Half-Life 2 Released
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November 16, 2004 - Yes, we&#39;d barely believe it either if we hadn&#39;t seen it ourselves: Half-Life 2 is here. More than six years in development, more than a year dramatically in the public eye, weathering delays
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Tycho: A crafty puzzle/platformer 1) from the first person perspective and 2) with a unique gameplay hook which is also 3) set in the Half-life Universe is more than I can handle mentally. The existing materials point toward a clinical, detached, (but most importantly) truly original sense of humor, which I guess is what happens when you hire Old Man Murray to do your writin's.Another reason I have positive associations with it are that, yeah, this team is originally from DigiPen, our local game development institute - you can check out work and games from other students here. They showed their final project to the guys at Valve, and (to hear that interview tell it) before it was even over they'd been offered jobs developing an advanced version of their concept on their in-house technology. Valve pulls directly from the community with extraordinary frequency, a philosophy so intensely moral I can hardly articulate it. Episode 2 is hitting along with Team Fortress 2 and Portal, in a single purchase, and it seems crazy that I would get all of that for twenty dollars. They haven't announced pricing yet, and I imagine that's why. I don't want to pay more than I need to, certainly, but one of the things I like about buying things directly from Valve is that I perceive it as being humane. I don't want them to kill themselves entertaining me, and if they suffer at my expense, then I at least want to compensate them fairly. (CW)TB
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The sequel to the best-selling Xbox game, Halo, is finished, say its makers.
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Defying the laws of physics on a regular basis marks the infinite appeal of Portal, Valve's new first-person shooter-and-puzzle game. Put a portal on one wall, and a second portal on another, and you can open a door to anywhere -- including some secret places. Wired's How To Wiki reveals some of those secret places and the rewards you'll reap. But, believe it or not, we don't know everything, so feel free to add your own secret portals and take home this week's bragging rights.
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Valve&#39;s Gabe has sent some fresh info to fan site HL Fallout in which he reveals the various Half-Life 2 retail and Steam packages that will be available to the public once Half-life 2 actually goes on sale.
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Installation bugs barely dent the greatness of Half-Life 2, says reviewer James Bregman.
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There&#39;s a balance to making a sequel to a successful video or computer game. The developer, at the very least, is expected to match the quality of the first game.
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The creator of Half-Life 2, Valve, has won a legal fight to stop Vivendi distributing its titles to cyber cafes. The ruling bars Vivendi distributing games such as Half-Life 2 and Counter-Strike to these pay-for-play venues.
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About three weeks ahead of its release date, a copy of the much anticipated Xbox game Halo 2 has been leaked onto the Internet. The leak, reportedly a European French-language version, came just days after
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Metamod:Source is an API manager that sits in between the Half-Life 2 Source Engine and game/mod DLL, allowing loaded Server Plugins to intercept and override calls passed in between; similar to Metamod for Half-Life 1.   Metamod:Source versions 1.4.3 and 1.6.0 have been released.  These are major updates that introduce a new loading mechanism, both for Metamod itself as well as for plugins.  In addition, we have launched a new website and marked the 1.6 branch as stable.  Metamod:Source is a C++ framework for Half-Life 2 servers, adding low-level function interception and other API features.
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Vivendi Universal Games said on  Tuesday it plans to ship "Half-Life 2" to retailers in  November, bringing to market the eagerly anticipated PC game  that has been plagued by missed launch dates and a hacker  attack on its development company.
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This is turning out to be the year of the upgrade for many computer gamers, thanks to the arrival of blockbuster game titles such as Doom 3 and Half-Life 2, on its way to retail shelves after a year's worth of delays. -The Washington Post
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Gabe: The Crash of the Titans demo just landed on Xbox LIVE. I just finished it and I was really impressed. It's a beautiful platformer with some really slick animation and character design. It also does a great job of capturing the feel of the old Crash games. It ends a little abruptly but it definitely sold me on the game.-Gabe out
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Microsoft Corp. finally came through with Halo 2 and ended the waiting period of millions of gamers worldwide today by announcing Halo 2 in the market.
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The eagerly-awaited Ubuntu Studio has been released, adding another entry into the expanding list of multimedia-optimized Linux distributions. I haven't had a chance to try it yet, but interested readers can peruse some installation screenshots or check out the latest news and information on the Ubuntu Studio Wiki. I plan to review the distro in a future column, along with an update on the latest version of the venerable PlanetCCRMA, but in this entry I'm focused on another very exciting new release. Ardour 2.0 is now available for download. This version is a significant improvement over the 0.99 series (1.0 was never released), with many new features and enhancements to performance and stability. The following article profiles the new Ardour as I employed it for three projects, all involving the program in the processes of composition and arranging as well as the more typical tasks of recording and editing. I've described each project in some detail, and each description includes a link to the final audio output.
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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.
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The global launch of the long-awaited Half-Life 2 game has been marred by online registration problems.