#screengrab
The head-chomping, zombie-making alien of Half-Life looks good in a powdered wig when painted by Gearbox Software artist and Team Fortress 2 hat maker Shaylyn "ChemicalAlia" Hamm, as seen at deviantArt. More »
Some people like coffee when they need a pick-me-up, some people like a snack -- heck, some people do sit-ups. But, for a select few, only mortal fear can motivate. So don't judge anybody who may be interested in pre-ordering Gaming Heads' Crabhead figurine on October 4, okay?
#gamingheads
Who doesn't love sending Half-Life 2's headcrab zombies to the great beyond with a few whacks of Gordon Freeman's trusty crowbar? And who wouldn't love to have said bloody, shambling headcrab zombie in statue form? More »
The versatile Garry's Mod is available now for Mac. To celebrate, the app will be $5 for the next week -- that's 50 percent off the regular price. Though, remember, if you own the PC version, you automagically own the Mac port. The one caveat with Garry's Mod is that you need to own another Source Engine game before use.
In the right hands, the mod can be used to make engaging Machinima like "The Jacknife Chronicles." In our hands, it would be used to make the umpteenth version of Gman doing "Banana Phone."
While not the first fan-made trailer for the Half-Life 2 movie which never-will-be, animator Marco Spitoni's stab at cinemafying the beloved shooter might be the best one to date. Watch the all-CG trailer posted after the jump, and join us in furiously wishing for a full feature film in this style.
Do you feel like taking a break from the toils of your day to watch an action-packed blockbuster, but don't really feel like dedicating ninety minutes to watching a film? There's an easy solution to that: check out YouTube user Kitty0706's "The Jacknife Chronicles," a twelve-minute, remarkably violent revenge story created entirely within Garry's Mod for Half-Life 2. We anticipate that it will it satisfy your action cravings in a fairly efficient manner.
The short film, which borrows more than a few locales and soundtrack clips from Mirror's Edge and Portal, can be found in its entirety after the jump. It's a little NSFW -- especially if you happen to work as a security guard in a high-tech compound.
#clips
You get The Jacknife Chronicles, a piece of machinima that uses Source Engine editor Garry's Mod and makes a gripping little short film out of it. More »
Half-Life has proven itself to be a pretty popular universe for fans to set their fan films within -- but that doesn't mean we're not hungry for more. We recently got our fix from the trailer for Beyond Black Mesa, a short film chronicling the adventures of a small band of anti-Combine rebels.
#weird
The infamous leak of Half-Life 2's beta in 2003 was a story with an international scope and wide-ranging consequences, some just now coming to light. Such as this box of Russian-made Half-Life 2bubblegum. More »
There's a substantial number of games we've been hoping to see unveiled at E3 later this month, but our desire for the announcement of one game in particular easily overshadows all others: Half-Life 2: Episode 3. We've tempered our expectations for such an announcement after being disappointed at trade shows for like, a decade -- but if the teaser image posted after the jump is legit, our wait might just be coming to an end in a little over a week.
The image features the Half-Life Lambda symbol, the word "Freeman," a barely visible watermark of what appears to be G-Man's face, and a mention of June 14 -- the original date for the (rather humorously) canceled Portal 2 event. We're still worried about playing the Charlie Brown to Valve's Lucy -- Rock, Paper, Shotgun claims the image is a fake, but doesn't provide the source for that information. We've contacted Valve about the teaser's authenticity, though we're finding it awfully hard to type out an email when all of our fingers are crossed.
Update: Reader Jake Handy pinged Valve's Gabe Newell about this, and Newell's response couldn't have been clearer -- or more terse: "Fake."
#steam
As promised, Half-Life 2 has come to the Mac as part of Valve's weekly updates to the Steam library. PC gamers are also in for an update, as the classic first-person shooter gets a few new tweaks. More »
The Mac Steam release list is a bit thin in terms of quantity this week, but the additions are pretty substantial. As promised, Half-Life 2 is now available for Mac and -- as we dearly, dearly hoped -- Episode One and Episode Two are also available. All three Half-Life 2 games feature cross-platform Steam Cloud support, meaning that players' games are saved on Steam's servers and can be opened from any computer, PC or Mac.
Additionally, Half-Life 2 and Episode One have been updated with 40 new achievements. All three titles are currently 30 percent off: HL2 for 7 bucks; and Eps. 1 & 2 for $5.59 apiece. The complete Orange Box collection (with cross-platform Steam Cloud support across all games) is also currently discounted ($21), with the Team Fortress 2 for Mac release promised soon.
Finally, EVE Online: Tyrannis will launch for both PC and Mac later today, making it Steam's first game to launch simultaneously on both platforms.
#movies
If you love the look of Half-Life 2 - and really, who doesn't - Viktor Antonov is the man to thank. But the art director for Valve's masterpiece doesn't just do games. He does movies, too. More »
#screengrab
If the greatest movie poster artist in history had worked with Valve, this would have been the result. As seen on DeviantArt (thanks John!). More »
#kotakumagu
Readers of PC Gamer, one of the last bastions of the specialist press for the platform, have been voting on what they think are the best 100 PC games of all time. And the results are in! More »
#valve
Games have "gotten away from genuinely scaring the player," and Half-Life, whenever it deploys its next episode, needs to get back to doing just that, the game's boss said More »
#rip
Robert Culp, known to some as the voice of Dr. Wallace Breen of Half-Life 2, to others as FBI Agent Bill Maxwell on "The Greatest American Hero," died today in Los Angeles. He was 79. More »
Click image to take a tour of the new Steam
Active Steam users will likely find the first half of this post to be a bit on the old hat side, but we soldier on: Valve's flipped the switch on a new and improved beta version of Steam. If you've already got a Steam account, you can download the new version by hitting up this page. The beta adds all kinds of nifty stuff, like accessible lists of what games your friends have downloaded (along with their personal stats for each title) and some new ways for you to sort and organize game libraries. There's also cross-game achievement tracking -- and Valve's finally done away with Internet Explorer rendering, swapping it out for the friendlier open-source WebKit engine.
But, that's not all! Our sister site Big Download was cruising around the new achievements interface and noticed that Half-Life 2 and Half-Life 2: Episode One now have achievements listed under them. As you know, Half-Life 2 released right around the time achievements were finalized, so it never arrived on Steam with them. Sadly, there's no news other than the icons -- which look a lot like those found in the Orange Box on Xbox 360. We'll be sure to keep you posted.
That's probably just his ass.