This video was made by a very creative group of people who took Tom Cruise's speech from that infamous Scientology video and placed it within the realm of Half-Life 2's Combine. It is creepy and well-done and honestly works.

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"Something fundamental had changed in the nature of our surroundings, and we all knew it. It wasn't just the weariness of a long, cross-European journey playing with our minds. Something was wrong. Something was very wrong.

And then it clicked, and in unison we exclaimed in shrill terror, "Holy shit, we're in City 17!".

And we were. We really, really were. We swear that Valve must have taken Leipzig as singular inspiration when designing Half-Life 2's Combine-controlled metropolis. It lo..."

"You can’t say “ground-breaking first person shooter” without mentioning the Half-Life series in the same breath. Since its initial release on the PC in 1998, the series has garnered overwhelming critical acclaim as well as commercial success. Crowbar-wielding Gordon Freeman fanboys have been frothing for Valve’s next concoction – Half-Life 2: Episode 3 – for over a year. When E3 came and went with nary a whisper about the next installment, it stung like a headcrab bite. Good news is—Episode 3..."

"the first widely available piece of concept art for the final episode of Valve's Half-Life 2 saga has been uncovered via the 2008 IntoThePixel E3 art gallery.

The piece--created by Valve artists Ted Backman, Jeremy Bennett, and Tristan Redford--appears to show Half-Life hero Gordon Freeman within a large Citadel-like environment, a Combine Advisor looming ominously overhead.

IntoThePixel's website labels the art as related to "Half Life EP3," with platforms listed as PC, Xbox 360 and Pl..."

"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...."

""We sort of laugh at it," [marketing man Doug Lombardi] told Shack News.

"Because we've been wildly successful--we're very fortunate, you know. Our games have all done really, really well, Steam has taken off and become this whole other business for us, Valve has never been in better shape--and yet everybody is talking about how in the PC world, the sky is falling.""

I read HERE (thanks Naked Snake3) that NVIDIA (The graphics card production company) is giving away some free games to anyone with an NVIDIA graphics card.

I imagine this applies to both pre-installed (manufactured PCs), and separately purchased (user installed) graphics cards.

The Games:
Portal: The First Slice (demo)
Half Life 2: Deathmatch
Half Life 2: Lost Coast
Peggle Extreme

Total Size = ~6.8GB

I've set up a (free) Steam account, and my PC qualifies. I have a dated Nv...

"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."

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"Valve's reputation as a top tier developer began when Half-Life released in 1998 and was cemented in 2004 when they released the spectacular sequel. Now, they're bringing that magic back with The Orange Box. As we've said in countless previews, this is one of the best deals we've ever seen in gaming, especially for those people that have yet to play Half-Life 2 at all. With Half-Life 2, Half-Life 2 Episode One, and Half-Life 2 Episode Two, players can take the entire Half-Life 2 journey up to..."

"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."

"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..."