Back 4 Blood - SAFE HOUSE

Speaking of potential (nearly) squandered, Turtle Rock Studios, formerly Valve South, are prepping cooperative horde shooter Back 4 Blood for release. A belated follow-up to the fantastic Left 4 Dead games (a series that Valve themselves quite apparently no longer have any interest in), Back 4 Blood looks to be designed around a similar gameplay flow - coping with the easily vanquished, but sometimes overwhelming ,undead while keeping an eye out for creeping, specialised, super zombies. 

Retro-Ahoy: Half-Life

Stuart Brown casts his analytical eye over Half-Life for the first in a more detailed retrospective series. Brown is a bit of a treasure. He doesn't rely on manufactured excitement or a cynical gimmick, instead he turns out short, snappy information pieces. He's basically the BBC2 of video game culture.

20XX's Seventh Gen Favs #8 - The Orange Box

Nestled in amongst three stellar Half-Life campaigns and Team Fortress 2's class clash was Portal, a short, sharp first-person puzzler. Ingenious teleportation guns aside, Portal lingers longest thanks to some genuinely good character-based writing - quite the coup considering the player controlled protagonist, Chell, was mute. Basically, Portal was Harlan Ellison's I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream if the central hyper-computer was a malfunctioning incompetent. Like the Ellison overlord, Portal's AI GLaDOS had long since outgrown her pre-programmed parameters. She was stuck regurgitating basic sequences, going senile in the process. Instead of openly sadistic trials, GLaDOS strung Chell along through a rotting obstacle course with the strangely specific promise of cake. Sections of the testing area were missing, the gun turrets had developed empathy and any sense of meaning had long since evaporated. When Chell finally disobeyed, GLaDOS threatened her like an admonished child, desperate to cling onto her fading glimmer of half life.

WITCH

Although the campaign did nothing for me, I did have some fun with Resident Evil 6's Mercenaries Mode. The dodging, leaping special moves Capcom weaved into the disappointing sequel worked well in the context of that survival mode's open plan gameplay. This tie-in for the PC crowd ups the ante, not just by sprinkling in characters from Valve's fantastic Left 4 Dead series, but also by upping the crowd count considerably. It's a tactic that has paid dividends for Capcom before, the PC issue of Devil May Cry 4 boasted a bonus difficulty level that flooded the screen with basic mobs. Add in a less claustrophobic FOV and a sterner frame rate and you've got a hype clip that makes me want to play a game I know I don't like.

Still Alive

Quick gameplay reel for Valve's Portal 2. Journey back to Aperture Science's R&D department to test the absolute limits of your monkey brain!