Half-Life 2 out in November
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Vivendi has announced that Half-Life 2, the sequel to one of the most popular PC titles ever, will be released on November 16. The original game was released back in 1998 and earned more than 50 game-of-the-year awards.
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Half-Life 2 maker Valve has won a legal battle over who controls access to its games in cyber cafes.
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Also this week: Xbox 2 backwards compatibility and Halo 2 four-way co-op (or lack thereof). RUMOR #1: Sony will release the PStwo, a scaled-down version of the PlayStation 2, on October 26th.
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Wie Publisher Vivendi Universal gestern Abend in einem offiziellen Presserundbrief mitteilt, hat der heiÃ erwartete Action-Blockbuster Half-Life 2 endlich den Goldstatus erreicht.
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The day after Half-Life 2 hit the market, the second game to be powered by developer Valve&#39;s Source engine followed suit. Activision announced that Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines has shipped for the PC.
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By Troy Wolverton, San Jose Mercury News, Calif.  Dec. 9--November was a good month for Nintendo -- and for the video game industry as a whole.
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December 01, 2004 - In a sly, swift update Tuesday evening, Valve released Half-Life 2: Deathmatch, the multiplayer component of Half-Life 2 which everyone had so gleefully hoped would appear.
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Gamers have been able to get a taste of the technology behind the widely anticipated Half-Life 2.
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[Hollywood News] Los Angeles, Oct 1 : The 21st sequel to the super hit James Bond series, which was due for release in November next year, has been put on hold due to the lack of a director and a hero.
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Gabe: The Penny Arcade store has been updated with some new items. First we've got a brand new zip up hoodie.    It's got a slick PA logo on the front and Tycho's speech from the comic strip "I Hope You Like Text" on the back. We've been getting requests for a zip up like this for a long time. I don't want to sound like a used car salesman but my guess is that these will not last long.     We've also added a new sticker pack. This pack includes Tycho, Gabe, Annarchy, Charles, The Merch, The Fleshreaper, The Fruit Fucker and two bumper stickers.  The sticker pack is $10 but we've got a special deal going right now. If you spend $50 in the store we'll toss in the sticker pack for free.    Also, don't forget that you can now purchase prints of just about all our comic strips. If you're looking for strips with specific characters or games, Pennypacker is a great way to search our archives. I've had a few people ask me what my favorites are or which ones I think would make for especially nice prints. Tycho and I are each working on a list of our favorites but off the top of my head I'd say "The Hawk And The Hare" series would look pretty classy all framed up and hung on someone's wall.     -Gabe out
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Tycho:  Last year's iteration of Tiger Woods had a fairly serious glitch in multiplayer, in that the game could not be played in multiplayer mode.  Or, it worked sometimes, but there was no way to know how or when - what combination of dances and burning herbs would right this aloof mechanism.  It was most likely the rush of new owners securing tee-times on simulated links, but after a week of trying to use the product without success I decided that I had better things to do than try and contextualize EA's grave miscalculations.    The few times we were able to jump on and actually get in there were the kind of epic, unadulterated "guy fun" one sees lionized in hilarious summer comedies.  Golf as a sport (and as a videogame) has the strong undercurrent of shared misery that one usually finds only in dive bars.  The recently released demo for this year's product - on both PSN and XBL, now - recalled those moments to us, independent of the rage that bookended each round of powerfully communal spirit lodge golf.  This year's product has a huge focus on Gamernet, a kind of user created content initiative that will hopefully see them approach the performance of their online infrastructure with more conviction.     GameFace, their face making thing, has seen a significant jump this year as well - it can take pictures from your console's camera and create actual face geometry, and I understand that photos can even be uploaded online and then brought down on the console for processing.  We were able to get some pretty good results with the earlier versions of the tool, but this is very much appreciated.  Of course, in the wrong hands, every tool is a weapon.     Ubisoft is now saying that Haze is an exclusive exclusive for the PS3, and not one of them timed or partial exclusives one might see in the lesser houses.  Truly monogamous games are rare these days, and this is certainly a surprise, but this thing has been hopping back and forth for months.  There was even a leaked document that showed this "exclusive" being released a week later for PC and 360, though all traces of the document were soon obliterated.  Assassin's Creed was (as you'll recall) a PS3 exclusive as well.  For a week, at any rate.        I'm really excited for Haze, but I'm not sure if that's a universally held belief.  The writer made a good impression on me at E3 several years ago, and Free Radical makes a good impression on me whenever they make a videogame.  It's also a four player co-op experience with a unique, asymmetrical multiplayer proposition that you've probably read about.  But, as with Bioshock, I'm really in it for the story - and, also like Bioshock, I think anything that limits its potential audience is a serious mistake.
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It doesn't break new ground, and the plot is a little sparse, but thanks to its visual quality and ability to suck you into its world, Half Life 2 is probably the best game of 2004. By Suneel Ratan.
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SPOnG last night received several SMS messages at ungodly hours foretelling the launch of Half-Life 2, rather a strange event for the release of a PC game.
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In late August Aspyr Media Inc. and Wideload Games first announced plans to collaborate on a new game release. On Thursday Aspyr and Wideload Games offered the first details about the game, including platform information and a release schedule.
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Several Half-Life 2 users who finally got the long-delayed game into their hands yesterday got exactly what they didn&#39;t want--more delays.
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Confirming suspicions, Valve releases a new multiplayer mode alongside the game&#39;s SDK; Steam instantly swamped. When Half-Life 2 was released, many were disappointed that its only official multiplayer mode
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Tycho:  As suggested by Gabriel's recent communique, pokemania is not only going strong but has burst, like some foul canker, and the infection has spread.  It's true that I have built a so-called "Leaf Deck," but this is because I was fairly certain they would beat me up if I didn't.  Now he's hauling in his case of Next Quest figurines each day, as I myself once hauled a tacklebox of Necrons, only I need to stress that it was more awesome when I was doing it, because Necrons are unkillable harvesters of flesh and not some kind of weird fox or living scarf.  It's absolutely fucked that I have spent almost fourteen years trying to reveal the subtle glories of table gaming, only to be cast down time and time again.  However wise my counsel, it apparently lacked that crucial munchkin component.    After I completed Half-Life 2: Episode Two - perfectly acceptable entertainment, but nowhere near the revolutions found elsewhere on the same platter - I started to wonder how they would deliver the third episode to the same platform in the next year or so.  I doubt they'll have another four games to accompany it, but who knows:  they're a bizarre company where extraordinary things happen.  Left 4 Dead, Counter-Strike, Day of Defeat, and Episode 3 might look pretty nice on there together.  On the PC, of course, one simply clicks a couple times to get whatever they want, and then leverages Valve's fairly incredible community implementation to get things done.  You could accomplish all of this using only the tip of your nose.      On the Playstation 3, even with Valve's distaste for native development, there's already several precedents for direct delivery of individual titles.  On the 360, where Arcade is Microsoft's only concept for delivering titles in their entirety, the hundred and fifty meg limit falls hard around some titles, hemming them in.  But there's a weird (read: psychotic) eyelet where where larger-form product can escape: as content drops for retail titles.  I was surprised that there was no option for this in The Orange Box itself.  Now that Valve is in a position to write a game once and then compile it to different platforms, a retail release - called "Steam," and including two or three catalog titles - could be delivered as an anchor for their considerable franchise power almost in  perpetuity.  After years of fairly positive digital delivery experiences through Steam, I have to say that I found purchasing a Valve product in a retail context almost unpleasant - and not just because it entails hauling around my considerable bulk.  Retail has been a raw deal for a long time now in developer terms, and I avoid it whenever possible.  I should solicit another piece by an insider here for the post, and I know just the guy.  When he breaks down the way royalties work in the industry, you'll be surprised it isn't just Electronic Arts that's left, selling Electronic Arts games in EA branded stores.