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Half-Life 2 just turned 20 years old, and to celebrate Valve have released an update for their classic first-person shooter. In brief: they’ve recorded developer commentary; they’ve added Steam Workshop support; Episodes One and Two are now part of the package; and there are some bug fixes and new graphics options.
Grab it before the end of the weekend (November 18th at 6pm GMT) and it’s also free to keep on Steam.
Four thousand words of notes. Hoboy. Field of Glory Colon Kingdoms is definitely thought-provoking.
It was also complaint-provoking in the fairly long period where I didn’t understand what it’s trying to do. Reaching that point, luckily for you, means we can cut out a lot of the “confused whingeing” subsection of those notes. Though it still has its shortcomings, I’ve come to appreciate that I was reading Kingdoms all wrong. Although it talks big about characters, politics, and religion, they’re not what it’s about. It’s about building.
Thunderful Games, the developers and publishers that make the colourful SteamWorld series of games, have announced a hefty number of layoffs at the company, with anywhere between 80-100 people losing their jobs. It’s part of a “restructuring” that’ll also see an unspecified number of game projects cancelled, said the company in a press release yesterday. As if this is not dispiriting enough, they also say it’s an intentional move that’ll see them making fewer games of their own and instead publishing more work by other developers.
Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in. This is a lie, of course. I haven’t been ‘out’ of strategy autobattler Mechabellum since I started playing around the 1.0 launch back in September. There I was, just starting to get to grips with the card-house-careful balance between each of its units when, bam, makers Game River dropped a Jenga block on top of it. It’s a stealth block, too. Didn’t even see it coming.
Update 1.1’s new unit is the Phantom Ray, which Game River describe as “a medium-sized aircraft with high HP that excels at striking enemies at close range with high-damage missiles”. It’s a mid-tier flier, costing 50 to unlock and 200 to field, and for that you get three of them per unit. As for default tech, you’ve got some range and fire rate unlocks, alongside an oil drop. The headliner here is the stealth buff, which cloaks the Phantom Ray by default until it attacks. When it does, it all gets a nice 40% bonus to damage.
Sorry We’re Closed is a retro survival horror-inspired game about escaping the clutches of an excessively horny demon who desperately wants your heart. As someone who isn’t often into the ‘lore’ behind things and prefers to just shoot and ask questions later, I found myself actually asking the questions. I wanted to know why I was targeted by such carnal eroticism. I wanted to know more about my character’s own relationships. How angels fit into the picture. And why lots of the demons seem quite chill, really.
But when it came to the actual survival – the bit I thought I’d enjoy the most – I came away a bit disappointed. Exploration is fine, it’s just the combat is often too frequent and too frequently irritating. I came to dread the action more than the atmosphere, in the end.
In Rue Valley you role play a guy with poor mental health. He wanders around a crappy motel, stuck in the same old patterns of life, seemingly unable to escape his inner demons. When confronted with the premise for this upcoming RPG you may have one of two reactions. The first: you will say “lol, it me” with enough humour to wishlist it on Steam and earmark it for the future. The second: you will mutter “ugh, it me” and be immediately put off by the idea of having to tolerate an entire second layer of psychological hangups.
There is a third secret reaction though… you might think: oh, this looks a lot like Disco Elysium, but in the real world.
I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: running away is the best feeling in videogames. More specifically, being chased is the best feeling in videogames, a sentiment I’d happen to share with my golden retriever if you replaced the word “videogames” with “the universe”. He is a purer being, but he’ll also never know the joy of executing a rail-dismount into a dashing corner-jump escape in Deadlock, and for this he deserves our pity.
It’s easy to miss if you haven’t played for at least a few hours, but Deadlock packs one of the most engaging movement systems this side of Tribes Ascend.
Epic Games has given the OK for their 1998 shooter Unreal to be hosted on the Internet Archive, essentially making the classic sci-fi alien blaster free, and preserving it for the future. They’ve also given the same permission for Unreal Tournament to be hosted there too, making free the multiplayer muckabout that spawned speedier and speedier sequels throughout the early 2000s (not to mention the origin of one of the most memorable multiplayer FPS maps of all time, Facing Worlds).
Well, that was quick. After artwork leaked last week for what looked very much like a remaster of classic real-time strategy Warcraft II: Tides Of Darkness, Blizzard sneakily dropped both that and a remaster of Warcraft: Orcs & Humans last night. They’re bundled together with Warcraft III: Reforged – itself with a new patch – in a ‘Warcraft Remastered Battle Chest’, which also includes the older versions of the first two games. The chest is available on Battle.net, where it’ll set you back £34.99 / $39.99. If you’re just after the older titles, they’re £9 / $10 and £12.59 / $15 respectively.
Over the years, game retailers GOG have drifted from almost purely offering classic oldies to welcoming more and more modern blockbusters onto their storefront. In one sense, they’ve turned from a game preservation champion into a slightly dustier, DRM-less Steam. Now, though, GOG have declared a renewed focus on not just selling aged games, but on tweaking more of them to work on non-aged hardware. And you’ll be able to tell which games have got this restoration treatment from a fancy badge plastered on top of them.
