The first entry in the Left 4 Dead Blog has gone live, and it provides an interesting insight into the testing phase of games at Valve.

After three days of testing Half Life 2, Gabe Newell’s cousin gouged out his own eyes, turned his bloody face to the sky and began screaming, “I can still see Alyx!” So what with the constant game playing and the eye trauma, it’s all pretty horrific.

Fortunately Valve staff are having a better experience with Left 4 Dead and are actually enjoying the task of playing the game in shifts to find any last remaining bugs. Great stuff.

Gears of War (the first one now) came onto the PC a year after the release of the Xbox 360 version, while the game was nothing out of this world amazing, it wasn’t bad. Heck we even had some compensation of sorts for the late release with a bunch of new levels that never appeared in the 360 version of the game. It was a pretty nifty deal real and gave us PC gamers a teeny bit of encouragement to buy the game.

However it seems that Gears of War 2 will never appear on the PC according to Cliffy B (he will always be Cliffy B to me) in this TVG interview.

Do you see the Xbox 360 as the main platform as opposed to the PC? During the whole Unreal time it was very much PC focused.

The PC right now is a fair amount different to what it was back in the day, with all the badly integrated video chips. Here’s the problem right now; the person who is savvy enough to want to have a good PC to upgrade their video card, is a person who is savvy enough to know bit torrent to know all the elements so they can pirate software. Therefore, high-end videogames are suffering very much on the PC.

So piracy was a main point for you…

Right now, it makes sense for us to focus on Xbox 360 for a number of reasons. Not least PCs with multiple configurations and piracy.

But when the dust has settled, is there any possibility of Gears 2 on PC?

No.

Definitely not?

No.

Wow, seriously this is just crap, I think it was confirmed a while back that it wasn’t coming onto the PC, but to spout out this piracy bullshit is just weak. Why can’t developers be honest with us for once? The game will sell loads more on the 360 than on the PC, mainly due to the nature of the game and Cliff will know that for all those 360 sales a large proportion will purcahse post-release DLC. He will also know that PC gamers won’t stand for that kind of treatment and very few would purchase any DLC even if it appeared on the PC.

I don’t know how he can claim that high-end games are suffering on the PC, didn’t Crysis sell over 1 million copies? Yes back in June it had sold over 1.5 million copies (source) which for a game that boasted extremely high system requirements at launch makes for pretty good reading. If a game like Crysis can sell that many, despite so many claims of mass piracy from Crytek then I don’t see why Gears of War 2 couldn’t achieve a good number of sales. Stop spouting this crap about the PC being a pain in the arse to develop on due to the many different system configurations, Valve have managed to do it, and People Can Fly were able to do it for the original Gears.

Pfft, I just want people like Cliff to acknowledge that with DLC and higher RRP’s that they can make more money off console versions of games like this and that they don’t deem the PC as being worth it. Stop this piracy crap, we all know piracy impacts on PC game sales, but it is overblown and used as a scapegoat. Grow some balls Cliff.

PopCap are busy bees, hot on the heels of the recent release of Peggle Nights comes the announcement that Bejeweled Twist is due for an October launch and will be unveiled at Seattle’s Experience Music Project Sci-Fi Museum and Hall of Fame on Monday, October 27, 2008.

“As our first and most popular game, we’re particularly dedicated to Bejeweled and wanted to make sure that our next offering in the lineup delivered as much innovation, polish, and sheer pleasure as possible,” explained Jason Kapalka, co-founder and chief creative officer at PopCap. “We spent a long time conceiving and prototyping a totally new direction for Bejeweled Twist. The game will be immediately recognizable to Bejeweled fans, and as accessible as earlier titles in the series, but with far more depth and flexibility. Previous versions of Bejeweled appealed to a pretty broad audience, but we’re confident Bejeweled Twist will offer a compelling experience for everyone, from the novice gamer to the seriously hardcore player.”

Bejeweled was ok, but match-3 puzzlers bore me quickly, World of Goo, now that is sure to be the indie game of the year.

Two fellow RPS-chat’ites went to the PC Gamer Showdown, they had a great time and and even got to play Left 4 Dead. SteveTheBlack and Dartt were the luck two who went to the Showdown and scored some awesome footage of the game in action.

Top stuff guys, wish I had gone too. Steve has a great entry where he talks about his experience playing the game at the Showdown on his blog.

I remember playing through Decay, the co-op bonus mode found in the PS2 version of Half-Life back in the day. I found it interesting as you could either play it split-screen with a friend, or let the AI control the other character. You took the role of two female members of the Black Mesa staff and were charged with doing things such as sending that little piece of rock that caused all hell on Earth to break out into a lift for Gordon to use.

What is interesting is that a group of modders have recreated Decay as a port for the PC version of the classic Half-Life. It will be interesting to see how it all works on the PC, time to download it myself perhaps?

I got my hands on a copy of Death Magnetic, the latest album from Metallica, as soon as it came out. I’ll be honest, I am a huge Metallica fan and I do not, in any way shape or form subscribe to the idea that they have ever “sold out” as many people claim they have done. I can listen to all their albums (save St. Anger) and enjoy them. However St. Anger was a poor, poor piece of music from the band. Death Magnetic then, well this is a tour de force if ever there was one.

Read the rest of this entry

I have often thought, not seriously, but it has often come to mind that Steam does not make full use of potential. However it seems like this is about to change as it has been revealed that mods are making their way onto Steam. Soon mods such as Age of Chivalry, D.I.P.R.I.P., Insurgency, Synergy, and Zombie Panic will be available to download for free by any Steam users who own a Source based game.

These mods will make use of Steamworks and will receive automatic updates in much the same way as games do via Steam. This is really a great step forward for Steam, Valve and mod teams. I think one of the main reasons why I don’t play many mods for Source games is the lack of Steam integration. Now this is changing I think mods will become a hell of a lot more popular.

My good friend DigiQ8 has revealed the Left 4 Dead system requirements over on halflife2.net thanks to some sneaky e-mailing with Doug Lombardi. Here is the low-down:

- OS: Windows Vista, XP or 2000

- CPU: 3.0 GHz P4, Dual Core 2.0 or AMD64X2 (or higher)

- RAM: 1 GB for XP / 2GB for Vista

- DISC DRIVE: DVD-ROM Drive

- HARD DRIVE: At least 7.5 GB of free space

- VIDEO: Direct X 9 compatible video card (Video card must be 256 MB or more and should be a DirectX 9-compatible with support for pixel shader 2.0)

- SOUND: Direct X9.0c compatible sound card

While the requirements have certainly gone up since the days of Team Fortress 2 and the rest of the Orange Box they don’t seem too steep, a bit steeper than I would’ve thought, though I guess with all the new effects needed for L4D Valve had to make some adjustments somewhere. Anyway I know I am sorted, and for me that is all that matters.

It has been a long while since I last talked about the next patch for the classic Battlefield 2. Well the latest word on the street is that the patch is still being worked on with an aim of a Winter release.

There has been a lot of discussions on the Battlefield forums regarding the Battlefield 2 Update 1.50, so this is to let you all know what’s happening.

Update 1.50 is still in development, we have held back on releasing the update as we have become aware of and are taking preventative measures against 3rd party tools which have been severely affecting everyone’s playing experience recently by crashing dedicated servers, clients as well as allowing account spoofing. We hope you understand our decision to delay the release to resolve these issues rather than releasing early with a need to update again.

We are looking to release this update by Winter of this year.

Nothing else at all, so a case of wait and see what it brings.

I recently had the chance to chat to Nicholas from Portal Prelude about the mod over on hafllife2.net in a lengthy interview covering all kinds of stuff such as:

Chris – How do you feel fans of Portal are going to react to seeing other NPCs in the game?

Our testers were not that annoyed. Because there’s no GlaDOS, and because it’s in the past. We needed to find something a bit more “realistic” and “familiar” to talk with the player. The former human employees of Aperture Science were a really good idea, because basically, we never really see them during the test. You hear them, and you know they’re watching you, just like if it was GlaDOS.

Why don’t you read the whole thing?