s Edge (£3.24), along with hundreds of others. However, it reminded me of a letter I wrote to PCGamer a while ago on how these sales could be damaging the PC gaming industry.
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Could digital downloads be a bad thing for consumers and developers? I’m starting to think so, and we’re already seeing the early stages of it. Read the rest of this entry »
Mod: Half Life 2 Cinematic Mod 10 Final
Posted by Sam in Gaming, Mods, Shooter, Single Player on 22 December 2009
If there was one Half Life 2 mod I had to recommend to somebody it would be this. The amount of work achieved by FakeFactory (Juergen Vierheilig) is simply staggering. A personal project of sorts, it has taken him 4 years and over $15,000 but the end was finally reached earlier this year with the final patch for Cinematic Mod 10. The premise is to unify Half Life 2 with Episodes One and Two, using the latest Source engine and enhancing the original’s graphics and giving the game a more gritty, uncomfortable look.
- Unified Engine; play the game (HL2 / EP1 / EP2) with the latest Orangebox engine / Advanced HDR / Dynamic Shadows
- Enhance the old HL2 maps with HDR, blooming, color-correction, new props
- Eliminate all blurry / Lowres textures with new Highres textures and/or Hires-Detail-Overlays
- Give the HL2 trilogy a more stressed, darker and uncomfortable look
- Enhance the soundtrack with a semi-dynamic new hollywood-style music
- Add optional HD characters
- Add more replay-value
You can download the full, final version from here (torrent) and here (http). It’s important to know before downloading that you need a 64-bit operating system and installed copies of Episode One and Two, and the original Half Life 2 to use the mod. More information, including recommended system specifications can be found on FakeFactory’s website. The mod also includes a model picker, so you can get rid of the god-awful Adriana Lima version of Alyx and restore the high resolution original version.
They say a picture speaks more than a thousand words, so here are some screenshots taken directly from the mod (click to enlarge), with no editing at all. Find more in AltTabbed’s gallery.
Official trailer
End of the War
Posted by Sam in Gaming, Multiplayer, Shooter on 18 December 2009
It’s been a fun week, but in the end one class had to come out on top of the other. The Soldier prevails over the Demoman 6,372,979 kills to 6,406,065. There are always spoils in war and this was was no exception, with the Soldier walking away with (well, in) some spangly new boots, interestingly named the Gunboats. It’s hard to believe that Demomen put up such a good fight, I’m almost certain Valve did some jiggery-pokery akin to BBC vote rigging antics. Also hard to believe is that the Gunboats will be unique to the Soldier for very long.
In other update news, two new official maps have been released, one (pictured above) is ctf_doublecross, which has a layout similar to ctf_2fort, in that there is a central open area with symmetrical ‘bases’ on both sides. The other is a simple two capture point attack/defend map that plays a bit like cp_junction with lots of chokepoints, called cp_gorge. So far I like Doublecross, the night setting makes a nice change, and there is a lot of rocket jumping action in the middle. I am a bit less fond of Gorge, but maybe that will change when 90% of players aren’t Soldiers or Demomen.
I have a lot to say about the new weapons in regard to balance, but I can save that until i’ve played a bit more with them. However, from about three hours of play as a Soldier I am finding the Chargin’ Targe rediculously overpowered. It gives the Demoman an EHP (effective health points) value of well over 300 (somebody do the math). In short, demomen are now harder to kill than a Heavy for a Soldier or another Demoman. I haven’t had a chance to try out the Direct Hit yet, apparently it’s damage is currently 50% higher than the regular launcher instead of 25% as advertised.
Oh, and crafting.
Propaganda poster competition winner (click for full results)
Team Fortress 2 WAR! Live Battlefield Report
Posted by Sam in Gaming, Multiplayer, Shooter on 15 December 2009
As these two heavyweight rivals continue to face off against each other in the week long war for the ‘secret weapon’, the Solder edges slightly ahead of the Demoman, with 4,666,558 kills to the Demoman’s 4,441,214. However, groundbreaking new discoveries by the Black Cyclops could help turn the tide, as he discovers his Scottish roots with two new weapons, The Eyelander and The Chargin’ Targe. Replacing the Demo’s Bottle and Sticky Bomb Launcher respectively.
True, the shield might block the occasional sword blow. However, they are essentially weapons to be used for hiding behind, and this is a concept the average Scotsman does not understand. “If I were to pick up this cowering-plate, I would have to put down my second sword,” a Scotsman thinks. “And surely that is madness.”
Valve’s motive behind these new weapons seems strange. However, the thought of singling out a target (perhaps a medic) on the enemy team, charging him down and one-shotting him with a critical sword hit sounds quite frankly rather fun. It’s also not too hard to see where Valve may have got inspiration from, *cough*L4D2′s Charger*cough*.
Stealth update: According to my sources, new weapons are released on thursday.
Demoman versus Soldier. Round one. FIGHT!
Posted by Sam in Gaming, Multiplayer, Shooter on 11 December 2009
It’s about time Valves came round to giving Team Fortress 2′s neglected classes a few new toys, now development on Left 4 Dead 2 has ceased. There is a twist this time however, because there is a secret seventh weapon which will be given to either the “one-eyed bagpipe-playing sonofabitch“, or the “Brutus Benedict Arnold Judas Bloody Iscariot himself: the SOLDIER!“. The winner is the class who frags the other the most over the next week, with the results announced presumably when the update is released in a weeks time.
I have to admit, I do not play TF2 as regularly as I used to, however, updates are always fun to get involved with, and you have to do your bit for the war effort. Therefore I have to chose a side, which is tough considering they are my two most played classes. The Demoman’s ‘Meet The Team’ video is probably my favourite of the bunch, but I have more hours played as the Soldier, and find the soldier’s playstyle more entertaining than the Demoman’s. Needless to say I will be having many games of TF2 in the following week, hunting down and killing as many Demomen as I can find.
Keep track of the WAR! status here.
Update: I think this team has decided who they’re supporting. Click for full image.
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