Last week we posted some news regarding Valve’s ’showing’ at E3, and since then some more information has been released regarding both of the games mentioned, and who would we be if we didn’t update you!?
Left 4 Dead’s disturbing boxart has been released (left) which I think makes clear that the game will feature plenty of gore (if any of us were in any doubt!), and zombies.
In addition, if you were still unsure if you were going to buy the game, Kotaku have an interview with Doug Lombardi (Valve’s Director of Marketing), where he gets 15 seconds to sell Left 4 Dead to you… whether it will work for you, who knows, but it’s worth a watch as Doug is always interesting.
Moving on to Portal, it has been revealed that the newly announcedPortal: Still Alive release for Xbox Live Arcade will in fact be a combination of Portal and Portal The Flash Version Mappack. The excellent (see our review) map pack is an interesting addition to the game and it is great that Valve are clearly still helping out independent developers by buying into their work. I’m sure that Valve will add their own seal of quality to the pack, and perhaps remove story elements so that it doesn’t clash with the original story arc, but until the actual release, who knows… Either way, if you have the PC version of Portal, there really isn’t a great deal of incentive to buy this, since you can already get the additional content… for free, but it’s good that Valve are spreading the Portal love
This years E3 is well underway, and the amount of news to come out of the Valve camp has been relatively low. There have however been a few announcements that are worth mentioning.
The first bit of news comes from the Microsoft Keynote, with the announcement of Portal: Still Alive coming to the Xbox Live Arcade. The game will feature updated levels to add to the original story arc, however according to interviews with Doug Lombardi it is basically a stand alone, downloadable version of the original game with extras tacked on. What has this to do with Steam? Unfortunately, absolutely nothing as of yet… The new levels for the game which was originally released on Steam and the PC have not been announced for these platforms, so at first glance they do not appear to be getting a release. I for one however think that Valve will not leave us hanging - not only do I have my gut feeling to go on, but it seems that Valve employees posting on the official forums also seem convinced that we will not be left out. In the meantime, if you can’t wait for an eventual PC release, why not check out Portal The Flash Version Mappack, which will certainly give you a few extra hours of playtime, or go through the Portal Maps Archive.
The other game to get a significant showing is Left 4 Dead. Left 4 Dead is now in a fully playable state and Joystiq have an interesting read detailing their time with the game. Not only this, but Kotaku have a great set of interviews with Doug Lombardi where they discuss both Left 4 Dead and Steam itself. Key points from the interview are how Left 4 Dead may well allow users to easily create their own Machinima with a patch post launch, why Microsoft decided not to use steam and to create Games for Windows, how Steam is creating a history of video gaming and reviving old titles, and Valve’s opinions on PC exclusivity.
From the interviews, it certainly seems like Valve have plans to keep the updates to the Steam Client going and that there are going to be plenty of things for us to keep writing about, so we can all breathe a sigh of relief!
Now all that’s left to do is wait for Left 4 Dead to come out in a few months time, so in order to kill that time, I guess we’ll have to watch the new gameplay videos.
I’m sure that I’m not alone in having killed many a lunch hour at work by booting up Portal: The Flash Version. So it was with enormous excitement and great surprise that I learned that this Flash Version had been made into a 3.5hour Mappack for the full blown version of Portal.
So, last night I sat down to begin my journey back into the world of Aperture Science and the hunt for cake.
The first thing I noticed was how well the flash version’s (TFV) maps translated into full 3D puzzles. I still havent got all the way through the original web browser game, however my memory was jogged at a number of point by faithful reconstructions of what I’d played before.
What has also been done very well is the moving between the maps. It would have been very easy to simply knock up each level individually and then just put them back to back, one room leading to the next. However, in keeping with the original Portal, there are lots of interchanges which seek to expand the player’s immersion and feel for your nameless character’s predicament.
The difficulty curve of the pack has also been handled exceptionally well. Even if you had never played Portal before, you could pick this up from the start and have very little difficulty initially. I think you might struggle with some of the puzzles, since there are a lot of situations where you find youself calling on you previous Portal puzzle solving knowledge, however, overall I think anyone could pick this up and play it.
The story is slightly different to that of Portal (I won’t spoil it here), which keeps the game fresh, and the puzzles in later sections do get pretty challenging, although the end of the level is always in sight.
All in all, TFV Mappack is without a doubt worth the download; for me it added an extra 4.2 hours playtime and gave me an excuse to revisit one of the best games of last year.
Not exactly huge news, but Portal: First Slice - the demo that had previously been available for free to owners of certain (read: nearly all) graphics cards - has now been made available to all other users for free via Steam.
If you havent heard of Portal, I’m not sure where you’ve been for the past year, but it was originally released as part of the Orange Box, and is now available separately. With a metascore of 90, Portal is a critically aclaimed, loved by players cult hit and well worth sitting down for the satisfyingly short 4 hour play time.
Personally, I’d advise you not to bother with First Slice, just buy the whole game; for $19.99 there really is no excuse! And now that you have an extra three and a half hours to add to the original game for free, it’s an even better deal.
However, if you must demo Portal before buying it; now you can.
We had fun last year playing around with Portal: The Flash Version, a 2D version of Valve’s first person puzzler. Well the maps featured in the flash version have been re-implemented in full 3D delivering over three and a half hours worth of extra content. For those of you salivating over the prospect of more maps or are just looking for an excuse to revisit one of the best games of last year you can download the pack here.
Last week we posted some news regarding Valve’s ’showing’ at E3, and since then some more information has been released regarding both of the games mentioned, and who would we be if we didn’t update you!?
I’m sure that I’m not alone in having killed many a lunch hour at work by booting up 
