Tag: Valve

My not so secret obsession/favorite game/secret lover is Team Fortress 2. It’s a brilliantly designed game that takes many of the best elements of both online gaming and sports and combines them into an endlessly re-playable blood orgy.

When Valve unveiled its Steam Controller last year, I was quite skeptical about the value of its built-in touchscreen. It turns out many of Valve’s testers had the same opinion. This January, at the 2014 Steam Dev Days conference, the company announced that it was ditching the touchscreen for a more conventional button configuration.

Hey kids, it’s CES 2014 and it’s time for some new Steam Machines! No, not of the carpet cleaning variety. The gaming kind. CyberPowerPC are announcing two models today that start at $499(USD).

If console gamers have the PS4 and Xbox One to be excited about, Valve has given the master race and their incessantly upgraded next, next-gen PC hardware something to tinker with. You can now download the first public beta version of SteamOS, the Linux-based and gaming-centered operating system.

The world’s premier hat simulator spreads its death and destruction to the chessboard. NECA’s WizKids will be releasing a Team Fortress 2 chess set by the end of the year. Never above mocking itself, Valve allowed WizKids to turn the game’s classes into disembodied heads, with the chess pieces worn as hats.

Yesterday Valve released a video showing a prototype of the Steam Controller – which is designed to be used with the company’s upcoming Steam Machines – being used to play a handful of games. The demo focused on the controller’s “legacy mode”, in which the controller emulates a mouse and a keyboard, letting you map keys and cursor movement to the controller’s buttons, triggers and trackpads.

Half-Life is the game that put Valve on the map. The last full game in the franchise was Half-Life 2 way back in October 2007. Ever since that launch, fans have been clamoring for the next installment in the franchise – presumably called Half-Life 3.

Earlier this week Valve teased the free, gaming-oriented and Linux-based SteamOS and the PC-console hybrid Steam Machine. It soon completed the establishment of the fundamentals of its living room invasion by unveiling the Steam Controller. As with the Steam Machine, the controller is Valve’s attempt at bringing the best of PC and console gaming together.

Ben Heck’s Steam box will soon be a legitimate Steam Box. The avid PC gamer can build his Steam Box, the console gamer will be able to buy a Steam Box, everyone can have a Steam Box!

Like other top developers, Valve often gets asked by kids who dream of working in the videogame industry about what they need to do to get in and what the experience is like. The company has responded with Pipeline, a project aimed at high school students that will try to answer those very questions.

Valve’s Steam platform has earned the loyalty and respect of many desktop gamers because of its progressive online marketplace and social network. The frequent deals and discounts help too. Recently Valve launched a new meta-game designed to keep its members locked in to Steam.

Fans of the Half-Life series will immediately recognize the Lambda logo in this image. But this isn’t just some patch on Gordon Freeman’s uniform, no. This is a handmade work of art – a geeky stained glass masterpiece if you ask me.

Fans of Half-Life 2 know that the Gravity Gun is one of the greatest weapons in the history of video gaming. The idea of a gun that can pick up random objects like sawblades and turn them into projectiles was just brilliant.

If you didn’t manage to get your hands on a full-sized replica of the Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device, now’s your chance to get a mini-sized one for your desk instead.

One of my favorite guns in the history of video games has to be the Gravity Gun from Half-Life 2. Perhaps my second favorite is the Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device, which admittedly is more of a tool than a gun.

We finally have more details on the extremely faithful Portal turret replica that Valve showed off last week. It turns out that it was commissioned by Valve from Weta Workshop, the award-winning special effects, design and prop makers known for their work in The Lord of the Rings.