Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Effseven pointed me at this. I haven’t played it. It’s a proof-of-concept demo-release of the full game which the mod team will be playing. It could be terrible. It… actually, I refuse to believe it could be terrible. The world wouldn’t be that cruel. It’s a single player FPS mod about Hitler getting dinosaurs with the inevitable consequences. From the moment when watching the trailer the newspaper headline “DINOSAURS! They Are Real And The Nazis Have Them” appeared, there was no way I wasn’t posting this. Good luck in finishing it, Sez I.
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So the internet has a new greatest thing. Earth’s best human, Trase, has created a Half-Life 2 mod where he replaces nearly all the game’s sounds with his own voice. And yes, it’s just as good as that sounds. Every weapon, vehicle, explosion, and enemy sound is now the vocal stylings of this lunatic modder. See below. Please, see below.

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Just in case you missed the comments linked trailer for the Black Mesa Source mod:

Valve never seem to take traditional routes for announcing new games. Their head of [Insert Appropriate Title Here], Doug Lombardi, likes to leak teeny bits of information to people when they’re least expecting it. To Kikizo, in an interview published last night, he dropped in something about Episode Three. Like you do. Apparently we could hear news about the game before the end of the year.

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Kotaku spotted this awesome piece of homemade costume-craft up for sale on Ebay. It’s a full Half-Life 2 Combine Metrocop outfit, which apparently even has a voicebox thing to make you sound even more like the game’s grumpy evil policemen. The reason for this authenticity is that it was a prop from a short movie, “The Combine Interview”, which – along with a closer look at the item itself – I’ve linked after the jump.

It’s currently bid for at $202.

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Older and more spiteful readers may immediately be thinking “but Meer already wrote about the RTS mod for Half-Life 2 months ago. Let’s burn his house down and tell his mum that he’s rubbish.” It’s true. I did. But! Stow those Molotovs, for I thought it well worth checking back in with HL2 Wars, what with the last version I squinted at being little more than a proof of concept.

Its development’s been ongoing, and now, three of four iterations down the line, it’s really starting to come together. V0.5 was released a couple of weeks back, and saw a shift to The Orange Box evolution of the Source engine – making for ultra-pretty. It’s still very early days for the mod, but if you’re any sort of Half-Life 2ophile, you really should go look-see.
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Clear Skies isn’t anything to do with Stalker. Instead it’s an epic 40-minute piece of Eve Online machinima which uses the Source engine to provide for its voice-acted characters. Eve pilot “John Rouke” is the chap responsible. “[It's] a mix of Half Life 2 and EVE, an actual plot and acting, all put together for a 40 minute ‘pilot episode’ format film,” says Rouke. “Two years of my hard work culminated in this, I’m very proud of it and I hope you like it.”

For a quick taste you can check out the 26mb trailer. If you like that then the full 450mb episode is available here as a direct download (slowish) or here as a super-fast torrent.

While the internet rumour mill’s been getting itself in a speculative tizz over the well-duh! revelation that there’ll be more Half-Life after Episode 3, I’ve been playing a rather good fan-made HL2 episode.
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This is reasonably amusing: a Half-Life 2 mod project that recreates large areas of central Toronto.

The website explains:

City 7: Toronto Conflict, is an action packed Half-Life 2 mod with a variety of unique levels and game play. Explore what has become of City 7 in areas like Dundas square, Eaton Center , Mel Lastman square, St. Michael’s Hospital and TTC system under the Combine rule. This version features Gordon Freeman as the main character, stuck in Toronto due to a teleporting accident in Kleiner’s lab. Try to escape this war torn city by finding any type of teleporting technology and send him back to City 17.

Next week: City 13 – Battle For Basingstoke.

Nick sends a piece of Half-Life 2 fan-art ingenuity that’s not only awesome, but also going for free to anyone interested. Free! If only I a) lived in Minneapolis b) had an empty warehouse to keep this stuff in.

Seems a chum of his held a Ravenholm (spooky HL2 zombie level) theme party this Halloween, and now he’s not sure do to with all the gigantic and impressive props he made for it. To whit: a headcrab rocket, a stack of authentic HL2 ammo crates and eight replica buzzsaw blades.

Nice work, Nick’s friend Jarrin.

So, have a gander at the ad on Craigslist, and if you’re able to go collect this huge haul of unique Valve tribute, you know what to do. And if an RPS reader does grab this stuff, we fully expect to see what you’ve done with it, m’kay?