Company of the day: Valve

There are hundreds of developers in this world that have contributed to the gaming medium and community. id Software created essentially the backbone of the modern Fps and multiplayer spectrum. Rockstar games have created and refined the sandbox genre. And then there's Valve software, which has not really invented as it did innovated the fps as we know it. Valve has done a good amount for modern games, they showed that a protagonists voice does not even have to be heard to move the plot in a story along(more notably HL2 than the original),that thinking whilst acting is crucial for survival, and a gun is just a gun...that is until you know how to use it to your own advantage.

                                          

Two men who had dreams of owning there own Video game company was fulfilled in the mid nineties. That dream was also helped by the fact that these two men were quite wealthy, discarding there jobs at  Microsoft

to make games would not have been possible without there financial backing. Ensuring a game was overall "fun" and "polished" were the new companies' main concern, rather than finishing it early and releasing it to make an easier dollar.

There the company also were quite content with allowing for modding of the game engines of which they created off a heavily modified Quake engine named GoldSrc and the companies main engine soon was replaced or modified and renamed Source. This engine would help create some of the most advanced physics and facial expressions of its time. But during the days of GoldSrc three of Valves biggest games would soon be realized. After Half life released modders from all over started using the code to create there own games.

 Counter Strike(a realistic counter terrorism shooter) Team Fortress( class based shooter)Day of Defeat(WWII shooter) all three were multiplayer only respectively although when Valve bought the rights to Counter Strike they added singleplayer missions as well.

Even to this day Valve strides itself on making highly polished and well crafted games while using an advanced game engine which can create large amounts of particle effects and textures at once and still run fine on a minimum rig. They are a company founded to make great games while maintaining a good amount of humor in themselves and are very good at using recurring jokes about their games and company as a whole. They listen to there community and know where they are going to take their next game in the series whilst still focusing on previous games(ie TF2 is still getting updates and its over 3 years old) There commitment to the enjoyment of the player is welcome to all and paying back their loyal fans with enough free updates to keep there games going for a very very long time.

First impressions: Aliens vs Predator(demo)

The new sci-fi horror shooter Aliens vs Predator is coming out within the month (feb 16 to be exact) but although the game demo that was released yesterday was in its own right fun. There were some problems that need fixing. For instance the executions are awesome, at least when you're the one doing them. Its not that its not fun dying like this, its the fact that your guy will not bleed when a giant tail goes through your stomach or when your face gets bitten off, what would have been smarter is if when that happens(ie. face bitten off)your screen should go black as the mouth lunges. In any case the game is very good, a lot of good controls, 3 playable characters(my favorite is the alien) all with their own abilities and weakness's. The Alien is good at getting the drop on players from above, the Pred is good at stealth and stalking, and the marine is kinda in the middle of the other two hence Aliens vs Predator and not Aliens vs Human vs Predator. Can't wait for the game to release so I can play the singleplayer which looks just as promising as the multiplayer.