Games Cheats and Reviews

Half-Life is one of the most popular franchises in videogames, so why hasn’t the world seen it adapted into a movie yet? According to Valve CEO and co-founder Gabe Newell, it’s because they don’t trust anyone to do it but themselves.

Speaking to PC Gamer, Newell revealed that they’ve actually gotten tons of studio offers in the past. “There was a whole bunch of meetings with people from Hollywood [after Half-Life 1 shipped],” Newell explained. “Directors down there wanted to make a Half-Life movie and stuff, so they’d bring in a writer or some talent agency would bring in writers, and they would pitch us on their story. And their stories were just so bad. I mean, brutally, the worst. Not understanding what made the game a good game, or what made the property an interesting thing for people to be a fan of.”

And that, Newell said, is when they decided only one company could get it right: Valve. “That’s when we started saying: ‘Wow, the best thing we could ever do is to just not do this as a movie, or we’d have to make it ourselves,’” he said. “And I was like, ‘Make it ourselves? Well that’s impossible.’ But the Team Fortress 2 thing, the Meet the Team shorts, is us trying to explore that.”

PC Games published six brand new high definition screenshots of Black Mesa, the upcoming Source-Engine Remake of Half-Life 1.

PC Games published the very first video from the final version of FakeFactory´s Cinematic Mod, that will include dynamic shadows. Dynamic shadows with the help of additive env_projectedtexture entities. Video shows early test settings. Finalized maps with dynamic shadow available with the CM10.40 update soon.

Realistic Ballistic Software has released a new update for its Half-Life 2 realism mod Occupation: Source, now available for download.

Vorti has released a playable demo for its Half-Life 2 mod Antlion Life. The mod has you playing as an antlion, with full 3D camera control and the ability to attack your enemies in a variety of ways.

Jackson3113 has released a new update for its Half-Life 2 mod Kingdoms Collide, now available for download.

Either you’ve played Perfect Dark before, or you haven’t. Most readers who find their way here probably have, and the ones who haven’t, well, you’ll probably need some serious convincing to play a decade-old game that pretty cheerfully ignores the innovations the FPS genre gained from games like, say, Half-Life, and came out on a console that wasn’t exactly known as the cutting edge of graphical holyshit-osity. For that first bunch it’s really easy to say, yeah, with the HD upgrade Perfect Dark on XBLA looks every bit as good as you remember it. Which, if you actually pop in the cart these days, you’ll realize is a hell of a lot better than it actually looked back in the day. Between the replaced textures and multiplayer over Live (in splitscreen, no less) this is a great way to re-enjoy a game you already love. It deserves that love. You should be proud to love it. More so now that it’s been touched up without losing a single bit of its original character.

On the other hand, Perfect Dark is old as hell and likely to alienate anyone who cut their teeth on games that came after. If you’re one of those people…I’m sorry, but I’ll be damned if I can think of a reason to say that this is kind of a major gap in your videogaming experience that you absolutely have to go back and fill in. Unlike some other genres, most first-person shooters are pretty far from timeless. We can’t look back on, say, Tetris, and think, “Man, this would be way the hell better with snappier graphics, more block shapes, and an epic storyline that makes us question the nature of our humanity or whatever.”

Jackson3113 has announced the initial release of its fantasy Half-Life 2 mod Kingdoms Collide, now available for download.

"Ultimately, Metro in 2033 a very exciting action thriller that borrows freely from both Bioshock and Half-Life 2.The narrative is simple but efficient and the atmosphere is fantastic. Urdumma enemy soldiers and a number of throughly stupid moments, however, draws down the grade with the fact that the PC version actually does not feel completely ready. To the total absence of course also multiplayer feels like a disappointement."

Mxthe has released a new version of its Half-Life 2 mod Smod Troopers, now available for download.