Better than I thought it would be, even without any gameplay:
If you want to see footage of the game itself, it's here.
It looked better a year ago, I think.
Jun 12, 2010
Crysis 2 gameplay trailer
I hope they put some real effort into the multiplayer. The original had so much potential.
Jun 9, 2010
L4D2 bot intelligence update
From Steam News:
Updates to Left 4 Dead 2 have been released. The updates will be applied automatically when your Steam client is restarted. They will be coming arriving with an upcoming title update on the Xbox 360. The major changes include:
- Changed Survivorbot item hunting behavior
- SurvivorBots now stay closer to human players in all game modesFixed Survivorbot navigation issue in The Passing: Riverbank
- Fixed bug where a SurvivorBot could become catatonic when attempting to save another Survivor from a Smoker
- Fixed condition where SurvivorBots would not enter the saferoom
- Increased self-inflicted friendly fire damage from the Grenade Launcher
- Fixed bug where the M60 would reset its ammo if dropped in certain situations
- Car Alarms will now trigger anytime a Special Infected pushes/pulls/rams a Survivor into an alarm car. This change only affects game modes with human-controlled Zombies
OK ... maybe not
Valve sent out another email to the gaming press this morning (including 1UP, if you'd like a source), announcing that the release of Portal 2 has been delayed until 2011. The email makes it clear that the aforementioned "surprise" announcement at E3 will most definitely be "***PORTAL-2-THEMED-FOR-GOD'S SAKE***." So much for all the Source Engine 2/Half-Life 3 speculation.
Here's the text of the email:
VALVE ANNOUNCES MAKING GAMES IS HARD
June 9, 2010 -- Aperture Science, doing business as Aperture Laboratories LLC, in partnership with Valve today announced the successful completion of an ethics-review-panel-supervised release date restructuring process. Portal 2, the sequel to the ground-breaking title that earned over 30 Game of the Year awards despite missing its original ship date, is now targeted for a 2011 release.
Representatives from both companies acknowledged that public safety concerns factored into the decision. They went on to say that even though Portal 2 will arrive slightly later than planned, all life on earth won't instantaneously stop as every molecule in your body explodes at the speed of light, which is what would happen should a rip ever appear in the fabric of Valve Time.
"Also, the game will be even better," they added, missing an historic opportunity to create the first product delay press release to mention that a product is being delayed to make it worse.
To ask questions about how close we all came to dying, or to ask futile questions about the previously announced E3 ***PORTAL-2-THEMED-FOR-GOD'S SAKE*** surprise or, less futilely, to schedule an appointment to attend a Portal 2 screening at the Valve booth during E3, please contact Valve's delegate to the EU's Valve Time Studies Group, Doug Lombardi.
It seems clear (as mud) that Valve issued this missive to quell all the rumors about that other thing. Which doesn't mean, of course, that Valve won't eventually skip Episode Three in favor of Half-Life 3. It just means that we're not going to tell us anything about it -- either way -- at E3.
So we have no idea what Valve has in store for the upcoming holiday release season. It could be HL3, or L4D3, or a new game, or nothing. Or they might have a plan now that they're expecting to fall apart later. Such are the mysteries of Valve-time.
In any event, don't expect them to announce anything about anything anytime soon.
Jun 8, 2010
Could it be ... Half-Life 3?
And when I say "Half-Life 3," I do not mean "Half-Life 2, Episode 3."
Consider the following: There was a gap of five years between the original Half-Life and HL2. During that time, Valve created the Source Engine to replace the GoldSrc Engine that powered HL1.
Half-Life 2 was released on November 16, 2004. HL2-Episode One followed about a year and a half later, in June 2006, and Episode Two showed up about 16 months after that, in October 2007. That's when the Orange Box was released, which included a pretty hefty update to the Source Engine.
So, we're coming up on three years. The notion of "episodic content" -- wherein shorter Half-Life installments are released over shorter intervals -- has withered and died. Episode One took forever, but it didn't take three years.
As we noted a few days ago, Valve has a surprise in store for their June 14 E3 exhibition, and Gabe Newell later said (maybe) that the surprise is not Episode Three. Fire up the rumor mill.
VG247 says it has a source, and that source is saying that the surprise may, in fact, be the announcement of Valve's Source Engine 2. The anonymous informant is even saying that the game the next Source Engine will be running at E3 might just be Half-Life 3.
After three years, maybe it shouldn't be a surprise, but if this is real ... holy hell. I've been predicting this since L4D2 came out -- without Episode Three -- and I still don't believe it.
(I'm not being facetious here. I really don't believe it.)
Adobe software sports "critical security flaw"
Adobe has acknowledged a "critical" security flaw in its Reader, Acrobat and Flash Player software.
Adobe says the vulnerability potentially enables hackers to take control of affected computer systems.
Users running Windows, Macintosh or Linux might all be open to attack.
The company is working to fix the problem. In the meantime, users of Reader, Acrobat and Flash are advised to ensure their anti-virus software is up to date.
"It doesn't really get any worse than a 'zero-day' vulnerability like this," said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos, a security software company.
He said that hackers could create a "booby-trapped Flash animation, or PDF" that would give them access to a person's computer, potentially allowing them to harvest personal information or use the machine to send spam messages.
UPDATE: They say it's fixed.
Jun 6, 2010
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