Wednesday, July 19, 2006

Gotta Love Valve

First off, a few words on Pirates 2 can be found deep within the crevices of LiveJournal. Their whole "hide blocks of text behind a link" thing makes it easy to hide spoilers, so jump over there if you're curious.

Valve software has announced two amazing new products. Team Fortres 2 is back, and this time its real. The one screenshot of the character models is enough to get me excited. A lot of people pined for the old, realistic military fashion, but that's been done a whole lot since the game was announced years ago. This cartoony, goofy look fits well with the over the top gameplay of the series, and hopefully the maps, gameplay and presentation compliment the new style.

Then there's Portal. Watch this video trailer, and its hard not to drool at least a little bit. Portal is like the newly released game Prey, in that it focuses on strange portals that warp you to different parts of a the map. The difference is that in Prey, the portals are scripted, pre-determined events. Portal gives you a gun that allows you to create your own portals, on the fly, in order to interact with the level in ways never seen before. It is a far more interesting technology showcase than Prey's, and if Valve can use the concept to create an interesting demonstration, this could be the new trendy technology of the industry. Also, I hope they keep the sense of humor that the trailer conveys. Good stuff.

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