Last week I talked about Dark Rock Games with Adam Griffiths.

Adam brought my attention to Dear Esther, a Half-Life 2 mod that Dark Rock was called in to work on by Dan Pinchbeck.

Dear Esther is now available here along with a movie here.

Dear Esther puts traditional game technologies to innovative new use. Rather than a story told through the medium of games; a 3D environment has been constructed to disperse a story throughout. The user navigates the environment, triggering audio fragments of a narrative which, together with visual clues and codes embedded in the world, build to create a story which is inherently constructed around the innate slippage of meaning and fragmentary nature of interactive experiences. It is a fusion of original text, music and world within an existing media framework.

Reading more information on Dear Esther is really quite interesting, I just wish my PC was working so I could check it out. I recommend you go out and give this a whirl and see what it is all about.

Word has reached me that Tide’s Reach has been officially unveiled! Being created by Pi Mu Rho and his small group of followers Tide’s Reach is an episodic mod based on the Source engine.

Space is a no man’s land; pirates, scavengers and private military roam the galaxy preying on a strewn and divided humanity. A living is made on the derelict freighters and cargo vessels, stripped to the bone by the needy and the desperate. For two brothers an innocuous salvage job turns out to be more than it appears and they are thrust into a growing conflict that see’s them pitted against vastly superior forces in an increasingly hostile galaxy.

Engage in a unique and innovative episodic adventure as a Terminal Operative. Work seamlessly with your brother’s combat support and use limitless systems to level the playing field in a growing conflict across the galaxy.

While the mod has been in development for quite a while now, it is only these past few days that Pi has come out and announced the name and launched the site a proper.

More on Tide’s Reach soon, and hopefully an interview with Pi too.

The lovely fellows at No Mutants Allowed have been busy working away down in their vaults on what they call the Fallout 2 Restoration Project which is pretty much an unofficial Fallout 2 expansion.

According to the creator ‘killap’ this work has taken him 2 years to complete and adds back in loads of content originally planned to be included in Fallout 2 by the original developers.

You will find about 6 new locations (some quite large, other smaller) as well as a few new areas to old locations. In addition, almost every town in the game has new content whether it is new characters, quests, or items. Playing this will definitely be a new experience.

There WILL be another release of this mod since I still plan on including the Shi submarine but am waiting on content.

If you enjoyed the original Fallout 2, then I recommend you check out this thread to find further details on what is included with this mod and information on how to download it.

The past few days have seen a large number of updates and new things for the Command and Conquer community, the following is what I had to say on it from cncnation.net

- CnC3 Pro has been updated to version 4 bringing with it a new install interface, new gameplay tweaks and much more!

- CnC All Stars has also been updated and is now on version 1.2 featuring a nice list of gameplay changes.

- Project Perfect Mod has undergone a very sexy transformation inspired by C&C3

- CnCNZ has just had another mega roundtable discussion, well worth a look!

Finally check out the CnC Communications Centre for all the tools to play your favourite classic C&C games!

I must say it is very good to see continued support from the C&C Community for the older games, they are classics and people do still play them. Thumbs up to the C&C Community as a whole.