Valve Just Did Something Cool

They did a comic about Team Fortress 2, lets call it The War Administrator.

Team Fortress 2 Video - Mass A.I.

I was reading the excellent Rock paper Shotgun and seen the below video posted there. A very impressive video put together by Manta Engie, a group who seem to have an affinity for good music.
The track in Mass A.I. (the video below) is Propane Nightmares by Pendulum. A band that has been growing on me very much recently.

The Orange Box (Completed) (Spoiler Free)

Orange Box is this year's GAME OF THE YEAR, because it is several great games in one. Halo3 was nice, but it was just more of the same. BioShock was great, but not as great as Orange Box.

Orange Box is three games, Portal, Half Life 2 Episode Two and Team Fortress 2. HL2ET is just more of the same HL2-ness, that isn't anything special. TF2 is my new multiplayer game of choice (previously Natural Selection). And then there is Portal...

The internet right now is full of Portal spoilers, you ow it to yourself as a gamer to just buy the game and come back once you have completed it. It isn't just a fantastic new and original play experience, it is very intelligent comedy and I had a big smile on my face the WHOLE way through.

Portal is simple, you wakeup in a place called Aperture Science, you get a Man-sized Ad-hoc Quantum Tunnel Gun and GlaDOS guides you through some trials. History will see it as the first true action/puzzle game, but I see the same slow paced exploration gameplay that we had in the original Half Life before Half Life 2 came along and turned the franchise into northing more than a Half Life skinned WWII shooter.

Portal Does link into the Half Life universe, but it is tagged on a bit. It's like ValVe wanted to do that, so the just did with the new stuff where they could. You certainly won't find any Aperture Science references in the Original Half Life. But considering that Portal is one of those games everybody will be talking about for years and years to come, I can't blame them for doing that at all.

As a gamer there are some games that I remember with reverence because of the story, gameplay or whatever, because they did something that connected with me. And Portal does that on many levels, I don't want to go into it because, they are all spoiler-ish I think you just need to play it for yourself.

HL2ET 2/5
TF2 5/5
Portal 5/5 (It gets a five, but if Portal was the benchmark then TF2 would get a three and HL2ET wouldn't even be rated)

Additional: I just looked at a few portal reviews and I seem to be happier with it than others, this is probably because I found Portal to be such a fresh and new gameplay experience. Plus it made me laugh, a lot.

Team Fortress 2 Beta First Impressions

TF2 is awesome, the pacing on the combat is slower than most, which I love (isn't twitch based gameplay). The nine classes of characters are all balanced well with advantages and disadvantages to them all, meaning that although the guy with the Minigun can kill lots of people, because of his slow speed he isn't likely to complete any objective before he dies (unless he teams up with a medic).

The graphics look good and surprisingly the game runs well on my system (GeForce6, 2GHz, 1GB) which is great because when I tried the Quake Wars Demo last week, even with all the settings off and on low, the game still ran just above unplayable.

Before the Beta was launched there was some concern as to wither this was a true Beta or just an exclusive demo as there is only a month left before the game is available for purchase from retail. But no, TF2 is most certainly a beta, the game has lots of stability issues and the TF2 Forum is filled with people having issues. I myself haven't finished a whole game yet as it keeps freezing and crashing. I recommend running TF2 in window mode instead of fullscreen so when the game does freeze it is easier to get to the Task Manager.

I wasn't expecting much, and I only bought The Orange Box for Portal, but I have been pleasantly surprised.

Team Fortress 2 Artstyle

I just seen this TF2 video where the development team talk about the art direction, visual queues, lighting technology they have been working on for the game and I was very surprised about the lack of promotional BS in their words.

Usually in videos where developers talk about their game things like 'innovative' and 'never done before' are said a lot and when everybody actually plays the game it is painfully obvious that it is nothing like how the team described (a certain Peter M certainly isn't the only one in the industry that is guilty of over promoted what they are selling). For example there is an interview about Bioshock out there where it is said that the Telekinesis power in the game hasn't been done before in an FPS, but most gamers will instantly recognise a similarity between the game's Telekinesis power and HL2's Gravity Gun. So anyway I don't like the general level of BS that comes from most people in the industry, but I found this video to be a nice refreshing change.



The team clearly knows their stuff and by demonstrating that I am more confident that TF2 is going to be a good game.

P.S. While on the subject of art-direction and Bioshock there is a free Bioshock Artbook that is up for download as of today on the official website.
The artbook is in PDF format so I would highly recommend installing Foxit as an alternative PDF reader to Adobe's bloatware reader.