Half-Life 2 Message Board older than one year ago

#dishonored If there's one man who knows from originality in video games, it's Viktor Antonov. He's the man responsible for the oppressive, beautiful art design of City 17 in Valve's masterpiece Half-Life 2. One of the main reasons that I'm excited about the upcoming Dishonored is that Antonov will be art director. Just check out this gallery of the man's work. He's a true original. More »

NECA's latest Valve figurine features a surprisingly smooth-skinned Gordon Freeman in a hazard suit, and comes with two sets of interchangeable hands, even though limb detachment is a feature we don't quite remember from Half-Life 2 (at least, not voluntary limb detachment).

Freeman stands 7 inches and has 20 points of articulation, and also comes with four separate accessories: crowbar, bugbomb, gravity gun and headcrab.

The Freeman figurine runs $18 and will launch in September, Lambda Generation notes. Just in time to get grandma that headcrab she's always asked for during the holidays.

Origin remains a controversial point in EA's movement towards a digitally focused future.

For a while now, if you got banned from Electronic Arts’ Origin service (and, sometimes, even their message boards), you might also find yourself unable to access the single-player content from the games you’ve purchased. That rubbed people the wrong way, and EA has apparently worked out the backend hiccups to fix it.

Cinema Blend received a notification from EA about an update to Origin policy that notes “offline content” will now be available by enabling an offline mode within Origin. Read it in full here.

“If you find yourself with a disabled account, please note that you can still play EA games in single-player mode. For PC games you will need to enable Origin's offline mode to play games with a disabled account. Go to the settings tab in Origin (the gear icon) and select Go Offline.”

Getting banned isn’t a scenario most users will find themselves in, but besides the broader philosophical issues, banning mistakes do happen, and to find yourself unable to play the games you bought sounds incredibly frustrating.

It’s easy to forget nobody really liked Steam when it originally launched alongside Half-Life 2, but the service has come a long way since then, and Steam has since raised expectations for digital delivery services to the point that when Electronic Arts decided to get into the game with Origin, its missteps have been rightly criticized.

#halflife And you thought it was some giant building in Dubai. Nope. According to measurements converted from in-game models ad referenced for scale, City 17's own Citadel, constructed by the Combine, easily takes the cake. More »

#halflife German artist Daniel Ritthanondh is the man to thank for this Half-Life-inspired lamp, which will simultaneously light up your room and darken your dreams. More »

#toys Actually, calling it an action figure does it a bit of a disservice. The term "action figure" conjures all sorts of images, mostly of very small men. This custom Strider from the Half-Life universe is not very small at all. More »

#toys Kotaku was at the New York Toy Fair this weekend in full effect, snapping photos, taking footage and just generally gawking at all the awesome new video game toys that'll be lining up for your disposable incomes in 2012. More »

Looking at Steam’s Stats page, Half-Life 2 is currently sandwiched between Plants vs Zombies and X3: Albion Prelude. But this weekend, if the Call For Communication Steam Group pull it off, Valve’s own game should be somewhere near the top ten. The protesters are hoping that the surge of players will send a message to Valve: “we want to know what’s happening to Gordon Freeman.”(more…)

#halflife Or is it a protest for Half-Life 3? Whatever. More »

#halflife Reader Michael has spent over 100 hours putting together this music video, in which the narration from Godspeed You! Black Emperor's The Dead Flag Blues is played over visuals from Half-Life 2. More »

#valve Repulished from Rock, Paper Shotgun. More »

Valve have created themselves an interesting situation. Presenting themselves as bastions of consumers, remarkably accessible to gamers, regularly inviting in groups of modders – often to give them jobs – and always being present to offer a quote on how customers deserve to be treated with more dignity, they establish themselves as being our friend. And then from that position, they sure do like to take the piss. And as Eurogamer’s Tom “Tom Bramwell” Bramwell mentioned on Twitter this morning, it’s hard not to sympathise with a growing body of Valve’s customers who are asking for better communication.

No one has a clue what they’re up to. Games are sometimes announced moments before release, or years in advance and then nothing but silence. Sometimes when they tease it’s obscure, frustrating ARGs that eventually end in a new pretend hat. Other times it’s a complete open door and everything revealed. They hide clues in so many places that people end up scouring everything they do for a hint, a glimpse, of something that might suggest they’ll eventually return to the Half-Life universe proper. They’ve turned gamers into pseudo-schizophrenics, people frantically trying to find patterns in the random, believing there are hidden messages within their communications. But does anyone have a “right” to know what’s going on with the Half-Life series.

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#halflife Harrison Krix's replica Half-Life 2 gravity gun looked incredible, but it was never destined for his shelf, or that of an international adult collectible retailer. It was built for charity, and it's for charity it was auctioned. More »

#halflife If you've ever wanted to see a live-action Half-Life 2 movie, these mock posters are only going to make you want to see one a lot more. More »

#halflife Custom LEGO builder Brandon Bannerman doesn't wait for due process to take its course, he makes his own damn LEGO. And this week he's made this wonderful little Gordon Freeman. More »

#thehorror Good evening, Kotaku. I hope you weren't trying to get any sleep tonight. More »

#halflife Master craftsman Harrison Krix has built himself a replica of Gordon Freeman's Gravity Gun from Half-Life 2. It's really something. More »

If there’s one downside of having an SSD as your main hard drive, it’s that you find yourself aggressively removing any and all games you’re not convinced you’ll play any time soon. And so it is that I have no Source-powered games on my PC right now, and need to sit through a 5GB SDK download just to play this 200MB mod. While I wait, I’ll show you what it is I’m waiting for – Water is a mini HL2 mod about a singing Mermaid with magic powers who isn’t wearing a shirt. No Jamaican lobsters and crying here though: this puzzle-blessed action-adventure makes fish-people all grimdark, by the look of things.(more…)

The original Half-Life was a truly ground-breaking title. So much of what we take for granted in current games, specifically first person shooters and action games, can be traced back to this critically acclaimed effort by Valve Software. Half-Life was notable on a number of fronts (for simplicity I have limited that number to four, the rule of three be damned): The immersive and (then novel) presentation of story through scripted events...

You'll forgive us if we're highly speculative about code supposedly unearthed from the leaked beta client for Valve's upcoming strategy RTS, Dota 2. It supposedly includes information from a folder named "ep3." Now wait a minute, stop huffing -- we know, we know -- and hear us out. As reported by Valve fan site Lambda Generation, the Dota 2 beta client has apparently leaked via Vietnam, and eager fans datamined the code for info, apparently plundering a string of code regarding something called "ep3."

As you might imagine, both the dataminers and gaming websites are saying the folder pertains to the comically nebulous Half-Life 2: Episode 3, with the code pointing to two weapons -- an ice gun and a flamethrower -- as well as three "weaponizers" (concrete, liquid, and metal). But wait, why would Valve leave code for another one of its projects in the beta code for Dota 2, especially a project that it refuses to acknowledge exists? In short, Valve's done some similarly cheeky things in the past to promote its games, albeit not nearly as deep as this would be. We've reached out to Valve for word, but don't expect to hear anything official.

You'll forgive us if we're highly speculative of code supposedly unearthed from the leaked beta client for Valve's upcoming strategy RTS Dota 2, but, well, it supposedly includes information from a folder named "ep3." Now wait a minute, stop huffing -- we know, we know -- but hear us out. As reported by Valve fan site Lambda Generation, the Dota 2 beta client has apparently leaked via Vietnam, and people with way too much time on their hands datamined the code for info, apparently plundering a string of code regarding something called "ep3."

As you might imagine, both the dataminers and gaming websites are saying the folder pertains to the comically unheard of Half-Life 2: Episode 3, with the code pointing to two weapons -- an ice gun and a flamethrower -- as well as three "weaponizers" (concrete, liquid, and metal). But wait, why would Valve leave code for another one of its projects in the beta code for Dota 2, especially a project that it refuses to acknowledge exists? In short, Valve's done some similarly cheeky things in the past to promote its games, albeit not nearly as deep as this would be. We've reached out to Valve for word, but don't expect to hear anything official.

Something old for you today, which you may well have seen before, but I think it’s worth reminding people of. It’s Radiator. I’ve included something new for good measure, but nothing blue because this isn’t a wedding, it’s a little article about mods. Sorry if that’s disappointing. You’re going to be even more disappointed if you don’t like pretentious artsy mods. I’m talking the kind that have trailers with sombre piano music playing and try to evoke a sense of loss while definitely never having guns anywhere in them at all. Imagine you’ve walked into a small cinema in Paris. Instead of popcorn and nachos, the butler (for there is a butler) provides you with a glass of port and invites you to take a seat. He places a keyboard on your lap and a mouse in your hand.

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Another Valve-inspired short film to enjoy this morning. Many years ago, John showed off part one of the Purchase Brothers guerrilla-style Half-Life homage, and now they’ve only gone and released part two. It uses the same blend of live action and game footage to fine effect. They spent $250 making this. To put that into context, Michael Bay spent 742 billion dollars on each of the Transformers films. This contains marginally less robots hitting one another but otherwise it’s far superior. Remember to watch in HD.

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Escape From City 17, a 2009 short flick from The Purchase Brothers, was and still is the best piece of fan-made Half-Life cinema we've ever seen. Over two years later, it finally has a follow-up. More »

You might remember the popular Half-Life 2 short Escape From City 17 that David and Ian Purchase created back in 2009. Well, they've finally followed it up with a second part, and it's pretty darn amazing. Here, just watch it: According to the brothers, this was done on a budget of $250, and donated software, time, and an HVX200 camera. Pretty impressive, wouldn't you say? Just imagine what they could do with a real Hollywood budget...

#speakuponkotaku Commenter Make.Sense gets sick while playing Diver: Deep Water Adventures, which makes perfect sense. He also gets sick while playing Half-Life 2, which is reason enough to appear in today's Speak Up on Kotaku. More »

#halflife2 Is it a game? Is it a manifesto? An artsy-fartsy waste of time? A story-within-a-story, an exercise in branching plotlines, meta-humor, and video game commentary? The provocative new Half-Life 2 mod The Stanley Parable is perhaps all of those things. Or maybe none of them. The game and its designer hope only that you'll draw your own conclusions. More »

"Cakebread," the creator of Half-Life 2 mod "The Stanley Parable," says the less you know about his experimental, story-driven game the better, and we're going to adhere to the spirit of that. Besides, if the trailer above doesn't make you want to play it, nothing we're going to say will help.

Okay, Internet! Okay. I’ll play The Stanley Parable. Jeez, I’ll play so you’ll stop hassling me. I’ve got tea to drink and stuff, y’know. I mean so what, yes, it is my kind of thing. And I do like wry and creepy first-person games, and The Stanley Parable is one of those peculiar story-driven, non-linear, thought-provoking, brilliant-constructed, acutely clever, well-writeen mods that we love to post about, but some of us want to sit about watching Chinese action movies at ten o’clock at night, and totally don’t have time to download 450mb of Half-Life 2 mod (which you only actually need Source SDK to play) and then wander through corridors figuring out what the hell is going on, and smiling all the while at that incredible voiceover.

It’s brilliant. Exquisite, even. I can’t spoil it by talking about it, but there’s a trailer below, if you want to take a look. But you shouldn’t look. You should play it.(more…)

#halflife2 Branching storylines have become quite the thing in games lately, but most games don't take the idea much farther than "choose option A to get ending A, choose option B to get ending B." More »