Portal 2 not coming anytime soon

After the conclusion of Portal, many gamers were left yearning for more cake and a visit from their companion cube, unfortunately they are going to have wait a while. When talking to Eurogamer, Valve's Doug Lombardi had this to say about a portal sequel.

"In typical Valve tradition, it won't be Portal with different colours," said Lombardi, dressed as a companion cube. "I think that when you hit something like that, you have two choices: you can quickly replicate it and stick it out there - do the opportunistic thing and cash in on it; or you can do the crazy thing like we did after Half-Life was so successful and go off and try and say, 'Okay, that was revolutionary, so its successor has to be equally as revolutionary.'

Looks like Portal 2 is going to launching alongside Duke Nukem Forever and Starcraft: Ghost.

[Source]





-Ryizzel

Read more...

New TF2 Trailer

To promote the standalone release of Team Fortress 2, Valve has released a new trailer. In this "Meet The" video we are introduced to the Scout...who seems to really love turkey sandwiches, but then again who doesn't.

If only killing a Heavy with a Scout was that easy in-game.





-Ryizzel

Read more...

The Orange Box games To be sold separately

Do you feel like screwing yourself out of a good deal? Have you ever woken up and said "Gee, this day is going to be made of fail, and I think I'll help it along." Well, I have news for you!


Valve has confirmed that the individually boxed Orange Box games will be released on April 9th. The separate SKUs, that will be released worldwide, include the first person puzzle game portal, cell shaded multi player frag fest Team Fortress 2, and both Half Life Episode 1 & 2. Though Valve made no comment on pricing for the games, retailers list portal for $19.99 and the others for $29.99.







-Ryizzel

Read more...

TF2 Update Released

On Thursday, Valve released an update to Team Fortress 2, which addresses some class balancing issues and adds several new features. Also added was Tournament Mode, along with a win/loss tracking and a team creation UI. Valve has also made searching for custom games is now easier, thanks to the feature added that allows players to search for custom games via tag filtering.

Added "Custom" tab to the server browser

* Servers can now specify metatags describing the custom rules they've adopted
* Players can use tag filtering to find servers running the custom rules they want to play
* Added options for servers who want to become custom games: Disable critical hits (tf_weapon_criticals), eliminate respawn times (mp_disable_respawn_times), and raise maxplayers above 24


Initial release of Tournament mode (mp_tournament)

* UI for handling team naming, ready mode, and win results
* Disables team player limits, autobalancing, and intermission


Class balancing

* Reduced Soldier's maximum rocket reserve ammo from 36 to 16
* Reduced Demoman's maximum sticky bomb reserve ammo from 30 to 16
* Reduced Demoman's maximum grenade launcher reserve ammo from 40 to 24


General

* Added protection against voice command spamming. Dramatic reduction in teleporters needed
* Fixed mp_timelimit ending the map during the middle of a round on maps like Dustbowl and GravelPit
* Fixed "lastdisguise" command not remembering if you were disguised as your own team
* Added "Toggle Disguise Team" binding in Options->Keyboard to toggle the disguise team for the Spy's PDA
* Changed PDA menus to accept keys bound to "slot1", "slot2", etc., and "slot10" cancels
* Fixed Spectator targetID not using team colors
* Changed team autobalance code to not balance the teams when the active round timer shows less than 60 seconds
* Fixed "-maxplayers" on the command line not correctly setting the maxplayers value for the server
* Fixed Badlands never having Sudden Death triggered
* Fixed Engineer being able to detonate buildings that are being sapped
* Changed Engineer buildings to detonate when a player disconnects instead of blinking out
* Fixed potential client crash for players being healed by a Medic or dispenser
* Made several improvements to server-side stat reporting (not related to individual player stats)

-Ryizzel

Read more...