Steam

The Source of a Bloody Good Time

Martyn Zachary Leave a comment

One of the most surprising video game announcements in recent memory – honest! – is Bloody Good Time, a new eight-player multiplayer game “regrouping ambitious teen actors ready to kill for fame” from Scottish The Ship developers Outerlight, who have suddenly made their return to the gaming headlines. Bloody Good Time, launching today on the 29th of October and available on XBLA and from Steam, has the ignoble distinction of only being the second Source title to be published by Ubisoft, the first being the classic Dark Messiah of Might and Magic.

As perhaps evident from the trailer above, the game pits eight hopeful first-time auditioners against each other in an audition to the death on three different movie sets. The game’s cast of characters is a who’s who of movie caricatures, ranging from a surfer dude to a mall goth. Players will get their chance to off the rest of the competing aspirants in four different game modes: Hunt, Elimination, Revenge and Deathmatch.

(more…)

Read More

New Left 4 Dead DLC: The Sacrifice

Martyn Zachary Leave a comment

This Friday’s Portal 2 GTTV episode also had a brief but promised Left 4 Dead segment to it. Valve’s Chet Faliszek talked with Geoff Keighley to announce the details of the new Left 4 Dead 1 and 2 DLC, called “The Sacrifice,” to be released free on the PC and on the Macintosh, too.

Unlike the previous Left 4 Dead 1 DLC, “Crash Course”, which did so in name only, the forthcoming downloadable content is all about Valve bridging existing gaps in the games’ storyline: “The Sacrifice” will reveal to players exactly what happens to the original four survivors, leading all the way up to the events of the previous DLC, “The Passing.”

In addition to the new playable content, a digital L4D comic by Michael Avon Oeming (best known for the Powers comic with Brian Michael Bendis), of 150 pages and four separate parts, will be released. Each part will tell the background story of one of the original four survivors, the first of which will be released as early as September. Gathering from the screencaps below, we’ll probably see Louis’ story first:

(more…)

Read More

Alien Swarm

Martyn Zachary Leave a comment

More often than not, letting go is unfortunately the name of the game in the modding community. Most of us probably did just that in 2007, albeit begrudgingly, after Black Cat Games’ blog completely ceased to receive news updates on their forthcoming commercial game, Alien Swarm: Infested.

Though their previous project, the original Unreal Tournament 2004 mod version of the game (that you can still try out and play, by the way; its unrelenting difficulty level and gritty gameplay is something to behold), illustrated in the screenshots below, had laid down a steel-solid foundation for future games to build on, their PR unfortunately started mirroring Black Widow Games’ They Hunger: Lost Souls on the other side of the fence.

This is why I am all the more happy to report that more than three years later and completely out of the blue, Valve have just released Alien Swarm, a Source-based top-down co-op corridor shooter, completely free of charge.

(more…)

Read More

Counter-Strike: Source Beta

Martyn Zachary 1 Comment

Valve’s Quintin Doroquez has just released the following crucial information to all those clamouring for the forthcoming revised version of Counter-Strike:

Phase 1 of the Counter-Strike: Source beta has opened at cyber cafes that subscribe to the Valve Cyber Café Program. A full listing of those venues can be found here: http://www.steampowered.com/?area=cafe_directory
Later this month, the beta will be extended to owners of Counter-Strike: Condition Zero and ATI\Half-Life 2 video card bundle owners. 1)http://store.steampowered.com/news/42/

Wait, wai-… wait a minute! Nearly got sucked into a bloody time warp there – that particular press bit’s actually way back from 2004. Believe it or not, after so many years of failed updates and broken netcode, Valve have honestly, really, truly scraped together a new batch of features to the game in conjunction with Hidden Path Studios. Broadly, here’s what the “limited beta” image above is about:

  • 144 achievements added
  • New lifetime player stats and summary screens
  • New match player stats and summary screens
  • New end of round display with MVP and interesting fact about a player
  • Updated scoreboard with new icons, visual style, MVP stars, and avatar pictures
  • New cinematic death camera
  • New domination and revenge system
  • Added avatar icons to voice chat, scoreboard, and end of round display
  • Incorporated many source engine updates

Before these changes are rolled over to the general population, you can sign up for the beta here. Steam is coughing and sputtering as is common with all major releases, so you might have to wait for your turn a bit.

Update: Whoops, the limited beta filled up already. That was quick.

References   [ + ]

Read More