It is a game that has had a profound effect on myself, and I am sure on many other people. I remember playing the Uplink demo and falling in love with it, the gameplay so damn good and I was blown away when I got my hands on the full game. Everything from the set-pieces such as the Tentacle Monster to the Dam along with the story and the fighting was brilliant. Not many other games have followed in the footsteps of it which is a great shame.

The impact that the game has had on the modding scene too is amazing, there are so many mods for Half-Life, and so many great ones it is unbelievable. Natural Selection, Team Fortress Classic and Counter-Strike just to mention a few show the great legacy of the GldSrc engine.

In honour of Half-Life’s birthday ModDB have a little feature showing off some of the best amateur mods, and mods that have become full blown games that were based on what we saw with Half-Life. It is well worth a read and can be found here.

If, for some strange reason you haven’t played Half-Life yet, well it is available on Steam for $0.98 until 12:01 pm PST on November 21.

I was too busy playing and getting sucked into the game to take many screenshots, but those guys at Rock, Paper, Shotgun have some galleries of the game from their trip to Valve.

This game is just amazing in co-op mode, singleplayer is ok, but it has nothing on blasting through the hordes of zombies with three friends. They seriously are hordes, at times the AI Director will send what seems like thousands of zombies at you and will then throw in some Boss characters like the Boomer or Hunter.

When we were playing it was the Director that we talked about most, this thing is magnificent. It can build the tension so much just by keeping the opening areas of a level relatively clear of zombies. After the onslaught that we battled against so often in the opening rooms of the second demo level, to fail and start again in near total silence in freaky.

I won’t forget the moment when we entered the last but one chambers and heard the sobs of the Witch, we saw he sitting in the doorway blocking our path to the final battle. With three of us on very little health we decided to that the person with the most health would instigate the fight. It was quick and brutal, only two of us were left standing with 1 health a piece, we managed to force the Witch to retreat away from the level.

That was intense, and it was pure awesome. I can’t wait to get back to play this again tonight.

Each of the four writers have posted their thoughts on their massive play test during their trip to Valve and they make for some very exciting reading.

For those of you who pre-ordered the game, then the demo will be going live sometime tomorow, I can’t frickin wait.

Steam Cloud will make its first appearance with the Left 4 Dead demo which is due for release this Thursday to all those who pre-orderd.

Doug Lombardi had this to say while sitting on a cloud:

For some time now, Steam has allowed gamers to log on from any computer in the world and access their applications. This also makes it easy to upgrade a PC without worrying about losing your games. Steam Cloud is a natural extension of the portability Steam affords gamers and developers, and we intend to expand its feature set as it is used in Left 4 Dead and other games coming to Steam.”

Valve managing director Gabe Newell has this to say regarding the pre-orders:

“People had really strong reactions to Left 4 Dead when we started showing it. Our pre-orders are running 60 percent ahead of Orange Box. This in combination with the fact that it is a new IP made us think that an extensive marketing program made a lot of sense.”

Valve have launched a massive promotional campaign for the game costing $10 million and covering television, online, print and outdoor advertising. The promotional posters for the game (as seen below) feature the logo of the game, the disfigured hand that is now synonymous with the game.

These advertisements will run hand in hand with a massive television campaign with 30-second adverts appearing on a wide variety of US TV networks from November 9th to the 28th. The ads will be mixing humour and horror, and I assume with bear classic Valve stylings.

The Xbox 360 and PC demo of the game is slated to be released in early November and will feature 1-4 player gameplay from the game’s “No Mercy” campaign. Newell is also positive regarding the future success of the game.

“Well, Left 4 Dead has a long way to go to beat Half-Life and Counter-Strike, but our fans’ excitement when they play the game has certainly infected us. It will be a top five title for the year, but beyond that we’ll have to see how big it gets.”

Pre-orders up 60% on the Orange Box, a $10 million advertising campaign? I am sure that Left 4 Dead will be a hugely successful game.

Miles Jacobson, the studio director at Sports Interactive had this to say regarding the announcement:

“Many of us at Sports Interactive have been big fans of Steam since it’s inception, so to be working with them properly this year across releases of Football Manager on the PC is fantastic. It gives us the opportunity for all of our games players to get any patches or updates that we make available quickly and easily, as well as a place for us to host any other downloads, such as demos and promotional videos, with super fast broadband speeds for download, and no issues with bandwidth, which we are hit with each time we release a demo”.

The demo for Football Manager 2009 will be made available via Steam a few weeks before the release of the game. You can pre-order the game on Steam now which will allow you to pre-load the game 48 hours before the game is unlocked at 9.00 GMT on the 14th November. Further information regarding pre-orders can be found here.

If I am not mistaken, this will be one of the first non-Valve games which will let you register your retail version on Steam. I believe this happened with Prey, but I don’t think this has happened since. This means that if you want to get the retail game and not use Steam you can, however if you want a boxed copy and the chance to use Steam that is also possible. This is one of the best ways to release Football Manager and it puts the game in front of a massive target audience and represents a great way to further boos sales of what is destined to be a great game.

Press Release:

FOOTBALL MANAGER TEAMS UP WITH STEAM

Football ManagerT 2009 Leverage Suite of Steamworks Services for Retail and Electronic Versions

LONDON (9th October, 2008) – Sports Interactive & SEGA Europe Ltd. today announce that the PC versions of Football ManagerT 2009 will incorporate Steamworks, a complete suite of publishing and development tools that offers PC game developers and publishers access to the game features and services available through Steam.
Steamworks will support both the retail and electronic versions of the Football Manager 2009 games giving players game updates, downloadable content, and patches. Also, players will be able to play from any PC in the world without needing their DVD copy of the game. STEAM will also host and distribute the Football Manager 2009 game demo which will be available when it is released a couple of weeks before the release of the full game.
Football Manager 2009 is now available for pre-purchase as a PC digital download from STEAM, and will be available for players to play at 09:00 GMT on the 14th November 2008. For details on availability and pricing, please visit www.footballmanager.com/buynow.
“Many of us at Sports Interactive have been big fans of Steam since it’s inception, so to be working with them properly this year across releases of Football Manager on the PC is fantastic” said Miles Jacobson, studio director at Sports Interactive. “It gives us the opportunity for all of our games players to get any patches or updates that we make available quickly and easily, as well as a place for us to host any other downloads, such as demos and promotional videos, with super fast broadband speeds for download, and no issues with bandwidth, which we are hit with each time we release a demo”.
“The Football Manager 2009 team has an incredible plan to extend the product beyond launch and achieve a level of connectivity with FM 2009 players that surpasses any prior release in the category,” said Gabe Newell, president of Valve. “We’re delighted to have Steamworks selected as the vehicle to help take this legendary franchise to the next level and look forward to offering the game to the millions logging onto Steam each week.”
Football Manager 2009 features a vast array of all new features including, for the first time ever, a full 3D view of the world famous Football ManagerT match engine.

For further information on Football Manager 2009 please visit www.sigames.com or www.footballmanager.com. For assets on Football Manager 2009 or other SEGA games please go to www.sega-press.com.

About SEGA Europe Ltd.:
SEGA® Europe Ltd. is the European Distribution arm of Tokyo, Japan-based SEGA Corporation, and a worldwide leader in interactive entertainment both inside and outside the home. The company develops and distributes interactive entertainment software products for a variety of hardware platforms including PC, wireless devices, and those manufactured by Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony Computer Entertainment Europe. SEGA Europe’s web site is located at www.sega-europe.com.

About Sports Interactive Ltd.:
Sports Interactive (SI), is the world’s leading developer of football management simulations through it’s Football Manager series of games Founded in 1994 and based in the Old Street area of London, SI has a full-time staff of 44 and employs services of more than 1,500 part-time researchers across the globe. The company’s games have enjoyed an unparalleled history of commercial and critical success, with nine of its creations among the UK’s Top 20 fastest-selling PC games of all time, and 4 in the UK’s top 20 best selling PC games of all time. Sports Interactive became a wholly owned subsidiary of SEGA in 2006. Further information on the company and its games is available from the SI website, www.sigames.com.

About Steam:
The leading online platform for PC games and digital entertainment, Steam delivers new releases and online services to over 15 million PC users around the world. For more information, please visit www.steamgames.com

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.

“The shared experience of Left 4 Dead is unlike that of any other action game,” said Gabe Newell, president and co-founder of Valve. “That’s what we’ve experienced playing the game, and from showing the game to the press and our partners. It sounds cliché, but in many ways you have to play this one to truly appreciate what we’re attempting. So, to give gamers a chance to sample this new type of experience first hand, we’re taking Left 4 Dead on the road.”

This is a great way to big up the excitement for the game, I just wish I was able to go to the PC Gamer Showdown. Damnation!

Some of you may have thought that the Pyro Update for Team Fortress 2 packed in a whole heap of new stuff. While that was true at the time, the Heavy Update is going to come along and change the way we view Team Fortress 2 updates for ever. The update is going to be so big that a new Heavy Update website had to be created to pack in all the news that will be drip fed to us over the next week with the update being planned to go live next Tuesday.

The update will feature three unlockable weapons and thirty-five all new achievements for the Heavy. In addition you can expect to see a whole new game mode along with five maps for it to launch. Furthermore there will be a new Payload map which will have more open spaces than Goldrush, and if that is not enough the community map, cp_steel will also feature in the update.

Keep your eyes peeled here for new information, screenshots and a special installment of the ‘Meet The Team’ videos. For now, check out this page for the lowdown on cp_steel.