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Posts Tagged ‘Valve’

A Brief Primer of the 13 Potato Fools Day Pack

Wednesday, April 20th, 2011

Unless you’ve been living under a rock this month, or sequestered inside of a specially designed relaxation vault located deep underground, then you’re aware of Valve’s latest little marketing ploy: The Potato Fools Day Pack. Thirteen indie games, both old and new to Steam. It’s a fantastic deal filled with big names in the indie games scene like Tripwire Interactive, Dejobaan Games, and Frictional Games. The pack practically oozes with an absolutely astounding variety of games. That, and it’s tied in with Valve’s Portal 2 ARG.

“Thirteen games?!” you ask yourself, full of incredulity. “That’s far too many for me to comprehend, let alone play what with my busy schedule, filled with playing bad games.” Well, good thing for you I’m here to break down each game in the pack so you know what you’re getting into. (more…)

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Posted in Dan Hawes, Editorial, Video Games | 1 Comment »

Valve Announces Portal 2 PS3 Steam Features

Tuesday, January 18th, 2011

PORTAL 2 PLAYSTATION 3 STEAM FEATURES REVEALED

January 18, 2011 — Valve, creators of best-selling game franchises (such as Half-Life and Counter-Strike) and leading technologies (such as Steam and Source), today announced the Steam features shipping with the PlayStation 3 (PS3) version of Portal 2.

Marking the debut of Steam functioning on any next generation console, the features shipping in the PS3 version of Portal 2 include cross platform play (PC/Mac vs. PS3) for multiplayer games, persistent cloud-based storage of PS3 saved games, and cross platform chat (PC/Mac and PS3).

In addition, those who purchase Portal 2 for the PlayStation 3 may unlock a Steam Play (PC & Mac) copy of Portal 2 at no additional cost by linking their PSN and Steam accounts.

“We made a promise to gamers at E3 that Portal 2 for the PlayStation 3 would be the best console version of the product,” said Gabe Newell, co-founder and president of Valve. “Working together with Sony we have identified a set of features we believe are very compelling to gamers. We hope to expand upon the foundation being laid in Portal 2 with more Steam features and functionality in DLC and future content releases.”

“We designed the Portal 2 PS3 experience to be very straightforward for gamers,” said Josh Weier, project lead on Portal 2 at Valve. “PS3 gamers will be able to simply drop the Blu-Ray disc in the PS3, link to their Steam account from inside the game, and all their Steam friends (on PC and Mac) will be visible and accessible for chat and game invites.”

These features are made possible thru the use of Steam, Valve’s platform for the delivery and management of games and digital content.

Portal 2 is due for release on the PlayStation 3, PC, Mac and Xbox 360 this April.

For more information, please visit www.thinkingwithportals.com

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Posted in News, Press Release | No Comments »

What’s in a Game: First Person Shooters

Monday, December 20th, 2010

Halo. Half-Life. Wolfenstein 3D. Doom. These games are classics in the genre of first-person shooters. But, what makes them a good first-person shooter? What aspects exist that make a shooter a shooter? Let’s take a look.

The first and foremost aspect of any FPS game would have to be the variety of weapons that are typically available. From AK-47s to Gravity Guns, the array of weapons available is very wide indeed. It seems that even since the earliest shooters, like id Software’s Wolfenstein 3D had a variety of weapons for the player to choose from. Most games start you off with a pistol or light machine gun, depending on the type of FPS game you were playing; a WWII simulator would probably start you off with a rifle or light machine gun. As the game progresses, you get stronger and stronger weapons, usually by killing other enemies–who usually have the better guns–or by finding abandoned rifles on the ground. The sheer variety of weapons and the ways you, the player can utilize them, is a very important aspect of any first-person shooting game. The satisfaction of using a newly acquired weapon is very fun; my personal favorite is using the rocket launchers in any game that has them!

A second aspect of first-person shooters that have become increasingly prevalent in recent games would be the AI of your teammates and the enemies you fight. Starting with Valve’s Half-Life, the use of artificial intelligence to power the enemies of the game has become a vital part of the first-person shooter experience. Enemies will conserve ammo, use cover, even work in tandem with their teammates to take down a target. Bad AI is now a weak point for shooters; bad AI equals less of a challenge in the main campaign modes for games. (more…)

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Posted in Editorial, Tyler Thomas, Video Games, Writers | No Comments »

Call of Duty: Black Ops Available on Steam

Friday, October 22nd, 2010

Press release:

CALL OF DUTY: BLACK OPS COMING TO STEAM WITH FULL STEAMWORKS SUPPORT

Most Anticipated Title of 2010 Prepares for PC Launch

Oct 22, 2010- Valve and Activision Publishing, Inc today announced the upcoming holiday blockbuster, Call of Duty: Black Ops (PC), is now available for pre-purchase via Steam, a leading platform for PC and Mac games with over 30 million accounts around the world.

Those who pre-purchase Call of Duty: Black Ops on Steam will be able to start playing immediately upon release on November 9, 2010, when Activision expects the title will be available worldwide. Developed by Treyarch, Call of Duty: Black Ops utilizes the Steamworks suite of tools. The title is rated “M” (Mature – Blood, Drug, Reference, Intense Violence and Language) by the ESRB. (more…)

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Posted in News, Press Release | 1 Comment »

News – New Portal 2 E3 demo videos released

Wednesday, June 30th, 2010

New videos from Valve’s Portal 2 demo at E3 are making their rounds on the blogs and it seems GladOS has even more new toys for us to play with in the sequel. The videos below show off the use of the new Thermal Discouragement Beams and Pneumatic Diversity Vents, which are Portal-ized names for laser beams and vacuum tubes. Still, it looks fun:

Portal 2 will be released early 2011 on Steam, Xbox 360, and PS3.

-NB
(via Kotaku)

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Posted in E3, News | No Comments »

News – Steam comes to Mac, sales boost immediately

Thursday, May 20th, 2010

Finally, I can manage my footie team from my Macbook!


Valve released Steam on the Mac platform a little over a week ago with a modest amount of launch titles including Portal, which is free until May 24th. Titles offered for the Mac have steadily increased since launch, and the first new batch of games on Steam has given Mac users the opportunity to play alongside Windows users with 3 multiplayer titles: Killing Floor, Madballs in Babo: Invasion, and Altitude.

To celebrate the union of Windows and Mac users, the co-op zombie survival horror Killing Floor is being offered at 33% off, with the other two multiplayer titles at 50% off.

It seems all of the promotions have payed off — yesterday Valve announced that 11% of this week’s Steam purchases are from the Mac platform, proving that the operating system can be a viable consumer base for computer gaming.

Still, there are some issues with Valve’s offering to the Mac world. Tom’s Hardware benchmarked Portal running on both systems and found that Windows machines run the title significantly faster, a result of Valve simply porting the game from Windows to Mac without taking into consideration the hardware differences. Additionally, a glitch in a recent update makes the portals appear black, rather than see-through.

Don’t drop your head in shame just yet, Mac users. Although the game runs quite a bit slower and has some visual bugs, Valve reported that Portal on the Mac is 1/5 as likely to crash than its Windows counterpart proving that once again something on the Mac “just works.” That is, assuming someone figured out the whole one-click issue: (more…)

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Posted in News | No Comments »