Valve’s Weighted Companion Cube plushy may have sold out at a frightening speed but in our opinion something much better has taken its place – the HL2 Headcrab Hat. Who hasn’t wanted to walk onto public transport moaning with a headcrab on their head, only to pay the fare and sit down quietly? Ok, so it’s a specific fantasy but for US$29.95 it could soon be reality.
via BBPS
Team Fortress 2 fans are in for a bit of a treat in the coming weeks. It has been confirmed that 360 players will be getting a new patch that has already been sent off to Microsoft for approval. The patch will fix “several game-play exploits, improve bandwidth usage, improve stats reporting and fixes some menu bugs.”
PC players will be getting maps as they are individually released and 360 users will get a pack. It is not known when we will see them trickle out or if they will be free.
Valve are also planning to give players the same tools they used to make the videos for the game. Valve hopes that this will create a plethora of user created content to show off the different classes. As above, we don’t not know when this feature will be hitting.
There has been no word on the PS3 version of the game, but given that Valve are not handling that game we wouldn’t really expect them to talk about it.
via ShackNews
A forum poster by the name of “slugz” has proven that all you need to do is ask, and you will find the answers that you seek. He wrote an email to Valve asking nicely as to whether we could expect any additional achievements on Steam for the classic Valve Source games, and received this very promising reply from a Valve staffer:
“We’re planning on adding achievements to all of our games you touched on in your mail [Half-Life 2, Half-Life 2: Episode 1, Day of Defeat: Source and Counter-Strike: Source]. We’re just now coming out of the post-shipping haze, so these should start showing up on Steam pretty quick here. We’re also planning on adding a bunch more to TF2, starting with an achievement pack for the Medic in the next week or so.”
via Gaming Today
Valve has released a demo of The Orange Box on Xbox Live. This demo is for Half Life 2: Episode Two, but expect Team Fortress 2 and Portal demos to arrive soon.
via DigitalBattle
I think it has to be said that some of us don’t see the big deal with the Weighted Companion Cube, but rather than be torn to shreds by the crazed masses we must post every little detail of its rise to power. Not very cute when it’s causing a human to live in fear, is it? Anyway, Valve have seen it fit to release two of their own plush Cubes. One is regular sized, suitable for throwing at co-workers or letting the cat destroy. The other resides in your car, usurping the place of the fluffy dice. They are said to be “coming soon”.
via Kotaku
A very long video for the Valve/Turtle Rock game Left 4 Dead has made its way to the internet. The 85 minute video shows off use of the hunters rifle, nice fire effects and some blood splattering gore. The game is slated for a early 2008 release, check after the jump for the video.
Turns out the journos who attended Leipzig aren’t the only lot that haven’t had a chance to play BioShock yet - Valve boss Gabe Newell has banned his employees from playing the game until Half-Life: Episode Two and The Orange Box are finished. He recently told CVG:
We had to ban Bioshock from our offices […] Nobody gets to play it until Orange Box is done - that’s our reward to ourselves as a company; everyone gets a copy of Bioshock.
Talk about sugar-coated sour.
Attendees of QuakeCon 2007 will be treated to a hands-on session with Turtle Rock Studio & Valve’s upcoming release, Left 4 Dead. So if you’re in Dallas, Texas from August 2nd to the 5th, you can be the first of many to sample this 4-player zombie shooter.
Valve gave gamers their first taste of this one at Showdown LAN 2007. Those who attended reportedly dug its frantic, claustrophobic feel; essential components of any zombie experience. Teamwork will be an important focus in L4D, which could make this a drop-dead hit at QuakeCon.
Left 4 Dead is officially scheduled for a release in the fourth quarter of 2007 on Xbox 360 and PC.
via Kotaku
