Category Archives: Gaming

Steam Community Launched

Gaming, Internet

Since it was delayed from the intended date last week (possibly due to QuakeCon), it was a surprise to see that Valve has forged ahead with the beta launch of Steam Community, described by Valve as the largest addition to Steam since its official launch in 2003.

Steam Community introduces some major new features to the Friends network, such as personal pages for each user and groups for gamers to join to organize games. The advanced features promised, such as player matching, do not appear to be present yet. The service is comparable to Xbox Live, but does not require a subscription fee.

Valve and id Sitting In a Tree

Gaming

I admit I was a bit surprised when Valve announced their appearance at QuakeCon 2007 last week to show off the new game they helped develop, entitled Left 4 Dead.

We’re headed to QuakeCon 2007 next week. If you’re one of the 7,000+ lucky attendees, be sure to stop by booth 221 to say hi and play a few rounds of Left 4 Dead. Valve and the Turtle Rock Studios design team will be on hand to answer questions about the game. We’re giving away some cool schwag, too. Next week, we’ll fill you in our visit to the show.

Understandably, QuakeCon has become more of a trade show than just a LAN party, especially with the trimmed-down version of E3 we have to put up with these days. But could it be indicative of a future partnership between the Doom Guy and the One Free Man? This site speculates as much, but we won’t know for sure for a few more days, at least until id gets a bit more talkative about their next gaming engine, “id Tech 5.”

Update: Looks like we called it! Strange that it happened the very same day O_o

Homework Mania

Gaming, Movies, School

Well, this time it actually is the end of the month. Some crazy stuff has been going on: school, work, Thanksgiving, more school, video games, movies, school. There sure is lots of stuff to keep me busy enough to not update this blog, anyway.

Saw Casino Royale the day it opened. Awesome flick. Also picked up Painkiller from GoGamer for a measly ten bucks and I am already stuck at the second boss. I had to quit, though because I had a nice hefty research paper and presentation to get ready for my computer architecture class. Now that that’s done, I get to do a ton of Calc homework and work on my Software Engineering project.

Oh, and then there are finals…

Portal and TF2

Gaming, Half-Life

Yes, I am horribly, horribly late with this.

Those who launch their Steam client more than once a year will notice that Valve has put some downloadable trailers up for Portal and Team Fortress 2, which are scheduled to be released by the end of this year, barring any delays. (We shall see!)

I was going to be getting Half-Life 2: Episode Two anyway because Episode One was so awesome, but now it has only strengthened my resolve 🙂