MINERVA is one of the first and most critically-acclaimed mods for Half-Life 2 — so much so in fact that its designer was immediately offered a job at Valve so his talents wouldn’t go to waste.

Now you can experience MINERVA for yourself without having to fiddle around with annoying mod installs: it’s just been released as a proper Steam application, so you can grab it with one click. Find it here. You’ll need to own Episode One to play it.

A statement to Kotaku by the creator Adam Foster describes it as a “super-fancy Director’s Cut edition with tweaked visuals, bug fixes, better puzzles and all kinds of subtle improvements. Nothing hugely new, just old stuff tidied and polished for this re-release.”

And hey, it’s free!

Source: Kotaku

You know what I love? Simulated physics. I love watching objects fall and tip and fling and crash and crumple in dynamic and believable ways. Simply by implementing a believable (not necessarily realistic) system of physics and gravity that affects the objects in the game word, a game is given a literal and figurative weight, and is opened up to all kinds of dynamic and exciting outcomes.

Half-Life 2 is nine-years-old. Nine years! Since then, simulated physics have become so common-place as to hardly be noticed.

Did you know that Valve and Arkane once teamed up to produce a Half-Life spin-off? Called Return to Ravenholm, and occasionally, erroneously nicknamed Half-life 2 Episode 4, the project was shelved prior to announce. Valve’s Mike Laidlaw explained the situation to LambdaGeneration:

“We are big fans of Arkane and wanted to come up with a project we could work on together. We threw ideas around, they built some cool stuff, but we eventually decided that it didn’t make sense to pursue it at the time. As I recall, we felt like a lot of the staples of Ravenholm–headcrabs and zombies!–were pretty much played out,” he said.

“And the fact that it would have to take place sometime before the end of Episode 2 (so as not to advance beyond where Valve had pushed the story) was a creative constraint that would hamper the project … and Arkane.”

All that’s left are a few screenshots, available on ValveTime. Although they shots look quite dated now, in the wake of Dishonored reminding us just how talented the team at Arkane is, it’s a little bit heartbreaking to see that which never never came to be.

Source: LambdaGeneration via VG247

A new live-action Half-Life short film named ‘Enter the Freeman’ is currently doing the ol ’rounds on the Internet. Created by Ian James Duncan and Bernhard Forcher, the film had a budget of about $3000. It’s about ten minutes long, but worth the temporal investment. Of course, if you enjoy it, there are further videos detailing how they managed on such a small budget, how the HEV suit was put together and painted and finally a commentary featuring the director and some of the actors. In any case, watch the film below and let us know what you think.

Lead writer on Dishonored Austin Grossman has confessed to Kotaku that he thinks his character, Corvo, is better than other silent protagonists — namely Doctor Gordon Freeman himself! Remember, before you put on your Nasty Internet Comments hat, these are Grossman’s words, not ours:

“I hate what Valve does with the silent protagonist. I find it incredibly awkward and really creepy. I find Gordon Freeman creepy as hell,” he told Kotaku. “It’s people talking at him, about him and sometimes even for him. He just happens to be in the middle of this whole thing.”

“The difference between Dishonored and how it works in Half-Life 2 is that it’s a lot more personal. I think you get that involvement because the character has personal relationships with people from the beginning. And it’s very clear that people have [censored]ed with you in a very personal way. I’m biased, of course, but I think Dishonored grips you much more viscerally, more emotionally. And that’s on purpose. Corvo doesn’t talk and I think it works because everybody knows what Corvo would have to say.”

Mostly, ‘I’ma stab you good!’ I think.

Source: Kotaku

The irascible Gnome Chompski, first spotted in Half-Life 2: Episode 2 and then later in Left 4 Dead 2‘s Dark Carnival level, has been spotted buried in the snow at the top of Battlefield 3‘s new Armored Kill map, Alborz Mountain — having presumably arrived there following the events at the end of Episode 2.

Sharp-eyed Redditors were apparently the first to spot the tiny traveller, presumably left in as a tip of the hat to a talented fellow developer by DICE and not, as some might wildly speculate, notice of an upcoming EA/Valve buyout/merger/love-in.

Source: PCGamesN

Valve seems like a dream place to work at, and that’s why people hardly ever leave – but Viktor Antonov, the designer of the iconic City 17 from Half-Life 2 and the now-visual-design-director for Dishonored says that he left after Valve stopped making “epic, triple-As”. “It’s all episodes now,” he says, reminiscing about Half-Life 2.

“Valve has grown into a much bigger company, and what I really enjoy about the philosophy of Arkane is that it’s a small, core team that does risky creative projects,” said Antonov. “And when I went to Valve, they were a small company. They’ve grown now, they’re much bigger, and I’m interested in a certain level of creative risk taking and a certain energy that can be compared to jazz, jamming or rock n’ roll, where it’s small, it’s intense and it’s about making revolutions in the media.” It’s not many who would say Valve are averse to creative risk, but there you go.

Source: Eurogamer