"From shotguns to rockets, chainsaws to weapons that fire right through walls, weapons are what make gaming fun. You can have the greatest game out there, but if the weapons sound weak and don't pack much punch, you've lost something in the interface between the gamer and the world you're trying to immerse him into."

"Did you know there’s an official slice of the Half-Life saga that never found its way to PC? Decay was a bonus game mode in the Playstation 2 port of the first Half-Life, much as Blue Shift was supposed to be the exclusive extra bit in the ultimately canned Dreamcast version. But while the latter saw its own PC release (replete with the at-the-time ace High Definition pack) and can be had to this day from Steam, Decay seemed damned to dwindle into olden console game obscurity. Oh, the irony o..."

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"Valve marketing boss Doug Lombardi said that the next installment in the Half-Life franchise would not be showing up at E3 2008, shooting down rumors that began circulating the Internet yesterday.

But, he said that a "playable Left 4 Dead will be on display in a Valve-hosted suite."

Half-Life 2: Episode 2 launched relatively recently (October 2007), but the franchise's loyal fanbase is already ready for more.

In the absence of Episode 3, Left 4 Dead will be Valve's focus at E3. The g..."

"Video In Link"

"At a conference on Steam and the future of PC gaming at its Seattle headquarters today, Valve announced that it would be introducing a new feature to its digital distribution platform that allows remote storage of all game data for Steam games.

Steam already allows you to play any games in your Steam library from any PC. Steam Cloud will extend that service to game data - examples given were a progress save from Half-Life, or your keyboard bindings and option settings from Team Fortress 2...."

"This week we discuss your feedback from last week, the Decoda review in Game Developer Magazine, our admission into the Xbox 360 Middleware program, our upcoming office space and the new current Commander system in NS2."

"After a very busy couple weeks, we're back with the next podcast. Things have been going great around here and we're on the verge of being able to talk about a few significant new developments!

We also just got back from GDC 2008. With over 18,000 attendees, it's becoming a zoo. So much so, that it looks like it will become invite-only starting next year."

"Natural Selection (a Half-Life 1 RTS+FPS hybride modification) was first launched on October 31, 2002 with version 1.0, it is up to version 3.2 as of now and has seen a lot of changes over the years. All this time there has never been an officially supported map pack. Sure a lot of servers had custom map packs, but these were not officially supported.


Now finally after all these years there is a community member (Brent 'Stix&Stonz' Mitchell) who took the step into realising a fan map pack."

"The Northern Illinois University campus is still reeling from Thursday’s rampage shooting by an apparently deranged 27-year-old man.

But that hasn’t stopped anti-game violence activist Jack Thompson from threatening NIU with a lawsuit. Over video games."

"With his Friday appearance on Fox News, Miami attorney Jack Thompson has managed to once again introduce the video game violence issue into the aftermath of a tragedy.

In the past, some observers have referred to Thompson’s media tactics as massacre chasing. Frankly, it’s hard to disagree. Beyond that, one has to ask - given that NIU shooter, Stephen Kazmierczak, was 27-years-old - why are video games an issue at all?"

"Seeing that Jack went out of his way to email me this morning to point out that he was "right" about the shooting being spurred by Counter-Strike, I thought it was probably worth another round of Dissecting Jack's Lies.

Hit a jump for his confusing quotes and how accurate they were:

1: "We find from brain scan studies out of Harvard that if you get started playing, for example, violent video games you can more likely copy-cat the behaviors in the games".
Verdict: False
Evidence: Whil..."

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"When I first started writing on this site about six months ago, one of the first articles I wrote had to deal with Episodic content and how it was working. Here we are six months later and I felt it was about time to follow up on the original article to see how the the three titles I mentioned in that article are coming along. And in summary up front, I can tell you that overall, episodic content does not live up to the hype except in the pocketbooks of the corporations."

"The biggest problem with great games is how everybody is always jabbering on about how damn wonderful they are. Which got us thinking: surely even the very finest videogames must have the odd blemish on their flawless complexions, the occasional fly in an otherwise unspoiled tub of ointment?

Click below to see what really got GamerSquad’s goat in the likes of Goldeneye, Half-Life, Halo, and Zelda: Ocarina of Time."

"We’ve all played a game where someone other than the main character has a huge role in the game, usually an unsung role. The problem is that these characters are absolutely vital to not only the enjoyment of the game but in pushing the story further along and quite often even saving the main character a time or two. Well it's time these silent saviors get recognized, so here's the top 5 best supporting characters. They were picked based on personality, in-game presence, and over-all abilit..."

"FPS - First person shooter. Three words, one genre and a whole host of games; it's almost the de facto style for a PC game today. That's you holding that gun, casting the spell and swinging the sword; you get to choose exactly where you look, touch and move to. It's the closest you can get to that virtual world.

Shooting games have been around since... well, if electricity was around when Noah was rebuilding after the floods, I'd bet money that he'd be playing a shooting game of some kind..."