Games I have been playing.

I think I didn't do this last month due to being busy with Christmas and New Year and such. I will start off with Nuclear Dawn. I picked it up through the Indie Royale. I did first thoughts post on the game earlier this month. The game has merged FPS and RTS together. When I first heard about I wasn't sure how it would work. You have a commander who plays in RTS view and uses resources gathered by the FPS players to expand their base and build turrets, spawn points and supply depots to help the rest of the team. I've put a good 30 hours in to the game so far and as I was writing this I noticed it has been updated and this patch includes a new map so I will be jumping on the game once I have finished here.  

Next on my list we have Super Monday Night Combat. I recently got into the beta for this game. It is very similar to its predecessor Monday Night Combat which came out a couple years ago. It was a great game but definitely under rated. The game is in beta at the moment and only has one playable game mode at the moment which is damn near the same as the gameplay described below in the video. With a couple of changes that I have noticed. Instead of having to build turrets they are already in place, along with the fact you can not repair them as the support class like you could in MNC. I am hoping they will change that back in later patches. 

I've only got a couple more. The first of which is Sven Coop. It is an old Half-Life coop mod, in which you can play through the original Half-Life game, other single player mods such as They Hunger and Opposing Force along with literally hundreds of custom maps and original levels made purely for the mod itself. Lastly I have started a complete Half-Life series play through starting with Half-Life obviously then I will venture on to Blue Shift and Opposing Force before making my way to city 17 and work through Half-Life 2 and it's episodes.

Let's Play Half-Life 2

A while back a bunch of Valve fans started a Steam Group named A Call for Communication, this is basically them just wanting better communication between Valve and the fans in question. This is all Half-Life 3/Episode 3 related as fans are becoming seemingly impatient with their wait for the return of a certain Mr Freeman. Along with fans making this page along with a Facebook page, twitter and a Steam forum thread. We have also seen Operation Crowbar put in to place as well where fans bought and sent crowbars to Valve HQ as yet another not so subtle hint.

Now it would seem they are going to try and get Half-Life 2 to the top of the most played list on Steam as an attempt to grab the attention of Valve. This mass play through of the Valve game is set to start at 7pm gmt (11am pst) this Saturday. I am actually playing through Half-Life with intentions of moving on to Half-Life 2 once I have finished. I believe I could finish off the first game by Saturday and join in with this. If anything, it's an excuse to play through the game again.

Idea for next Half-Life game.

I came up with a idea while I was half asleep this morning about something that Valve should do with the next installment of Half-Life. Basically you have three campaigns. One you play through as Gordon, one as Alyx and one as Barney. During these campaigns you will come across the other two and tag along with them for awhile, just as you did in Half-Life 2, so it would be single player with a hint of coop thrown in.

An example of what I mean is near the beginning you (Gordon) are at Dr Kleiners labs along with Alyx and Barney. Alyx gets teleported fine while Gordon's teleport experience is not the greatest and it takes him else where. This leaves Barney at Kleiners lab. This would lead to each character going along on their own story line and meeting up later on in the game. There is a part in HL2 later on I believe it's when your going to rescue Alyxs dad. I could well be wrong, but I know which part I'm on about. You are in a control room with some supplies and a couple sentry turrets. You have to hold out against a bunch of combine until Alyx gets there so she can do her computer thing. So depending on how well the person playing Alyx is doing (assuming you are co-oping with buddies instead of playing with the AI) you may have to hold out longer if they are having trouble getting to you.

I would seriously love it if something like this was in the next Half Life game. I came up with the idea as I was thinking about Blue Shift 2 and Opposing Force 2, which I am still waiting on coming out (I can only hope). As BS and OP are both in the same time line as the first actual Half-Life game I thought you know what would be good, is if they took the principle of Half-Life side projects (ie same time line different characters) and added it in to the game making one massive game instead of having a number of smaller games. 

New Half-Life Game

And by new, I mean old and unreleased. A version of Half-Life which was due to be released for the Sega Dreamcast back in 2000, which ended up getting cancelled, is now being ported over to the PC which is where Mr Freeman belongs really. It's like inception, a pc port of a console port. I'm going to give it a download. I was just about to start another Half-Life run through when I came across this as well. I think I'll play Half-Life then this and see the differences.

Gabe Newell Trolling

It's simple as the title suggests really. A certain Mr Newell is playing with knives in the office. You know every day work stuff. But wait what is that lurking in the background. It's a monitor with the words Half-Life 3 scrawled on it. Is it real? Is it fake? Is it photo shopped? (which I guess would fall under the fake category but nevermind.) They always are working on their arsonal. After Dota and the new Counter Strike I don't think they have anything else on the table. My guess is Half-Life 2 Episode 3, a few hours in to wet your whistle followed shortly by Half-Life 3 a month or two later, with what I'm guessing will be a majorly updated Source engine. Whether they choose to rename it as they did between Half-Life 1 and 2, who knows. As for time line, I'm going to guess next year at the earliest. They have DotA and CS:GO to tweak and play with throughout this year.

Sven Co-op 4.6 Update

For those that don't know Sven Co-op. It is an old Half-Life mod allowing a number of players to play through levels co-operatively including but not limited to the Original Half Life game. Even after all these years the mod is still being updated with the release of version 4.6.

This release features:

• They Hunger Co-op: Episode 2
• A new boss monster: The Kingpin
• Many new and improved maps
• Greatly improved HLSP and Opposing Force storyline support
• Half-Life: Uplink co-op
• Lots of powerful new mapping features
• Tons of bug fixes and changes (e.g. Shock rifle secondary fire can now charge player HEV suits)
• AI improvements
• All-new custom sounds for the Bodyguard

Along with much more, full details on the update can be found here. It is good to see after all this time an old mod like this still getting updates and support.

Half-Life: Origins

I came across this pretty cool fan made video of the start of the first Half-Life game over at Gamerant. It's pretty cool and this trailer has left me wanting to see more, anyway I guess this is as much of a certain Mr Freeman we will be seeing any time soon as we all know Valve like to take their time. Anyway here is the video, check it out.

My top 10 games of all time.

This list is in no particular order, it is just 10 of my favourite games some are newer than others.

Guild Wars

I shall start the list with a MMO under the name of Guild Wars, I believe this game has been the under dog in the MMO market especially compared to the likes of WoW. Yes it does have quite the core fan base. But any casual gamer if they have heard of it and a lot of them will tell you no. The game is getting on a bit now as it was released mid 2000's, 05 if memory serves me correctly as of probably beginning of this year I finally escaped it's grasp on me, yeah I do have a few titles left to grind away at before I can say I have absolutely nothing left to do in game, to be honest I can live with my legacy left behind in the Guild Wars world and until Guild Wars 2 comes out I probably won't be getting back in to it. I have dabbled in a number of other MMO's but Guild Wars was the only one that took hundreds of hours of my life from me. I still to this day don't know why I was so addicted to this game but it does hold a special place in my heart.

Half-Life
The game that started Valves journey in to the hearts of many, many gamers. This game was probably the first game I played that had quite an in depth story behind it. Everything I had played before this game shooter wise, the story was 'There's the bad guy go kill him. Why? Because he's the bad guy.' While I still love those kind of games that essentially just give you a gun and tell you to go nuts, this game changed that. There was a lot of thought effort and time put in to the story, not saying it was the first one to do that of course it was my first story telling shooter game. I am much more of a fan of this game than the sequel. Half-Life 2 I still love that game to bits but there is far to many holes in the gap between Half-Life and Half-Life 2. Valve totally could of done other games to fill in the missing pieces. Even if they had done a sequel to Blue Shift and Opposing Force that would have been more than enough game to explain a little more. I still think they should do a Blue Shift 2 with Barney and the events running up to Half-Life 2. You start off and he is undercover with the combine. You could have easily made a game with Barney and his time under cover with the combine, watch him make choices he later regrets so he doesn't blow his cover. I could sit down and come up with many situations you could make a story for a new Blue Shift or Opposing Force game. It has so many missing links you could fill in and you know from Valves huge fan base that people would be all over the games should they be released. I'm gonna stop my little rant there anyway and go play through Half Life up to Episode 2 as soon as I'm done writing this.

Road Rash 2
Now I am going back even further in time to one of the games from my childhood which I used to play the crap out of. Road Rash 2 for my Sega Mega Drive. I loved this game, it's racing motor bikes while trying to beat your opponent with bats and chains what is not to like. My only gripe at this game is the lack of save ability, but that's more at the console than the game it's self. Saying that though if I was able to save my game and beat it, the replay value probably wouldn't be as high as it was. Saving on this game involved leaving the console on with the game paused. All that time spent playing this game just so I could get the best bike available, I believe I got it about 4 times but because it took me so long to save up for it, I never got that used to the bike and crashed a lot due me not being used to the handling and speed of the bike usually ending up in me getting game over.

Final Fantasy IX
That's right Final Fantasy 9 not 7. Not to say 7 isn't a good game but it's not my favourite. I was a little late to jump on the Final Fantasy bandwagon getting into it with the release of the 9th in the series. But it is my favourite of all the Final Fantasy games. I have played it through so many times I could probably sit down and tell you the entire story start to finish.

Burnout Series

Burnout is probably my all time favourite racing game. Probably Burnout 3 being favourite of the lot. It's the most fun you can have crashing cars without being hospital bound.

Deathspank

It is a small(ish) game from developers Hothead Games. I am including all three games as this entry as well. I fricking love Deathspank and his random humour, abuse of orphans and just the generally weird ass hack and slash adventure. If you haven't heard or played any of the Deathspank games, be it the original, Thongs of Virtue or the latest adventure with our random hero, The Baconing. I suggest go invest in one of them, I believe they cost round about a tenner for each game. It's definitely worth the money.

Team Fortress 2

I have been a fan of Team Fortress since the days of TFC, never did play the quake mod though. I have only one gripe again TF2 and believe it or not it's not about hats. It's about how escort maps such as Hunted were never brought along with all the other game modes. For those of you unaware of this map type. Basically one person was a VIP which one team had to protect while getting them to a certain area to win the game while the other team had to assassinate them. I spent more time playing escort maps than any other type. I should really go look see if modders have made custom maps with escort objectives. I realise we have payload which is technically an escort type game but it's not the same. Anyway rant aside, this game is well it's fun as hell whether you enjoy using the variety of weapons available or just using the stock loadouts through one of the many vanilla servers which don't allow anything but stock weapons.

Left 4 Dead

Third entry in my list from Valve. This doesn't really much explanation why it was put in my list. It's killing zombies with your buddies. How can you not like it.

Unreal Tournament

This game was probably the first multiplayer competitive shooter I played. Epic totally need to revive this game and when they do they need to make it just a tournament, no storys like UT3, just pure good old fashion killing the other guy purely for the fact that you want to be better than them. They have Unreal if they want to put a story behind the game, Unreal Tournament should be kept as a Tournment nothing more nothing less. Anyway before I get in to a full blown rant I have to admit this game is fantastic, and whether you pick up the original or any other version of the game it doesn't matter.

Command and Conquer: Red Alert 2 - Yuri's Revenge

While this is technically an expansion pack, one which I dub greatest expansion in existence, you can argue with me all you want you will never change my mind on the matter, I believe this game could have easily stood by itself without a problem. This game along with with Unreal Tournament was one of the games that got me into lan gaming, primarily with my brothers, while I haven't been to a lan for ages as it's a lot easier just to play online, I used to love sitting in playing over lans trying to out do one another. Though I hated playing my younger brother as he was always Yuri and made sure he was near enough to both Allied and Soviet bases so he could just send in Yuri to get their construction yard and get the best of each faction. I always swayed away from Yuri and went either Allied or Soviet, had a solid plan for each team though. If I was Allied it was simple as getting a shed load of rocketeers and prism tanks. If I was Soviet I just defended my base until I had a ridiculous amount of Mammoth Tanks, I would go for a minimum of 50, this would be followed by the complete and utter destruction of anything that got in my way, while this massacrer was in progress I would be preparing a second wave of Mammoth Tanks to join them.

Games that should have been more popular - Science & Industry

I was thinking about how a lot of games and mods never truly got the love and support they really should have. Over the next few weeks I am going to write up about a few I feel should have been more popular. First game I am going to bring up is an old Half-Life 1 mod under the name of Science and Industry. Compared to the likes of Counter Strike and Team Fortress this mod was severely under rated. It is in essence an advanced capture the flag type game.

You play as a security guard for one of two research companies, Amalgamated Fluorodynamics (AFD) and Midland Carbide Labs (MCL), I have no idea the reasons behind the names but they aren't really important. Each team starts off with 3 scis (from now on will be mentioned as scis), your job as a security guardis to protect your companies research lab from the opposing team while trying to kidnap rival scientists (from now on will be mentioned as scis as I am lazy) and bring them to the G-man at human resources to make them work for your team. This is the main objective in the game, there are some secondary objectives depending on the map which I will get to in a bit.

The reason for you needing to kidnap and hire enemy scis is to help with your teams research. This research can get you better weapons, better armour, devices such as trip mines, satchel charges and mind rays (which make you scis work more efficiently making them research quicker) and implants for your player which can speed your movement, regenerate ammo, health and armour among other things.

Along with hiring scis you can also help you teams progress with secondary objectives. If you happen to kill an enemy who happens to be using a weapon you have yet to research, you can pick it up and return it to human resources. Doing this speeds up research of that specific weapon. There are other secondary objectives that are only available on certain maps. These objectives include:
Stealing files from your opposing team which can help speed up research.
Sabotage of enemy lab equipment which costs them money to replace, this is important as the team with the most money at the end of the round is the winner.

I would really like to see some one bring this back and update it to say source graphics. It would be awesome if Valve picked it up, I believe they could do wonders with it and put Half-Life and Portal fans against each other changing the team names to Black Mesa and Aperture. They could then make the playable characters for each team a well known person from each franchise. Black Mesa having Gordon, Alyx and Barney while Aperture has Chell, P-body and Atlas, then maybe include the gravity gun and the portal gun as exclusive weapons for each team retrospectively.

If you are interested in the game and want to give it a shot to see how you like it, you should give it a download and while very few people play these days, there is always the weekly gather Sunday night at 9pm GMT which is still going without fail after all these years.

Gordon Freeman Returns!!!

Mr Freeman has been MIA for quite some time now. He has now been found, as a playable character in the PC release of Renegade Ops. You will be able to play as the one free man and drive around in the Half Life 2 buggy. The game is due to be released on Steam on 14th October and will cost £9.99.

There has been a couple Half Life related news articles of late such as the supposed weapon info in DOTA 2 code, and Gabes Haiku (both of which I believe people are looking far to much into), and now Gordon is making an appearance albeit not in the game we have been waiting for, but perhaps this is Valve's subtle little ways of letting us know that he is in fact coming back. It must be in development by now, it's been what 3-4 years since episode 2, there is bound to be something in the works they aren't telling us about. My guestimation is for Episode 3 some point mid next year followed by Half Life 3 maybe Christmas or early to mid 2013.