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Far Cry 3 And The Stranger In A Strange Land Didn’t make it to this year’s Game Developers Conference? If you were particularly excited about attending some of Valve’s various sessions, you can virtually attend through the power of the PDF. The house of Half-Life, Portal and Counter-Strike has released the slides from its four GDC presentations which cover all aspects of The Orange Box. The presentations “Integrating Narrative and Design: A Portal Post-Mortem” and “Stylisation With a Purpose: The Illustrative World of Team Fortress 2″ may be the most layman friendly, giving regular folk a look beyond The Orange Box‘s developer commentary. All four are worth a peek at the very least.
Valve Publications [Valve via GameSetWatch]
Back in February, Valve said they’ve be splitting the PC version of The Orange Box up and releasing each of the titles separately at retail. They said they were going to do it in March. They’re not. They’re going to be doing it in April. April 9 to be precise, and while we still don’t have any word on individual prices, picking up the entire HL2 saga in one box should be a bargain not to be missed. Individual Orange Box games hit retail April 9 [Joystiq]
Let’s state the obvious: Valve gave us a heck of a deal with The Orange Box. And if a developer were ever justified in charging console consumers for DLC, it would be Valve through a Team Fortress 2 map pack. But here’s the thing, Valve has no interest in charging us for more maps. Valve’s VP of marketing Doug Lombardi explains that they’d like to offer content… …for free, definitely, as much as we can. You know, we don’t have full say over that, but we have some say over how that works.
He continues:
An update for Team Fortress 2 was released on Thursday; the updates will be applied automatically. Additions such as adding a ‘custom’ tab to the server browser and fixing some class balancing issues are included, but there is a lengthy list of other updates, additions, and fixes over at the Steam website.
Team Fortress 2 Update Released [Steam]
Confession: I’ve never actually assembled one of the papercraft printouts—I did glue together about half a robot once before becoming violently ill with laziness—but I’m almost considering taking a go at these Portal turrets. Confession 2: By “considering” making these turrets, I really mean “lightly toying with the idea.” Confession 3: By “lightly toying with the idea,” I really mean there’s no way in hell this is happening. I don’t even have paper, glue or anything. Right now I’m typing on a pile of rocks fashioned into a QWERTY arrangement. I have no clue if you want even read this.
Download Here [deviantART via XboxDomain]
Valve has its own Team Fortress 2 Valentine’s Day gift planned for fans, a Whitman’s Sampler of a Steam patch that brings with it new map “Badlands” and a slew of tweaks, changes and bug fixes. There’s some general housekeeping being done with SourceTV and the Source Engine itself, but the patch makes changes that should affect gameplay on popular maps like Dustbowl, as well as fun updates like “Added flamethrower ‘sizzle’ sound when the Pyro is hitting a target.”
These updates are for the PC version only, with no new information on when Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 The Orange Box owners can expect their goodies. Interested parties can read up on all the changes that are sure to be the bane of TF2 players’ girlfriends at the official site.
Updates for TF2, Source Engine, SourceTV Coming Tomorrow [Steam]
The 11th Annual Interactive Achievement Awards were held last night at the Red Rock Resort in Las Vegas, with twenty-six awards handed out honoring the best gaming of 2007. Sixteen of those awards were split evening between BioShock, The Orange Box, and Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, with COD 4 walking away with the coveted Overall Game of the Year award. Rock Band took home three awards including Outstanding Achievement in Soundtrack and Family Game of the Year. Nintendo saw two awards – Adventure Game of the Year for Super Mario Galaxy and Handheld Game of the Year for The Phantom Hourglass. Puzzle Quest took home Downloadable Game of the Year, justifying all of those long hours I spent playing the damn game on the DS, PSP, and finally via Xbox Live Arcade. Along with the game awards, the night saw former Sony Computer Entertainment president Ken Kutaragi given the Lifetime Achievement Award and Blizzard president and CEO Mike Morhaime entered into the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences Hall of Fame. Congratulations to all of the winners – we were so very surprised. No really! Hit the jump for the full list of winners.
Good news! There will be more Portal. Bad news! We have no clue what that means or when it will happen. Valve spokesperson Doug Lombardi recently told Eurogamer: There’ll be more Portal, for sure. But the details of that, to be honest, we’re still working out.
He adds that Valve wants it to be more than “a bunch of new puzzles.” And we must agree, with Portal’s story being as compelling as its gameplay—even if a sequel or deeper add-on couldn’t duplicate the experience—releasing more levels alone reeks of wasted potential.
“More Portal for sure” – Valve [eurogamer] [picture]
