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Lifehacker
Back in 2003, the source code for then-unreleased Half Life 2 showed up on file sharing sites. Now, according to documents uncovered by German Public Radio, Valve worked with the FBI's Seattle office to try to lure out the hacker responsible with a job interview.
A graduate student at the University of Southern California is working on a project that employs Half-Life 2 as a setting/context for political cartoons. Sounds a little out there, but MFA student John Brennan has turned out that video so far, which features Sens. John McCain and Barack Obama on a debate stage, and a headcrab just to show this is Half-Life 2 we're dealing with. And I guess those are combine soldiers in the back beating up on something as these two talk, too.
Half-Life 2's "episodic" expansions are hardly what you'd call episodic in the gaming sense of the word. Other series can knock out two, sometimes even three full games in the time it takes Valve to cobble together a single 4-6 hour mission pack. Of course, the wait's always worth it, since nobody does it quite like Valve does it, but still. Long waits hurt. And when something hurts, we like to blame somebody. So who can we blame for the agonising wait between Episode 2 and Episode 3? Blame Left 4 Dead. And blame Team Fortress 2.
Valve's Doug Lombardi:
So I mean, we're taking more time because it's a more ambitious project. We also sort of had Left 4 Dead become this big thing in the middle of it that we wanted to spend more time on, and you've just got a lot of stuff that we spent this year doing with Team Fortress 2 updates and what have you. So there's just a lot going on, and then an ambitious project on top of it caused the schedule to move out a little bit from the delta of the last three releases in the franchise.
Goddamnit Team Fortress 2 and Left 4 Dead, how dare you...ah, who are we kidding. We can't get mad at you guys.
Valve on Episode Three: 'A More Ambitious Project' [Shacknews]
If there's one thing Valve excels at, it's making us wait. If you thought the wait between Half-Life 2 and the episodes that followed it were long, expect to wait even longer for the third (and final?) episode in the continuing adventures of Gordon Freeman. Valve's marketing man Doug Lombardi tells Kikizo that Episode Three is going to be longer than the wait between every other entry in the series — longer than the wait for Episode One, longer than the wait for Episode Two.
Couple weeks back, we posted a creepy, creepy Half-Life 2/Tom Cruise video. Also absolutely brilliant, but still, creepy. Well, this week, as promised, the clip's creator has put the Combine Metro Cop costume up for sale on eBay, and boy, is it great. It's referenced wherever possible from Valve's own designs (eg they used a Russian gas mask for concept art? This uses a Russian gas mask), and is loaded with incidental details, right down to a Combine ID tag and a fully-functioning voice-changer, for that authentic, garbled Combine radio chatter.
Half life 2 COMBINE Metrocop costume (working voicebox) [eBay]
You remember those Tom Cruise Scientology interviews? Creepy stuff. They've been remade countless times by comedians, we know, but this is the first time we've seen them remade in the Half-Life 2 universe. Which makes it just as creepy, if not more so, because it's not too big a stretch imagining the Thetans being a part of the Combine. Which would make Tom Cruise, big-name Hollywood star, the harbinger of our ultimate destruction. Food for thought, no?
Reader Aeon sent this in to help you pass away those weekend hours, and we thank him for it. Arts and crafts are one thing, but to sit down and create a crossword? One based on Half-Life? It tips the awesome scales at, well, awesome. It's short, but sweet, and Aeon says if it wets your whistle there'll be a bigger one to come. Oh, before attempting it, note that questions 8 & 11 require you, reader, having seen this and this.
This is a great video, and no matter who you are or what life you lead, you've run into your share of bullying and authoritarian bullshit. Except you aren't Gordon Freeman, and you didn't have a gravity gun. This is obviously a cheat-enabled sequence from the beginning of Half Life 2, but I'll watch it another 100 times after I get my next piece of mail from Technology Credit Union of San Jose, that's for sure. But I didn't laugh at this. Here's why.
It reminds me of a story my uncle told about his days in grade school. Someone screwed up and, as collective punishment, the teacher made everyone stay inside for recess. When she stepped out, he slipped a tack into her chair. She came back in, sat down -- "she had to shift her weight so it would penetrate the layer of girdle fabric, or whatever" -- and shot out of the chair. "No one in the class so much as cracked a smile", Bill said, "because we wanted to see her in pain".
That's sort of the reaction I have to this Combine asshole. Oh and, here's the can, pal.
Pick up the Can [WeGame.com]
This picture (full resolution after the jump) is not a cosplayer getting up to face the day as a Combine Elite soldier from Half-Life 2. It's actually a render of one into a shot of someone's bedroom. It's crazily reminiscent of this gallery, cosplay enthusiasts, in costume, hanging about in everyday settings. (The best is Chewbacca in the kitchen).
Also after the jump, from Deviant Art, a cartoon on why Gordon Freeman doesn't talk. (If you're guessing the punchline right now, you're right.)
The official Into The Pixel web site give us our first conceptual look at Half-Life 2: Episode Three with this moody painting of, we assume, protagonist Gordon Freeman facing down the Advisor seen in previous episodes. Obviously, fans of the game know that Gordon has a serious beef with the Advisor following the events of Episode Two, but this hardly seems like a fair fight. Don't bring a crowbar to a telekinesis fight, Gordo.
While unconfirmed — the art is listed under "Half Life EP3" — it may lead to more speculation that the final episode in the Half-Life 2 trilogy will make an appearance at E3 2008. That's been denied by Valve spokesfolk, but you know how they love to twist words.
Potentially good news for consoles owners of the Sony persuasion is that the official Into The Pixel listing tags the game as seeing release on the PC, Xbox 360 and PS3. Bigger look after the jump.
