Half-Life

Valve will never release Half-Life 3. But what if other developers could take a swing at it? PC Gamer asked Cliff Bleszinski, Tripwire’s John Gibson and Bluepoint’s Kynan Pearson for their ideas, which range from VR adventures to time manipulation.

The independently developed Half-Life 2 expansion Prospekt is now Valve-approved. It’ll be available on Steam in February. Created by lone indie dev Richard Seabrook, Prospekt continues the story of Half-Life: Opposing Force and threads its way through the narrative of Half-Life 2.

Valve’s Marc Laidlaw, who helped write the Half-Life series and the original Portal, has left the company after 18 years. The news originally broke on the Half-Life subreddit, and Laidlaw later confirmed the news to us. Why’d he leave? He wanted a “break from the collaborative chaos of game production.” Read more

Remember Half-Life: Blue Shift, that expansion where you played as Barney, the security guard? Well, Blue Shift’s Source engine remake, Black Mesa: Insecurity, just got its very first teaser trailer. You can watch it below, and follow the mod’s Mod DB page and/or Black Mesa Forum thread for updates.

Inspired by Black Mesa’s Steam re-release, modder Hezus decided to return to his 2012 remake of Half-Life’s “Uplink” demo, Black Mesa Uplink, to update it with extra content. Above is his first screenshot, showing off the mod’s new look. You can follow the mod’s progress (or give the old version a try) over at Mod DB.
Read more

When Combine posters pop up in your apartment building, you should think about moving. 3D artist Liam Tart, who’s worked as an environment artist on Alien: Isolation, is remaking a small, familiar section of Half-Life 2 in Unreal Engine 4 to get out of his “usual sci-fi comfort zone.” You can follow his progress here.
Read more

Black Mesa: Hazard Course drops two brand new screenshots. The mod project, which aims to recreate the Hazard Course tutorial level from Half-Life (a level that was cut from the big HL remake, Black Mesa) has now entered its internal beta, and is looking at a 2015 release.
Read more