Half-Life 2

There's an old saying in gaming monitor circles that once you've gone ultrawide, there's no going back. Indeed, having had the vast Samsung CRG9 hogging my desk for a bit last month, I'm inclined to agree. But what do games actually look like on a screen this wide? It's one thing looking at lovely wallpapers, but another thing entirely to have a game occupy your…

Tagged with Bestest Bests, feature, Hardware, Monitors, Abzu, Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition, American Truck Simulator, Assassin's Creed Odyssey, Batman: Arkham Knight, BioShock Infinite, Destiny 2, Dishonored 2, Everybody's Gone To The Rapture, Far: Lone Sails, Final Fantasy XV, Final Fantasy XV Windows Edition, Firewatch, Forza Horizon 4, Frostpunk, Gears of War 5, Grow Home, Half-Life 2, Heaven's Vault, Hitman, Hitman 2, Metro Exodus, No Man's Sky, Red Dead Redemption 2, Rez Infinite, Rime, Sea of Thieves, Sid Meier's Civilization VI, Stardew Valley, Subnautica, The Long Dark, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, Thumper, Tom Clancy's The Division 2, Total War: Three Kingdoms, Warframe, Yakuza 0.

I love a spin-off. Angel? Great stuff! Count Duckula? The Better Call Saul of cartoons. Kourtney and Khloé Take Miami? Take me, I’m yours! I could go on and on cutting-and-pasting from this Wikipedia page, but I’ll get to the point. Games also have spin-offs. Often they’ll be forgotten about. Sometimes they’re even disowned. On a few occasions, they’ll take on a life of their…

Tagged with Bohemia Interactive, EA DICE, Epic Games, feature, Valve, Arma 2, Battlefield Heroes, Codename Gordon, Counter-Strike: Condition Zero, DayZ, Fortnite Battle Royale, Fortnite: Save the World, Half-Life 2, Left 4 Dead, Take On Helicopters.

The nicest thing I can say about Terminator: Resistance is that if a Terminator were sent back in time to wipe out its code, the timeline of gaming in general would almost certainly proceed unchanged. Confused by the apparent failure, Skynet would keep on sending Arnies back to delete it, unaware that the job was already done, and that its agents were just piling up…

Tagged with feature, Reef Entertainment, review, Teyon, wot i think, Alien: Isolation, Factorio, Half-Life 2, Terminator: Resistance.

The best shooters endure. While other genres warp beyond recognition, there is something solid about the first-person shooter that makes it as dependable as a nice big AK-47. Maybe it’s the gung-ho simplicity - look down a barrel and pull the trigger. It's as fun to fire a double-barrelled shotgun from an early 90s FPS as the slick shotties of today. For that reason, this…

Tagged with Bestest Bests, feature, Alien: Isolation, Apex Legends, Arma 3, Battlefield 1942, Battlefield: Bad Company™ 2, BioShock 2, Bulletstorm, Call of Duty 2, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Remastered, Call Of Juarez - Gunslinger, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, Crysis, Day of Infamy, Destiny 2, Devil Daggers, Dishonored, Dishonored 2, Doom, Dying Light, F.E.A.R., Far Cry 2, Far Cry 3, Far Cry 4, Half-Life, Half-Life 2, Halo, Left 4 Dead 2, Marathon, Metro Exodus, Metro Redux, Natural Selection 2, No One Lives Forever, PlanetSide 2, Playerunknown's Battlegrounds, Prey, Quake, Quake III Arena, Rage, Rising Storm, S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl, Serious Sam HD: The First Encounter, Shadow Warrior 2, Star Wars Jedi Knight - Mysteries of the Sith, Star Wars Republic Commando, Star Wars: Dark Forces, SWAT 4, Team Fortress 2, The Chronicles Of Riddick: Assault On Dark Athena, Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Siege, Unreal Tournament, Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus, Wolfenstein: The New Order.

Those of you chained to the churning wheel of the internet might have seen this facial recognition algorithm thingo doing the rounds. It's called ImageNet Roulette, and it's basically a website where you feed in a photo of your human face and see what the cybergods of our terrible future make of you. But it's probably not safe to show the neurohive your real face.…

Tagged with feature, neural net, Alien: Isolation, Final Fantasy VIII Remastered, Final Fantasy XV Windows Edition, Gears of War 5, Half-Life 2, Hitman 2, Kerbal Space Program, Papers Please, Street Fighter V: Arcade Edition, The Walking Dead: The Telltale Definitive Series, Yakuza 0.

In Vectorpark’s Sandcastles, you build fantastic towers and watch the waves erase your work every 10 seconds. It’s a very direct metaphor for the global climate crisis that threatens to flood coastal cities and exacerbate natural disasters. Sandcastles confronts us with our totally predictable watery doom, but we also find fun and expression in our totally foreseeable destruction. When the planet dies, at least we’ll…

Tagged with feature, Arma 3, BioShock, Fate of the World, Frostpunk, Half-Life 2, Sandcastles, Sea of Solitude, Sid Meier's Civilization II, Sid Meier's Civilization VI, Sid Meier's Civilization VI: Gathering Storm, The Long Dark.

Half-Life 2 is nearly fifteen years old now, and despite Valve's sequel plans seemingly fizzling out, it doesn't look a day over ten thanks to the efforts of modders. Chances are that Half-Life 2 and its expansions have been gathering dust on your Steam account for years now, so here's a quick refresher -- mostly focused on the past five years -- on what's available,…

Tagged with Breadman, Craig Beattie, Damian Duda, Deppresick, Dolmo, feature, Filip Victor, Gunship Mark II, Marnamal, Modder Superior, mods, Phillip Marlowe, RunThinkShootLive, Spymaps, Valve Software, White Noise Team, Half-Life 2, Half-Life 2: Episode One, Half-life 2: Episode Three, Half-Life 2: Episode Two.

"Toss a toilet at your friend today!", goes the Steam blurb. That does rather capture the spirit of Half-Life 2: Deathmatch, doesn't it?

Tagged with feature, Have You Played, Valve, Half-Life 2, Half-life 2: Deathmatch.

I’m not sure anyone at Respawn has properly busted their ass on the curb. It hurts. The last time I cracked my rear off the concrete in a moment of skating hubris, I was limping for days. Fortunately for the fifty million folks flying around in Apex Legends, a billowing cushion of air has turned what should be an embarrassing accident into the most compelling…

Tagged with Electronic Arts, feature, Respawn Entertainment, Apex Legends, Half-Life 2, Titanfall, Titanfall 2.

Then the bus EXPLODED. Hello, this is the RPS podcast, the Electronic Wireless Show, and we are here to talk about the best game openings and intros. Whether they are cold opens or slow burns, we love a good first impression.

Tagged with feature, Podcast, The RPS Electronic Wireless show, BioShock, Dead Cells, Dragon Age: Origins, Half-Life 2, No Man's Sky, Portal 2.

Ah, the non-player character. Stoic endurer of all our sadistic whims. It’s time the monsters on the RPS podcast, the Electronic Wireless Show, made tribute to these humble little robots, whether they’re annoying companions, side characters, or disembodied human heads. Let’s talk about some of our favourites.

Tagged with Beyond Good and Evil, Broken Sword, feature, npcs, Podcast, The RPS Electronic Wireless show, Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag, Dragon Age: Inquisition, Half-Life 2, metal gear solid, Papers Please, Red Faction Guerrilla Re-Mars-tered, Starman: Tale of Light, The Crew 2, The Curse of Monkey Island.

The best shooters endure. While the state of the art moves on in other genres and leaves old designs in the dust, it's as fun to fire a well-made shotgun from an early 90s FPS as from one released today. For that reason, this list runs the gamut from genre classics to those released in the last year. There's bound to be something for you…

Tagged with Aliens versus Predator Classic 2000, Aliens vs. Predator, Bestest Bests, Crysis, feature, Halo Combat Evolved, Metro 2033 Redux, The Marathon Trilogy, Unreal Tournament 2004, Alien: Isolation, Arma 3, Battlefield 1942, Battlefield: Bad Company™ 2, BioShock 2, Bulletstorm, Call of Duty 2, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, Call Of Juarez - Gunslinger, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, Day of Infamy, Devil Daggers, Dishonored, Dishonored 2, Doom, F.E.A.R., Far Cry 2, Far Cry 3, Far Cry 4, Half-Life, Half-Life 2, Left 4 Dead 2, Marathon, Natural Selection 2, No One Lives Forever, PlanetSide 2, Playerunknown's Battlegrounds, Prey, Quake, Quake III Arena, Rage, Rising Storm, S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl, Serious Sam HD: The First Encounter, Shadow Warrior 2, Star Wars Jedi Knight - Mysteries of the Sith, Star Wars Republic Commando, Star Wars: Dark Forces, SWAT 4, Team Fortress 2, The Chronicles Of Riddick: Assault On Dark Athena, Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Siege, Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus, Wolfenstein: The New Order.

The Orange Box is one of the strangest quirks of gaming history. Never before had a developer released three brand new, entirely separate games at the same time in one package, and thanks to digital distribution, it probably won't happen again. What makes The Orange Box truly remarkable though is that it contained two of the most-anticipated games of 2007, and what proved to be…

Tagged with confused retailers, Half Life 2: Episode 2, Steam, The-Orange-Box, Valve, work psychology, Half-Life 2, Half-Life 2: Episode One, Portal, Team Fortress 2.