Valve boss Gabe Newell told 1UP that Portal 2 would allow the studio to take the concept and apply it on a much larger scale.

“One of the nice things about The Orange Box was it allowed us to try out a couple of different things, and Portal really seemed to resonate,” Newell said during his GDC spot.

“We got the signals that we wanted – this is what people liked; this is what people didn’t like. And to us, it was like, ‘OK, now we know how to take this big,’ so that’s what we’re going to do with Portal 2.

“It’s the best game we’ve ever done,” he added.

While the original Portal was fairly short (clocking in at about three to four hours), Portal 2 will be an standalone full-fledged game.

Portal 2 is due out this holiday season for PC, Mac and Xbox 360.

Valve boss and co-founder Gabe Newell spoke openly about the subject of DRM on PC games during the GDC conference yesterday.

“One thing that you hear us talk a lot about is entertainment as a service,” Newell said. “It’s an attitude that says ‘What have I done for my customers today?’

“It informs all the decisions we make, and once you get into that mindset it helps you avoid things like some of the Digital Rights Management problems that actually make your entertainment products worth less by wrapping those negatives around them.”

Develop says that Newell’s comments about the subject were met with cheers.

Ubisoft is the latest company to institute a type of DRM that restricts a player’s usage of their games (in this case, a constant internet connection is required, or else the game is unplayable), and this decision has caused a lot of negative feedback from the PC gaming community on the subject.

Our buddies at PALGN already got their hands on the most recent Game Informer and courteously scanned and uploaded the delectable pages about Portal 2.

Not only that, we’re provided with some tasty offerings regarding the game.

read this entry »

Update: GameStop has Portal 2 down for $49.99 and to ship October 26th of this year.

The new single-player will also feature a new cast character, fresh new puzzles and a larger set of “devious test chambers.”  In addition, characters will explore new areas of the Aperture Science Laboratories and be reunited with sometimes-murderous A.I., GLaDOS.

The multiplayer mode will also offer cooperative play and not only require you to play cooperatively but to think cooperatively as well.

Original: Valve’s Doug Lombardi told Eurogamer that Portal 2 is hitting the PC and 360 this holiday season!

Probably not going to make it to the PS3, because that was an EA endeavor – Valve handled the 360 and PC versions.

Not only that, Game Informer said that Portal 2 is to be the cover star of the next issue!

I sure hope there’s cake!

Valve aren’t finished yet with their fun ARG and, well, there’s still more mysterious Portal on-goings being added to the game (sorry 360 Orange Box owners, this is PC only).

Watch the new ending via YouTube.

thank you for assuming the party escort submission position

Valve are not going to let the worldwide PS3 outage steal any of their spotlight, right? Right. So, they’re letting the fans tackle their latest piece of viral marketing for what everyone suspects is a sequel to the award-winning game Portal.

An update to the game offers a new achievement called “Transmission Received” and has something to do with the in-game radios. The radios, when standing in certain spots throughout the game, will pick up interference which sounds oddly like Morse Code.

Get a piece of the action here, but there’s 188 pages (as of right now) of thread to sift through. A lot of it is fluff, but there’s a good amount of information in there.  In addition, RPS seems to have uncovered some ASCII artwork for the game.

Valve, I love you.

Dang, I just got Alien vs. Predator yesterday. Guess I’ll be playing Portal instead.

changed radio transmission frequency to comply with federal and state spectrum management regulations.

“Hopefully we’ve gotten past the point of mini-games,” Valve’s Chet Faliszek told CVG. “I’m sick of that [makes arm movement]. That’s not a game for me anymore. Let’s get some real interaction going.

“We have these technologies now that let us interact in different, really exciting ways. It’s developers’ jobs to do something with it. Impress me. Don’t just make shitty games I wouldn’t want to play if I had to use a joystick,” he went on.

Preach it, bruthaman!

Finally, someone who’s as tired of mini-games as I am. That’s all there seems to be on the Wii. Hopefully Natal and Arc have something serious in their upcoming repertoire.

Valve’s Chet Faliszek told Edge, “Before we do anything on the PS3 we need to be able to support it in the right way, but we’ll look at it, and I’m sure down the road we’ll do it.”

So, you can expect Left 4 Dead and Left 4 Dead 2 on the PS3 in about ten years or so.

Valve has revealed over the Left 4 Dead blog that players have killed well over 28 billion zombies since Left 4 Dead 2’s release. The exact number the Valve release was 28,981,249,043 upon their measurement.

Now, here are some facts to help you put that outrageous number into perspective:

- The entire population of the planet has been zombified and killed 4.26 times.

- With the average height of a zombie being 6 feet, if you stacked them end to end they would circle the globe 1,322 times.

- If you placed 28,981,249,043 rulers end to end, they would reach 28,981,249,043 feet in the sky.

The last one made me laugh.

Expect that number to grow when The Passing gets released!

In addition to the awesome new details about L4D2’s The Passing, Valve has also released some images from the new campaign, which can be found right after the cut.

read this entry »

Valve has joined in on the festivities that is Microsoft’s X10 event and is detailing the first DLC pack for Left 4 Dead 2; “The Passing”. The new campaign is set for a March release.

In “The Passing”, the characters of L4D2 meet up with the original L4D survivors, Francis, Bill, Zoey and Louis. According to Valve’s Chet Fliszek, the original survivors will aid the new characters in finishing the third map in the campaign.

There will also be a new type of infected called the “Fallen Survivor” who will drop health kits and ammo when killed.

Eventually there will also be an add-on to Left 4 Dead 1, which bridges the gap between the original game and “The Passing”. We’ve also got some video footage of the Fallen Survivor after the cut

read this entry »

Left 4 Dead 2 had a bit of a lackluster launch on the Xbox 360, because the game would lag once it got online. Valve, the awesome people that they are, have dropped a Thanksgiving Day gift on all gamers by boosting the servers for Xbox Live.

“We have upgraded our network infrastructure to better accommodate the huge response to L4D2,” said Valve in their blog. “360 players will now have lag-free servers. We’ve also added more dedicated servers.”

I dunno about you, but there’s nothing I hate more than losing because of lag. It sucks in Street Fighter 4, and it sucks in L4D2.

Valve’s Chet Faliszek revealed today that the number of preorders for zombie shooter Left 4 Dead 2 are four times those of the original. Impressive, to say the least.

“As we get closer to launch we see the reaction to the demo, preorders are four times what Left 4 Dead 1 was, people’s excitement, the boycott itself and how it’s changed… I think people are just excited now,” he told CVG.

Ad far as the complaints over a sequel being released so soon and the subsequent petition is concerned, Faliszek seemed slightly indifferent to the criticism.

“One of the weird things at E3 was we knew we weren’t showing the complete package, we knew there was a whole bunch of stuff we were holding back but we wanted to show something. Honestly I made the joke and it’s true: If you put $20 in a box and charge $10 for it someone would complain you didn’t put $50 in a box.

“Not to say some of the concerns raised aren’t valid, but you’re always going to have some kind of upset and that’s not how we work. We work at looking at the project and trying to get it out.”

Zombie fans rejoice! The Left 4 Dead 2 demo (which was initially only available to those who pre-ordered the game) is finally available to download from the Xbox Live Marketplace.

You’ll need to have a Gold account to download it for now.

The full game hits store shelves on November 17th.

Dear lord all mighty in heaven. It never ends with these guys…

Despite receiving an MA 15+ rating after it was initially rejected classification and banned In Australia, it appears that Left 4 Dead 2 has one again been put on the banned list.

The officially media send-out from the OFLC stated the following:

A three-member panel of the Classification Review Board (the Review Board) has unanimously determined that the computer game Left 4 Dead 2 is classified RC (Refused Classification).

In the Review Board’s opinion, Left 4 Dead 2 could not be accommodated within the MA 15+ classification. The computer game contains a level of violence which is high in impact, prolonged, repeated frequently and realistic within the context of the game.

In addition, it was the Review Board’s opinion that there was insufficient delineation between the depiction of general zombie figures and the human figures, as opposed to the clearly fictional ‘infected’ characters. This was a major consideration of the Review Board in determining the impact of this game on minors.

Keep it up Australia. Keep freedom alive! Do us proud!