Also after the jump, from Deviant Art, a cartoon on why Gordon Freeman doesn't talk. (If you're guessing the punchline right now, you're right.)

One Bored Super Soldier and Why Gordon Doesn't Talk [Deviant Art, thanks reader d p]

While unconfirmed — the art is listed under "Half Life EP3" — it may lead to more speculation that the final episode in the Half-Life 2 trilogy will make an appearance at E3 2008. That's been denied by Valve spokesfolk, but you know how they love to twist words.

Potentially good news for consoles owners of the Sony persuasion is that the official Into The Pixel listing tags the game as seeing release on the PC, Xbox 360 and PS3. Bigger look after the jump.

2008 ITP Collection [Into The Pixel via ShackNews]

According to Valve's marketing director Doug Lombardi Half-Life 2: Episode Three won't be making an appearance at E3 this year, with the listing chalked up to a "misprint (or something)." We would assume that if Valve is showcasing anything at E3 this year, it will be Left 4 Dead which is planned for a November 4 release.

Half-Life Havoc (HLH) is a lesson in video game physics created in Half-Life 2 using the included level editing tools. Taking inspiration from games like Garry's mod and Portal, HLH aims to create an environment where players can take some time to appreciate the complex physics simulations that are present in modern games. HLH is made up of a series of rooms, each of which has a puzzle or game that illustrates a feature of Half-Life 2's physics engine. Commentary nodes spread throughout the level teach the player about what is going on in each of the games and gives insight into video game physics.

Half-Life: Havoc

Top 5 Botched PC Game Launches [1UP]

Ninja Reflex: Steamworks Edition [Steam]

Previously, on Half-Life 2: Full Life Consequences, Gordon Freeman's bro John walked really fast and blew up the house of zombie ghosts and shot the last boss in the eye but Gordon Freeman was stepped on. In the latest installment, "What Has Tobe Done", John Freeman gets an e-mail and drives his motorcycle there and fires a rocket launcher at the boss's weak spot. Kaboom!! Wow. We thanks Kyle for setting us up the clip really fast.

For the last few years, the buzzword for game engine design has been physics, but most games didn't use it for anything more than the most basic eye-candy. HL2 showed that the model itself could actually be fun and interesting as part of the gameplay. I like to imagine doing the same thing for other fields - chemistry, for example, which has never been one of my strong subjects but would almost certainly make for amazing puzzles a la MacGyver. To some degree, this progression is already taking place; what's Spore but an expansive biology toy?

A fun and thought provoking read, even for those of us who run screaming from labs of any kind. Give me musty library stacks any day.

Anomalous Materials [The Escapist]

It's not quite as professional as Jin's effort, but I think it makes up for it in accuracy to the source material.

Orange Box contents to be separated at retail [VideoGamer.com]

The most prominent complaints, unsurprisingly, come in the form of frame rate stuttering and loading times. Connectivity reliability and support for achievements are also common requests, but those with thoughts on the matter should head over to the official forums and make your voice heard. Rock the vote and all that.

[PS3] Orange Box Suggestions / Tweaks & Bugs / Issues [Steam - thanks, hatchetforce!]

Zombie Panic Source [Official Site via FileFront]

The official site also promises "a surprise in store that is currently in late stages of production and will be done very soon." At this point, I'd really just appreciate it Valve would just cut them a check to fund proper, uninterrupted development or bring them on board. The wait is starting to become unbearable.

Black Mesa Source Media

Question: Are there any current plans after Episode 3 to have a Half Life 3?

Answer: We haven't announced anything specific, but Half-Life won't end at Episode Three - hang on to your crowbars!

Half Life 3 [via videogamesblogger]

I even spent a healthy portion of my time with the original Half-Life 2, a game that still holds up, now three years long in the tooth. The innate gameplay and intangible experience has been great, as it has from the beginning of the Half-Life 2 saga. The technical aspects, however, have been less so.

Despite thinking that I'm a bit of a frame rate snob, turns out I'm not. I've certainly experienced my share of less than optimal moments on my relatively ancient Windows XP machine. Perhaps that's why I was able to mostly overlook most of The Orange Box's frame rate dips on the PlayStation 3. I suppose it's like Shadow of the Colossus on the PlayStation 2. It couldn't hold onto a solid frame rate if its figurative life depended on it, but that doesn't prevent it from being one of the best games of the generation, if not all time, in my opinion.

However, with that paragraph full of excuses behind us, the technical performance of The Orange Box on the PlayStation 3 is, in parts, unforgivable. The game's technical hiccups (almost wholly frame rate related) aren't limited to any particular portion of the game. It seemed that the title was at its worst during portions of Episode One, making an already frustrating portion of the game that much more difficult to bypass because of poor performance. Those issues with frame rate also affects moments in Portal, sadly, a game that features little in the way of intense action and enemies.

Most of the time, when The Orange Box started to stutter, I found myself wondering "Why here? Why now?" It wasn't always the moments clogged with Strider-killing action or spectacular effects, perhaps for the better.

To put it bluntly, The Orange Box for the PS3 simply the least impressive release of the three, across the board, strongly outperformed by its Xbox 360 and PC counterparts. Those with a choice, who for some reason may have waited until now to pick up the collection, should look to the non-PlayStation 3 editions of the game if they can. Those who do will enjoy a smoother experience and have access to each platforms' version of Achievements.

Those currently only in possession of a PS3 should still look at The Orange Box as a worthwhile purchase. There's almost no end to the value in the five game collection. Anyone who has missed out on the Half-Life 2 saga is in for a treat, regardless of the less than optimal presentation. The game's included are thrilling, moving, enlightening and, at times, a source of great humor. Half-Life 2 is one of the few examples that would hold up in a "games as art" debate, a stellar example of less is more storytelling and beautiful aesthetic design.

It's only a shame that the PlayStation 3 port doesn't do portions of the game justice.

The Orange Box (PS3) Impressions: Volume One [Kotaku]
The Orange Box (PS3) Impressions: Volume Two [Kotaku]

Having worked my way through the first three chapters of Half-Life 2: Episode Two, I stopped just before one of the episode's key vehicle sequences. This portion of the game was deemed one of the worst, in terms of technical performance. Assessments of those moments are mostly accurate. Yes, the frame rate takes some heavy dips, but at no point did it become unplayable. Slideshow? Nah. At least not for me.

Driving Episode Two's car through a wooded outdoor area, over a nicely rendered stream is where The Orange Box seems to perform at its worst. Fortunately, this section of the game is little more than a leisurely spin in the gutted car, and the game's graphics held up nicely during a more peril-filled driving scene.

There's no doubt that The Orange Box on the PlayStation 3 underperforms in this particular chapter, but it is not game breaking. Some will complain, some simply won't notice. Sorry, but I have little in the way of doom and gloom to serve up to you.

That said, there are a few more obvious hiccups in the second half of Episode Two. As in the first half, panning from side to side in certain levels quickly can cause a frame rate dip. Fortunately, during many of the more action packed moments, the game continues to perform admirably.

One odd glitch that I've come across is the camera spinning wildly or Gordon moving against my will, given the odd analog stick push. This has happened maybe a half-dozen times during my eight-plus hours with the game and may be due to odd SIXAXIS behavior. Fortunately, I haven't mistakenly walked off any cliffs.

I've also seen a few more pop-ups than I'd really be happy with. During one portion of the game's fifth chapter, headcrab zombies and Combine zombies that were submerged under toxic waste had odd moments of popping up and down. You'll also see some far off geometry popping in during the game's driving portions.

Also worth a mention is the game's loading. While the original Half-Life 2 and its episodes take about 12-15 seconds to load between areas, it handles those loads a bit more gracefully than Episode Two does. Load times are mostly the same, but Episode Two places them at less convenient spots.

I did spend a bit more time with Portal today, as well, which features a handful of stuttering moments when panning around. Momentarily annoying when looking for such things? Yes. Game killing? No. The last time I'll ask and answer my own question? Not by a long shot.

I expect that I'll wrap up Episode Two tomorrow, then go back and give the other titles a closer look, especially the driving bits on Episode One and the original Half-Life 2. I hope to have a final impressions post available for everyone soon.

To wrap up, I'm still having a great time with The Orange Box. It's surprisingly funnier than previous Half-Life games and still manages to mix up the formula well. None of the technical hairsplitting is interfering with my journey through the game. Though, I'd prefer a few more rocket propelled grenade rounds...

After a quick look around, ducking into Team Fortress 2—which I was able to play momentarily and only in a solitary sense—and working through the first hour of Half-Life 2, I decided to check out what was being billed as the main offender—Half-Life 2: Episode Two. Within the first few minutes, my fears were confirmed. Right off the bat, Episode Two started to chug.

But that was it. After that first scene, featuring our silent protagonist moving through a train car derailed in the wilderness, it was smooth sailing. Walking from out of doors to a nearby cave, the frame rate held. Then, within the first ten minutes of the episode, bizarre texture popping or some such graphical glitch was affecting sidekick Alyx Vance's leather jacket. Something else already? Ugh. But, this too, quickly subsided, and was never seen again.

For the next few hours, the game's graphics performance stayed strong. Having engaged in some heavy fire fights during the course of the afternoon, and experiencing nothing out of the ordinary, I was wondering when it was going to head south. While I have yet to actually finish the episode, I've encountered nothing game breaking, merely a few stutters.

Most of my experiences had taken place indoors, and despite the odd hitch when the lighting went into "look at me!" mode, the Source engine, the Cell and the RSX held their own. When Freeman emerged from a mineshaft and back into the woods, I started to notice a few graphical quibbles. A pair of rocky spires popped in rather crudely, with the level-of-detail change being somewhat noticeable.

The frame rate took a hit in a few spots while outdoors, but mostly when quickly panning from side to side, as the game's motion blur effects kicked in.

I stopped playing right before one of Half-Life 2: Episode Two's vehicle sequences, one of the complaints pointed out in the 1UP preview. I'll be there soon enough, as I plan to finish the Episode tonight and will keep my eyes peeled for any inconsistencies.

There's still plenty of game to cover, but my initial impressions of the final game's technical capabilities are positive. We'll see if they don't last soon enough.

Now that all that frame rate and lighting nonsense is out of the way, how does The Orange Box play? Quite well, actually. As a big fan of the Half-Life series, I'm willing to forgive the odd quibble, but wouldn't want anything to interfere with my experience. Episode Two, so far, has been great fun, exploring a handful of new mechanics and adding interesting set pieces to the series. Using the SIXAXIS for control works quite well, even if I'm not totally in tune with the default controller mapping. Normally, I play my Valve games on the PC, as I have already done with Half-Life 2: Episode One, Portal and Team Fortress 2, but I found the console version to be just as enjoyable.

As far as the game's other titles, I've only spent a bit of time with each. Half-Life 2 was smooth, if a bit homelier in parts than I remember it from a few years ago. And while Portal looks to be a nicely handled port, I can't yet pass judgment on Team Fortress 2. No one else was playing TF2 this morning, unsurprisingly, so my hands-on time with the shooter was uneventful. I certainly can't judge the game's performance when I'm the only one on the map, but hopefully I'll find a few opponents sooner rather than later.

Expect another volume of hands-on impressions of the PlayStation 3 version of The Orange Box tomorrow.

IGN's Hilary Goldstein writes that The Orange Box for the PlayStation 3 "is still a fantastic collection and runs well for the most part, but there are some technical issues that put it behind the 360 version." He then tempers that with a stiff upper lip, writing that the "technical issues aren't going to be enough to deter anyone who wants to enjoy Orange Box on PS3." and that "unless you require your games to never dip below 30fps, you should not strike The Orange Box off your PS3 holiday wish list."

Gamespy is also forgiving, writing that the dip in framerate doesn't introduce itself until Episode Two. Those drops "don't rival a slideshow, but they're noticeable" according to author Sterling McGarvey.

Unfortunately, still no details on the smoothness of Team Fortress 2, as that game is currently unplayable due to a lack of support from EA online servers.

EA is issuing us a copy of the PlayStation 3 version so we can decide for ourselves. I'll provide impressions of the experience as soon as is humanly possible.

The Orange Box PS3 Hands-On [IGN]
The Orange Box (PS3) [Gamespy]

We're planning on adding achievements to all of our games you touched on in your mail [Half-Life 2, Half-Life 2: Episode 1, Day of Defeat: Source and Counter-Strike: Source]. We're just now coming out of the post-shipping haze, so these should start showing up on Steam pretty quick here.

We're also planning on adding a bunch more to TF2, starting with an achievement pack for the Medic in the next week or so.

There's not an auteur, not the fiction that movie people tell themselves about the movie occurring in the director's head, and it being your job as someone who's witnessing that on the screen to connect with that vision. That's a terrible way to think about videogames, because they're a collaboration. You've got this lead actor and they don't have a copy of the script, but if they're not having a great time then it doesn't matter what you thought you were doing. All that matters is your ability to engage with him. You have to focus on collaboration, you have to focus on this sharing of authoring the performance with gamers.

This evil, this disease, is the idea of a Silent Protagonist. Its symptoms are easy to diagnose: the protagonist never speaks and as seemingly important events fly by he/she says nothing... further, all the NPCs go to great lengths to talk around the player and advance the story almost in spite of him... It appears as a terrible, horrific, mark upon otherwise good or even great games. Half-Life 2 and Dragon Quest 8 are perfect high profile examples in people's recent memories.

Kill The Silent Protagonist [Surreal Game Design]

Luckily, I still have copies of the 1997-1998 chats with interesting game developers archived somewhere obscure, and I thought it might be fun to reprint highlights here on Kotaku, and compare and contrast them to what's happened to their careers since then - and how their statements have held up over time.

We'll start out with sci-fi author and Half-Life series guru Marc Laidlaw, whom I chatted to in late 1997, significantly before the game's November 1998 debut, and a few months after the writer got hired at Valve.

What's your job on 'Half-Life' currently entail?

I'm the designated writer, which means I've been wrangling with a lot of story elements that existed in the game long before I got here, and helping reshape them into something with the structure and feel of an actual story-one's that not as obvious as it might appear on its face. For instance, we start with the Doom-style gimmick of the dimensional portal through which horrors are pouring. But...you can't just stop there. It was old when id did it, after all. Call it...a timeless theme. Anyway, you have to start looking for ways of handling these elements that no other designers would dream up.

I won't take credit for the basic story, but if you finish playing the game and feel like what just happened made a strange kind of sense, then I would hope that's because of some of the things I've been doing. In a creative group like the one at Valve, there's no shortage of great ideas, and it often seems to me that other folks come up with the really wild ideas and simply use me as a sounding board and to see if their wild notions can get worked into the story somehow. (As an aside, I was hired to get in early on the creation of Valve's mysterious yet-to-be announced Second Game, so I'll be taking more blame for that storyline.)

[As some students of history might know, that 'Second Game' was not Half-Life 2, but rather, as Laidlaw mentions in a 2003 interview with me: "I was supposed to do a couple weeks of work to consolidate the storyline for Half-Life so that it could ship that year, while the bulk of my time was devoted to a science fantasy epic called Prospero. Half-Life proved to be an irresistible force; the Prospero team was soon absorbed, and my full attention went into shaping the Half-Life story."]

Half-Life will rule because...

...Right now I am dying to see what the free-agent mappers do once they get their hands on the version of Worldcraft that ships with Half-Life. Our levels have to make sense as part of the Half-Life story. But when the mapping community gets to work on levels that don't have to abide by our conventions, and just get to employ Valve's bag of tricks, I predict a flood of absolutely insane maps. That should be fun!

[Lo and behold, what an embarrassment of riches, including Counter-Strike, Team Fortress, Day Of Defeat, and many more.]

Apparently, Capcom have hired George Romero to do the TV ads for "Resident Evil 2" in Japan. Which film-maker would be particularly suitable to film the ads for "Half-Life", if you could pick anyone?

Paul Verhoeven, if Terry Gilliam could sit in on the session. And if Jeunet et Caro would just stop talking French for a minute, then they could have the job.

[As far as I know, there's never really been an official filmed version of the Half-Life series, either in ads or longer form - though Valve did ask for feedback on a possible movie version a few years back. Probably wise.]

What was/is the attraction for you in making games?

I've been aching to do something pioneering. Storytelling is such an ancient form that it's rather hard to break new ground in terms of content-but presentation is a different matter. Our means of relaying stories keeps changing over the ages-from oral traditions to written glyphs and characters, to films and now...computer games.

I think we are now passing into something like the "silent movie" era of computer game storytelling. The opportunity for making classics is very exciting. Twenty-five years ago I was writing about and trying to envision forms of 3D entertainment in my earliest science fiction stories; now I'm actually working in a field that I liked to dream about before it existed.

What's the part of Half-Life that you're most proud of thinking up/designing?

ML: Right now, I'm happiest with our plans to turn the player into a real character in the game, without making a snarling asshole out of him. The player is going to be important-and not only as a target. He's going to feel he's doing things for a variety of good reasons, including sheer survival. As for things I had absolutely nothing to do with creating, I love the monsters. Half-Life contains more incredible creatures, with incredible creature behavior, than just about any science fiction movie or book I can think of. We could put together the best zoo in the universe.

[Looking back at this statement 10 years later, it's easy to see Laidlaw's sophisticated thinking helping make Valve one of the pioneers in this field - with Half-Life having sold 8 million copies in various forms, and "closest thing to a revolutionary step the genre has ever taken". Good job, Sir.]

Full Text Of 1997 Laidlaw Interview [GameGeekPeeks]

We're going to try and do something pretty ambitious for that project. We don't want to overcommit. If you look at the Episode Two trailer that we shipped with Episode One there's some pretty radical difference between what you see there and see in finished game. That's really an artifact of making a trailer for a product that's still in heavy production. You just don't know where you're going to end up.

Who said the cake was a lie? This user-created movie over on GameTrailers shows a real-life version of the Portal cake and it sure looks yummy. But is it tastier than the Companion Cube cake? It doesn't matter. Just watch the clip so you can hear Jonathan Coulton's great song from Portal yet again.

I Played Through Episode Two Holding A Goddamn Gnome (Spoilers) [James via Rock, Paper, Shotgun]

Other than that, I've got Metroid Prime 3: Corruption wondering where the hell I've been and some must-play time with Dementium: The Ward.

So what is it, dear readers? What are you playing this weekend?

We've met the engineers, scoped the beautiful graphics and heard about the 9 character balance to no end. Now we're left with one thing: actually playing the game. So hit the jump for our Frankenreview on Team Fortress 2: all the value you see in The Orange Box, squeezed into review form with way more disappointing content.

PCGamer
[A] Pixar comparison isn't fair. TF2's gurning murderers look better...It sounds like a small thing, to be able to tell what class someone is as surely and as clearly as you can...But stuff like this has an intensifying effect on your moment-to-moment experience: you feel, see and comprehend the game world in Technicolor. It makes all the relationships instantly clear and the importance of your actions explicit. In short, it makes everything you do 300% cooler.
1UP
Valve's rebalancing and outright revamping of key classes works; each actor in TF2's cast of nine owns his role with less overlap than ever. The football-like match flow is intact, too — Heavies and Soldiers wrestle at congested lines of scrimmage; now and then Scouts and Spies slither through for Hail Marys (expressive in-game taunts substitute high steps)

IGN
If nobody wins the game at the end of a round, TF2 transitions to an overtime round where teams are no longer allowed to respawn, health pickups disappear, and resupply cabinets no longer give out health. You need to instead rely on medics and dispensers to heal any damage. Strangely, if nobody wins in overtime or wipes out the other team, the round ends in a draw. Sort of defeats the purpose of overtime, doesn't it?

Eurogamer
The game also does a lovely job of framing your relationship with other players and nurturing them. If someone is dominating you, the game says so, and revenge is sweeter. The scoring system, of course, helps reflect this - if someone is dominating you, they get more points for continuing to do so. Valve also includes a range of Achievements...that - rather like celebrated Geometry Wars 360 achievement "Pacifism" - push you in the direction of new ideas as much as they celebrate or laugh along with your accomplishments.

Shacknews
So are there imperfections? Of course...There could be a few more maps. Of the included six, only a few truly capitalize on the subtle mechanics of the game, the rest often devolving into futile, tug-of-war stalemates or crushing defeats. The classic 2Fort map now feels somewhat stale, antiquated. Default respawn times seem a little high. The classes will never be perfectly balanced—such is the nature of class-based combat...[but] to sit and complain about such minor quibbles is tantamount to taking a magnifying glass to a great painting.
I'm picking this game up...as soon as we kick Gizmodo's whiny ass in Halo 3. Then I'm picking this game up.

Hahaha! "Mac gamer demographic." Anyway...

According to the main man at IMG, Tuncer Deniz, his info comes straight from the folks at Apple, following an e-mail trail that involved Newell and Mr. Steve Jobs himself. It doesn't seem like an unreasonable request to me. Just charged Mac users a thousand bucks for the game and you'll recoup your costs in no time. We're quite used to overpaying for all things Apple.

Thanks for the heads up, Kaji.

One Million Reasons Why Half-Life 2 Isn't on the Mac [Inside Mac Gaming via Apple Insider]