The Orange Box (OB) is the latest release from the gaming giants, Valve. The OB is a collection of three new games, and two old ones thrown in for free, and it costs the price of a single game at retail. So what are these games you ask? Well let me tell you! [Read More...]

Call of Duty 4 is an immense game, one of the few First Person Shooters to have had a similar impact on me to that of the Half-Life games. Upon first playing this game I knew I would love it, there is something about it which is just brilliant. The game is highly cinematic at times in single-player, with some scenes just brilliant and at times shocking. This game does some things which I have not witnessed in other games, and at times my jaw was left hanging at what had occurred to you character. [Read More...]

Peggle Deluxe is another quirky game presented to us by PopCap Games for a value for money $20 or £10 on Steam. On the surface you may consider it a simple puzzle game, but it is more. Not much more, but it is certainly more than a simple puzzle game. [Read More...]

Half-life 2: Episode 1 is the first in a scheduled trilogy of Half-life episodes and again places the player in the shoes of Gordon Freeman as he deals with the repercussions of his actions at the top of the Citadel. The state of the world has changed following the detonation of the teleport reactor, and much of Episode 1 is something of an introduction into the events that are soon to follow in subsequent episodes. As such we return to the Combine riddled, alien infested warzone of City-17, that has clearly seen better days, and the bowels of the now crumbling Citadel, for a 4-5 hour, densely packed and altogether tighter experience. [Read More...]

To the modern FPS gamer, whose idea of a great multiplayer experience is wedging their character between a high-definition bump-mapped muddy floor and a wall of realistic anti-aliased sandbags as bullets fly past, Team Fortress must sound like a homosexual intercourse innuendo. “I squeezed in through the back entrance before unleashing all of my firepower on his sorry ass!” “I was right on him, charging up my shot, but he was going too fast and I fired my load too soon!” “This big, burly engineer jumped on me and whipped out his wrench!” [Read More...]

Imagine the scene: You wake up one morning and everything is just better than it was the day before. Instead of clambering out of bed in the morning in last night's clothes, still smelling of vomit from the night before, you're wearing the finest silk pyjamas. The bed you clamber out of? A four-poster bed with hand sown blankets, not the bunk bed you share with your reprobate of a flat mate. You walk gracefully down the marble steps and into a large, fully fitted kitchen only to find a maid, as opposed to your next door neighbour trying to steal your shoes again. [Read More...]

Zombies. As gamers, we've seen just about every kind possible. From Half-Life 2's "fasties" that are practically a blur before they're in your face, to Doom 3's traditional shuffling hordes; there isn't a flesh colour, bone size or brain preference that we haven't encountered. [Read More...]

If there’s one thing I’ve noticed about PC games recently, it’s that we’re continually being distanced from other players. Back when levels looked like they’d been clumsily tacked together out of cardboard, we’d run at each other with a whole array of crazy weapons, getting into the thick of it with rocket launchers, chainsaws and pretty much anything else that made a huge gaping hole wherever your crosshair was pointing. Nowadays however, with our shiny graphics cards that can process huge environments, we’re encouraged to submerge into the shadows and watch the world through our battered rifle scopes; finger poised over the mouse button to strike. Where is the physical contact? The glorious, honourable, enthralling dance of hand-to-hand combat? Well, if you’re willing to take a step on the slightly crazy side for once, and experience something original; it’s just about to smack you in the face in the form of Rag Doll Kung Fu. [Read More...]

Rubble scatters past from a nearby explosion; the bang still drumming through your head as you stuff another rocket into a hefty bazooka. Leaning against the remnants of what used to be a stone wall, you watch a fellow American sprinting onwards, through the ruins, into a hail of lead that rips him to pieces. The fire came from an overlooking window; and sure enough, this draws your attention to a mounted machinegun poking out. Cursing, you lift the bazooka and fire - a trail of smoke roars upwards, and in a spectacular flash, blasts the Axis soldier from his perch. Falling wreckage covers your comrade’s body; his death was not in vain, but it is now forgotten. [Read More...]

How to hunt down an invisible man? That's the question that Hidden: Source revolves around. Assault rifles and shotguns are all well and good, but when the target is only visible by a slight predator-style ripple in the air, even the most hardened Special Forces troopers will have problems. [Read More...]

The evolutionary process has sped up a hundredfold.

Normally, a mod like this would maybe appear a couple of years after the original game came out. A third-person physics-based total conversion set in a beautifully realised fantasy world? Madness, and certainly the last thing I'd expected from the Source engine (actually, I lie. The last thing I expected was...well, that's another story). But for such a thing to materialise before even a year has passed since the game's release is cause to leap around joyfully, and then get on with downloading Eclipse, all 200 megabytes of it. [Read More...]

Life on Mars?

Not for long, by the looks of things. We take a look at one of the most promising and heavyweight Half-Life 2 mods as I meet with the leader of Warpig Studios, John Beck, over a luncheon of liquefied space-food. [Read More...]

When Prima and Valve Software recently gave us the chance to review their latest co-publication, Half-Life 2: Raising the Bar, I was thrilled. It would give me an opportunity to show everyone what the book is all about and why people should invest their money in buying it and their time in reading it. For those of you who are unaware, Half-Life 2: Raising the Bar is one of a series of three books being published by Prima which include the Official Game Guide and the Official Mod Makers Guide – a release date is yet to be announced on the latter book. [Read More...]

I woke up that morning and I felt like a kid again on Christmas Eve. I wasn't alone either as the whole of the community felt exactly the same - and not a single one of them tried to hide it. With nearly 2,000 people viewing the forums and over 1,000 people spamming our IRC channel, the community was bursting with anticipation. The date? Certainly not quite near December 24th, Christmas Eve. Instead it was the eve of the release of Half-Life 2, the sequel to the best PC action game of all time and it was November 15th 2004. [Read More...]

Half-Life 2: Capture the Flag is a fresh breath of air for the ongoing struggle of the Combines battling the Rebels. In this newest MOD with the humble name of Half-Life 2 indicated on the title, gameplay revolves around capturing the opposing force's flag in four alternate modes. For players such as myself who love to see anything from the Half-Life 2 universe implemented within the game, HL2: CTF will bring hours, if not days of enjoyment. [Read More...]