I am back on YouTube! The past few months have gone past in a blur of two moves, a career change and lots of unpacking. Now that I am settled in my new flat, it is time to get back into the whole blogging and streaming thing.
Myself and my boyfriend Casey played through the main story of Lego Dimensions recently, and both of us loved it. Therefore, we have decided to stream each level pack on my channel, starting last night with the Portal pack.
Steam Greenlight, Valve's new community moderated service, has gone live. Greenlight allows developers or publishers to post information about their indie games currently in development. The community then vote on which games they would like to come to Steam.
Currently, there are 497 games available to vote on, including popular indie games such as Slender. Community members will also be able to provide feedback on each title listed so developers can choose to have their game reflect these concerns, praises and ideas if they so wish. Each game will have information, screenshots and aspects each indie game promises to include if their game is given the green light.
Left 4 Dead 2's latest DLC has missed it's 24th July release date. Valve headed to their Twitter page to tweet an explanation. Taken from one of their tweets, Valve stated that "We are working with MS on a release schedule. We don't have an ETA yet, but we hope to have it out soon. It will be 560 Microsoft Points."
Entitled "Cold Stream", the DLC includes a brand new campaign, and will also import four of the five campaigns over from Left 4 Dead:-Blood Harvest, Crash Course, Dead Air, and Death Toll. No Mercy had already been ported over in the previous DLC, The Sacrifice.
Steam users will already have access to the new DLC for free. Let's hope it's released on the Xbox 360 soon!
Valve have released a set of educational tools for Portal 2 called "Teach With Portals."
Teach With Portals has been developed alongside teachers, with the aim to provide students with educational science, technology, maths and engineering aspects. Children will be able to play the game and use the specially crafted tools provided to learn more about physics, maths and more.
Currently the programme is in beta, and is available to download via Steam for free.
The Verge has reported that Valve is getting ready to release their own console. The 'Steam Box' will reportedly rival the Wii U, Playstation 4 and the Xbox 720. According to the source, Valve have a few publishers and developers working alongside them, the console may be announced at next week's GDC conference.
The Steam Box apparently will include 8GB RAM, an NVIDIA GPU, and a Core i7 CPU. The console will run any standard PC titles, and allow services such as EA's Origin to be used.
Most of you should have gathered that it's Valentines Day, and whether you like the day or not, I've decided to feature some great game related Valentines art on 8-Bit Girl for today.
A deviantART artist by the name of Beavotron has created a bunch of excellent Valve-themed Valentines cards, some of which you can view below.
Valve have released a comic book/graphic novel devoted to the scenarios and characters in some of their most popular games. Entitled "Valve Presents The Sacrifice and other Steam-Powered Stories", the book comprises of 200+ pages for fans of Portal, Left 4 Dead and Team Fortress.
This hard-cover collection serves as a great read to fans who are wishing to find out more about the games they love, or for comic readers who fancy reading something new. It's currently retailing at £15.82 on Amazon. Just in time for Christmas!
It appears that many YouTuber's enjoy re-creating their favourite games into movie trailers, as we've seen plenty as of late. More are set to join the list after the release of a few trailers, which you can see below.
Angry Birds: The Movie
This one is not what you would seem. The creators play on the game's title, whilst paying homage to the east-London gangster flicks of Guy Ritchie. I was also reminded a little of some cheesy Grindhouse films in parts of it. Anyway, I'm not going to go into the story, I think it'll be better if you watch it and find out for yourselves below. Enjoy!
Left 4 Dead: The Movie
The following movie trailer is excellent. Not only does it manage to retain the look and feel of the levels in this popular zombie title by Valve, but the actors representing Louis, Zoe and Francis are spot on. Where's Bill I hear you ask? Spoilers: Play the DLC pack "The Sacrifice", and you'll figure out the answer to that one.
Luigi's Mansion
Luigi's Mansion was an excellent launch title for the GameCube, and soon fans will be treated to it's sequel on the Nintendo 3DS. Action News have got together and created their own live-action version of this classic ghost busting title, which you can view below.
Halo: Helljumper
OK, so this is not a brand new trailer. In fact , it's been around for a little while now, but I could not mention these two new additions to the fan-made gaming film list without mentioning this one. Based on the Halo franchise, Helljumper was apparently filmed over a single weekend, which is surprising, as it looks incredibly polished. The trailer shows a lot of promise, but we will find out if this reflects in the full film when it is released in January 2012.
Have you seen any great fan-made films based on games? Give them a mention in the comments section below!
Multiplayer shooter Counter-Strike: Global Offensive is now in beta testing on the PC and some gameplay footage has been leaked out onto YouTube.
Global Offensive is a remake of the popular Half-Life mod Counter-Strike. Teams of terrorists and counter-terrorists face off in objective-based matches. The money they earn from wins and kills can be used to purchase new equipment. Global will introduce new maps, modes and weapons.
Valve has said that they’re planning to grow the closed beta slowly, as they want to ensure that the game is stable before additional players are invited.
Counter-Strike: Global Offensive is being developed for the PS3, Xbox 360, PC, and Mac.
Released by Valve in 2007, Portal gave gamers a new challenge-completing puzzles by transporting themselves, and objects, through portals. Portal 2, released in April, has since shifted over three million copies, meaning that Portal is definitely still a fan favourite from this company.
It's clear to say that the idea of physics puzzles and the ability to create portals with a gun has captivated many fans worldwide, and this could definitely be seen in the recently released Portal short film by director Dan Trachtenberg, No Escape. Gaining it's debut screening at this years Comic Con, No Escape received critical praise, and rightly so. What we have here is a brief, but incredibly solid homage to the game.
Whilst the humorous aspects of Portal are not present here (GlaDOS's outbursts for example), the film makes up for this with plenty of moments of the portal gun in action. The film-makers cite Terminator 2 as an influence, so you should get an idea of what to expect here. The visual effects are flawless, and the ending is excellent.
With over 3 million views on YouTube, combined with positive reviews dotted around the internet, I just wish someone would give Dan Trachtenberg enough money to turn this into a full length film now.
You can check out the film in it's entirety below:
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