Charlie Sheen has been going through difficult times lately, having been kicked off his TV show, and dealing with various drugs and hooker-related problems. But if you ask Mr. Sheen, all is fine — he’s still winning.
The guys over at Reddit unearthed an old science fiction B-movie starring Sheen, a movie called The Arrival. Sheen not only plays a scientist who discovers alien life (hint hint), but he looks remarkably like Half Life protagonist Gordon Freeman. Considering the movie was released in 1996, it could very well be the inspiration for Gordon Freeman — development of Half Life started in 1996.
It’s no secret that Valve is working on several projects at a time, but it’s a pretty big secret what those projects are. Besides Half Life 3, or Half Life 2 Episode 3, we dunno much of what’s going on, besides the occasional hats for Team Fortress 2.
But according to new evidence, the studio is working on a science fiction game with the codename “SOB”. From the recently leaked DOTA 2 code, there are several references to “ep3″, “cstrike2″, and “SOB”. According to one rumor, the SOB includes code references to “nebula”, “npc_ship”, “ship_guns”, “client_ship”, “flightplan”, “server_ship” and more. We’ve also gotten some concept art from one of Valve’s artists, who featured it on his website — the concept art of a space ship which you can see above.
Half Life protagonist Gordon Freeman carried a wide array of weapons, from the trusty crowbar, to rocket launchers, grenades, and what not. While most modern shooters today let you have only a few weapons, usually two main guns and a sidearm, older titles like Half Life let the player keep all weapons he finds throughout the game, hence the image of the real Gordon Freeman. We’d love to see how the real Duke Nukem looks like.
If there’s one game we’re all eagerly awaiting to see, it’s the next Half Life game. Whether it’s called “Episode 3″, or just “Half Life 3″, we wish Valve would announce something soon. And they may be closer to announcement that we think, as Half Life 3 t-shirts have been spotted being worn by a Valve employee at an industry event.
Now, this could be a hoax, it could be that the employee just got the t-shirt made for himself, it could be that it’s Valve trolling us — it could be a number of reasons why this doesn’t mean that Half Life 3 announcement is around the corner. But we really want it to be true.
Half Life 2 was released back in 2004, and got two small “sequels” in form of Episode 1 (2006) and Episode 2 (2007).
Valve has a pretty good track record when it comes to releasing hard hitting titles. Not only is their Half-Life franchise regarded as one of the greatest FPS franchises of all time but it has spanned countless other titles powered by the Source engine such as Counter-Strike and later, Portal.
First released back in 2007 Portal tasks players with finding their way through various puzzles using nothing more than a portal gun. If you’re not familiar with this device you can shoot one portal, which serves as an entry way, and then another which serves as the exit. Quite obviously, you can then walk through the entrance and appear at the exit wherever you may have placed it. If you haven’t check the game out you should definitely do so.
Alternatively, you can skip over the first title entirely and just pick up Portal 2 which is expected to hit store shelves on April 18th. In fact, Valve has just announced today that the game is available for pre-order from various retailers including their Steam digital distribution outlet. As a little freebie, if you pre-order the game through Steam you will be given a $5 discount dropping the game to $45. Not bad..
Seriously, what is it with fan-made short films of popular genre that makes them all aspire to look the same, with the same editing, same color grading, heck, even the actors look the same. The Black Mesa short film is out, and while it’s not our cup of tea, we have to admit the visual effects a pretty well done.
We can’t tell you how much we wish this was true. But it’s only a piece of fan art from The Simpsons fans over at Springfield Punx. It appears Mr. Burns has finally hired the right man for the job. What sort of role do you image Mr. Freeman of Half Life fulfilling on The Simpsons?
With game’s like Half-Life, Counter-Strike, Team Fortress and the Left 4 Dead, Valve is no stranger to hit titles. What they are a stranger to, however is the PS3. While the games have gone on to sell like hot cakes, Valve has yet to give the PS3 any love. Why? Well, they have yet to establish a dedicated PS3 development team considering the games are harder to port than you would think. Sure, Orange Box was ported but it was laden with bugs and other things.
Luckily, Valve has said today that while there has been little PS3 development in the past, they are sure they will develop for the console in the future. But, before they do that they are going to have to make sure they can do it right because they don’t want an Orange Box repeat.
It seems that a poll recently went down over at GameSpot that asked gamers who the All-Time Greatest Game Hero was. Well, it seems that Half-Life‘s star Gordon Freeman won the poll with 55.8% of the votes.
To celebrate such a feat Valve is cutting 55.8% off the price of all Half-Life games this weekend as they continue with their weekly deals.
Haven’t played Half-Life 2 yet? Now’s your chance.
Valve has finally released lifetime retail sales figures for some of its most popular games, including the Half-Life and Counter-Strike series. The sales figures reveal that the studio has sold over 32.8 million copies of their games since their first title back in 1998.
Interestingly, sales from Steam is not included in the below list, so the figure is actually much higher. The following numbers are also sales on only PC, not taking into factor console sales, and were published first in Game Informer and then on Gamasutra.
Here they are:
Half-Life (Valve) / 1998 – 9.3 Million
Half-Life: Opposing Force (PC, Gearbox) / 1999 – 1.1 Million
Half-Life: Blue Shift (PC, Gearbox) / 2001 – 800,000
Counter-Strike (PC, Valve) / 2000 – 4.2 Million
Counter-Strike: Condition Zero (PC, Valve) / 2004 – 2.9 Million
Counter Strike: Source (PC, Valve) / 2006 – 2.1 Million
Counter-Strike (Xbox, Valve) / 2003 – 1.5 Million
Half-Life 2 (Valve) / 2004 – 6.5 Million
Half-Life 2: Episode One (PC, Valve) / 2006 – 1.4 Million
Valve has finally released lifetime retail sales figures for some of its most popular games, including the Half-Life and Counter-Strike series. The sales figures reveal that the studio has sold over 32.8 million copies of their games since their first title back in 1998.