Orderoftheflame

Valve, creators of best-selling game franchises (such as Left 4 Dead, Counter-Strike and Half-Life) and leading technologies (such as Steam and Source), today announced Portal 2 for shipment this coming holiday season.

Portal 2 is the sequel to 2007’s Portal, which won 70 industry achievement awards.

For more information, please visit www.steamgames.com

I loved Portal. It was short, sweet, ingenious, and actually one of the best puzzle games I’ve ever played (not to mention one of the best full stop). I’ve started trying to fit a new play through of the original in when I find a few minutes between my work at the moment since the patch, and it still brings a smile to my face, and doesn’t feel stale.

Can’t wait. Pre-order on steam, then play and complete on the release day for me.

So… formula1.com has their ‘09 season summary video up. I can’t believe It’s only a week until the new F1 Season. In fact, it’s a god send that the first race is the weekend after this one, other wise I’d be screwed with all my coursework (I have to watch F1 live, it’s no fun otherwise!).

I’ve been a bit bad at keeping up with the pre-season testing so far. I’ve caught bits here and there though. Seems like the Ferrari’s are on top at the moment, but the rest of the big teams aren’t far behind. As for the new teams, Lotus and Virgin seem to be getting on ok, while Campos seem to be mucking about and USF1 aren’t going to even be racing! (Thank god. It would be funny and all, but clown cars belong in the big top). My monies on Alonso to do well. He’s always had the talent to add to his two championships, and to be quite frank, there’s not much of a better match than him and Ferrari out there. I’d love to see the season another way, but it’s a bit hard right now.

I’m really looking forward to watching Hamilton and Button both give it their all in the McLaren, the first all British pair since Graham Hill and Jim Clark at Lotus in 1968. Also good to watch is going to be big M over at Germany Mercedes GP. I’ve yet to form an opinion on if he can get a win this year yet. He’s definitely not slow looking at the practice times, but I’ll hold judgement until the green flag drops in Bahrain.

‘09 was a great season, and I can’t wait for the 2010 calendar to begin!

Saw this link to some of the best wildlife photography I’ve ever seen and had to share it. Some gob-smackingly stunning shots.

On This Earth

So as all of my uni work piles up, and the motivation to stick at it melts away, I’ve started looking at the list of games I’ve got to look forward to it when it’s all done.

I’ve got a mountain just on Steam that I want to put more time into, let alone all the console title’s I’ve been stacking up just to finish.

• Ben There, Dan That!
• Company of Heroes + Expansions
• Dead Space
• Defence Grid: The Awakening
• Darwinia
• Empire: Total War
• Evil Genius
• Jade Empire
• Mini Ninjas
• S.T.A.L.K.E.R: Shadow of Chernobyl
• Civ 4 + Expansions
• A metric bucket of Star Wars games
• Time Gentlemen, Please!
• Torchlight
• Serious Sam HD
• Trine
• TrackMania United
• Universe at War: Earth Assault
• X3-Terran Conflict
• The Witcher

Not to mention all of the other junk and indie games (that are now in their dozens for me to play) that I picked up over Christmas for a song. This is going to take an age to get through.

Some absolutely stunning film of last years Atlantis launch.

To set the scene… Before when I’ve got a new bit of kit for my camera to try out, or I’ve read up on a new technique, I try it out on the dog. It’s just quicker and easier than going out and finding real wildlife, and when you make a noise she’ll give you a wtf look rather than legging it.

I’ve never really put any thought or effort into these photos, as they were just experimenting really. However, as I was sorting through my library yesterday, I noticed some of them didn’t actually turn out too badly at all. And so, for today only, I’m going to be the wierdo posting pictures of his pet on the internet.

Two mysterious boxes? Looks like I got a new toy for my camera delivered today! A Red Snapper 283 Tripod and head, to replace my (30 year old? Older than me at least!) existing one. I’m really liking it, it’s light enough to strap to my camera bag and not feel heavy, but it’s solid as a rock. I’m loving the quick release on it especially.

One of the first things I did when I got my camera set up on my old tripod was take a quick 360 panoramic of my room, so what better way to try out my new one?

Set eight years after the first game, Bioshock 2 from 2K Games returns to the underwater distopian city of Rapture.

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Finished up Bioshock 2 this morning, and I’ve got to say I really enjoyed it. I’ll probably whack a review up if I find the time, seeing that I haven’t done one for months and months.

It’s been nearly a month since I made my last real gamey post, which is bad of me. It’s been reasonably quiet on that front though, there’s only really been a few major things that spring to mind.

• Firstly the Battlefield Bad Company 2 beta. I got on this due to having a pre-order (and ended up with a few spare keys from different sources as well before I gave them away), and despite only being one level set to one game mode it’s still far more fun than I’ve had with MW2. It’s pretty certain that it’ll become my new social MP game when it’s released, and I’m already signed up to take a share in a dedicated server (suck on that IW.net).

• Next is the Heavy Rain demo, which everyone with a PS3 should have played by now despite it not being on the store yet. I’ve been looking forward to this game for longer than it’s been announced since playing Fahrenheit when it was released in 2005.  It’s no secret that I like my games to have a great sense of depth and love them to be story driven. Fahrenheit is most certainly one of these games, and when I heard that Quantic Dream would be developing a similar game for the PS3 I couldn’t wait.
  The demo confirms my gut feeling that I can see no possible way for this game to be bad so far, and therefore my pre-order has remained as it has for a long time. There’s no real spoilers in the demo, so anyone with a PS3 should check it out.

• I ended up with Scribblenauts for the DS for my birthday as well, and I’ve had a great laugh with it so far, despite it being frustrating hard sometimes.

• Another demo, this time for the new Aliens Vs Predator game also popped up on steam quite recently. It however is catastrophically disappointing, and I have no interest to buy it any more, dispute loving the AvP and AvP2.

• Lastly, I finally played through the GTAIV expansion “The Ballad of Gay Tony” despite having downloaded it last October. As I expected, lots of funny witty dialogue, fun new game play elements and tons of great new characters.

As I said, it’s been a pretty bland time for games, but that’s to be expected. No developer in their right mind would want to release in the month straight after Chrimbo. I’ll just have to wait until some new exciting games get released. Like Bioshock 2, today.