I never played Cave Story. :( 

I lol'ed. Shamelessly. 

Yeah, that was great :) 

The original was great and this one doesn't look half bad:

http://poke646.com/ 

is the steam version of half life ? 

It is the Half-life 1 available through Steam ;) 

but how is it different half life retail ? And why would you need th steam version? 

but the half-life 1 engine has been updated lots since it moved to steam, while the non steam version has had no patches for years. Maybe there is some incompatibility there. 

the original was very pro and well designed, but was kind of annoying because the weapons just had new art resouces - they behaved exactly the same as the origials. 

Is Poke 646? Reminds me of Pokemon. 

From the Poke646 website:

The true meaning of Poke646 goes way back into the early 80's were the C=64 homecomputer was very popular. I wrote my first games on it in Basic and Poke646 was the command to change the font color on the screen. I thought it would fit the title of this mod as this is the first complete game I designed since my early days in the computing business.
:) 

what does that mean ? Do I have to repurchase half life through steam to reap the benefits ? 

is half-life ported to the source engine. there are no major differences apart from water and maybe physics though, afaik.
but if poke646 is developed exclusively for this very version, it unfortunately means hardly anyone will be able to play it - at least i doubt too many people have bought hl1 again only because of the source features. if the team is smart enough, they will either (also) do it on classic hl or hl2. 

do you get the half life 1 steam version with it ? 

When I bought HL2 on steam it was a pack that included HL1 (along with ep1, multiplayer, etc).
Not sure if that kind of pack still exists, probably. 

If you still have your half-life CD key, you should be able to register it with steam, and then half-life and all the associated games will be added to your list of games on steam. You may have to download lots of content from the servers to get it working, but you shouldn't need to buy it again. 

IIRC you can use the "activate a product on steam" window and input your hl1 cd key and it will unlock the game for currently logged in steam account, you can then download the game OR if you have it installed already it will copy the files over to steam and download all the updates automatically.

I haven't used this though, so it might not work that way 

Neg!ke, you are talking about Half-Life:Source, which is a totally separate game from half-life. Half-Life on steam is the same as HL without steam, valve just released a source version so you could have pretty water and effects :)

/clearup 

fucking steam ... 

thanks. i've confused it.
does the steam version (newer patches) have any special features that justify developing the mod for it? or maybe just as a precaution. 

its just that 90% of hl players have the steam version now so it makes sense. As for upgrades and shizz I suppose there have been optimizations etc to the graphics engine and online play but I have not looked to closely at it tbh. 

If this doesn't make you feel small after watching the entire thing, well then I dunno

http://selectivegamers.com/pc-news/r...o-problem.html

Quote:
A few guys have been working on a very impressive project during their free time, "Infinity: The Quest for Earth". The game is a massively multiplayer online game set in a futuristic persistent universe. Here's the impressive part: their game engine can render entire planets in real-time.

It's best to quote Flavien Brebion, the main man behind the project: "..all the planets have realistic dimensions and scales. If you were to land on a planet and fly at low altitude at airplane speed, it'd take you hours before reaching another continent. You'd never see the same hill or some mountain twice. Then, each major planet can have tens of moons. Each solar system can have many planets, all rotating with realistic, dynamic orbits, allowing you to attend an eclipse or a sunset in real time. Finally, the galaxy will contain millions, if not billions, of these solar systems. All different."

Here's a demo video of the game, the impressive part starts at about 1:00: 

broken link 

http://selectivegamers.com/pc-news/render-whole-planets-in-real-time--no-problem.html 

I've finally gotten into playing some games again lately and from best to worst, here are my thoughts:

Thief: Deadly Shadows

Top notch stuff. Chock full of interesting gameplay, open-ended, oozes atmosphere, great story, great voice acting, and most importantly, it's a fun game.

The game is really well paced too...it changes from being a straight up stealth game where you're a petty thug who steals some things to being a game where you're basically saving the world. It does it gradually though...none of this "OH SHIT ALIENS ARE COMING HERE'S A GUN SEE YA LATER" stuff that every FPS seems to think will make you feel like a hero.

In Thief: DS, the choices you make actually have an impact on the world, so you can play through the game 10 different ways and have 10 different experiences in terms of how NPCs and AI will react to you...not just little stuff either...I'm talking about hordes of people hunting you or no one hunting you all in the same scenario depending on how you've played it up to that point.

It seamlessly blends horror, mystery, action, adventure, and stealth and uses just the right amount of each one. You owe it to yourself to play the damn game.

Most memorable moment

The entire Shalebridge Cradle level -- fucking fantastic.

10/10

Half Life 2: Episode 1

It's really just an exact continuation of Half-Life 2. Same exact gameplay, same exact locales, very very few new art assets, and virtually no advancement of the storyline other than things are starting to look slightly better, and you're making headway towards getting out of City 17. But I really enjoy the gameplay and universe of HL2 so I found this to be really enjoyable.

The only slight distinction about HL2 EP: 1 is that it has a higher ratio of puzzle elements to action than HL2 did. It was something I actually enjoyed though although a lot of people I've talked to and read posts from didn't like the puzzle stuff.

Most memorable moment

Kind of low on memorable stuff, but the very beginning of the game had a few epic scripted moments...like DOG tossing you 1000 yards in an old jalopy

8/10

F.E.A.R.

I had no intention of ever playing F.E.A.R really. It didn't look that interesting, it needed a seemingly monster machine to enjoy, and it looked like a giant Ring/Ringu rip-off. Well I ended up needing to play it and play it a lot when it became part of my job, and I actually ended up liking it.

I kept getting my ass handed to me when I was first playing it because I didn't understand that Slow-Mo was vital to actually beating the game. I always thought that Slow-Mo was just some kind of gimmicky shit you use when you're recording a demo to show off to your friends "ne0dud3" and "XXX_Trinity_XXX" on the Matrix message boards. It still is that, but in F.E.A.R. you basically need to use it to beat the game because of the way the A.I. functions.

The plot is OK...some nice twists at the end and it keeps a generally creepy vibe, but it really doesn't deviate too much from your standard "some bad shit went down here, and we'll slowly and cryptically tell you what it was" storytelling device. In terms of the game's horror vibe I will say this -- Thief : DS is by far a much scarier game, although F.E.A.R does have some slightly creepy moments...especially the intro for some reason...that is probably the most disturbed I felt by the game.

Long story short, the combat is really fun, there are some interesting gameplay concepts at times, although they are rare, and it will probably keep you entertained throughout if you don't get frustrated and quit for the hour and a half you are in the exact same environment doing the exact same thing without a break.

Most memorable moment

The vault level

8/10