You’ve probably already heard of Valve’s free top-down shooter, Alien Swarm. What you may not know is that it’s also a FPS. PCGamer broke the news from the steam forums. It just takes a few console commands to make a whole new game from the downloadable title: Go to Options > Keyboard > Enable developer [...]

Seeing how I spend a few hours each week prying words from my gums, it’s always a pleasure to read good copy. Valve just sent out the following press release about the cancellation of their E3 Portal 2 event. Fortunately, the cancellation will be replaced by a series of carefully scheduled surprises, so you can [...]

Can I get a hell yes? Having already tried alternate reality games and perfectly ordinary media coverage, Valve is making the strongest imaginable argument for why you should buy Portal 2, and that argument is Portal, QED. The game is free via Steam until May 24, and has been recently updated for Mac gamers as [...]

Exceeding your Portal RDA: Portal 2 confirmed, with 2 player co-op and bonus Steam for Macs.

Portal was the first game I ever reviewed here at Pixelsocks.com, so my ears perk up whenever I hear any news. Valve recently released two patches for the groundbreaking first person puzzler. The patch notes were brief: Changed radio transmission frequency to comply with federal and state spectrum management regulations (March 1) and Added valuable [...]

Left 4 Dead 2 does the sequel thing right. It takes the pseudo-random design that made the first game so replayable, expands it, and does so without sacrificing the original game’s feel. Add that to the franchise’s multiplayer excellence and a new narrative emphasis, and the only thing deeper than the smart FPS gameplay is the pool of zombie gore.

Cooperative FPS games are the darlings of the genre right now, but they’re popping up so fast that it’s getting hard to tell them apart. However, in a subgenre mostly defined by players reviving each other after tactical mishaps, Left 4 Dead is still the only game where you’ll drop your comrade mid-revival so you can shoot through him. You know, because of all the zombies.

Valve’s upcoming sequel to that game was present on the PAX show floor, and Ricardo Ariza was kindly fielding questions instead of just hitting zombies with guitars. He’s one of the two character sculptors working on the sequel’s 35 man team and was just chock full of information.

If you’ve missed out on the seminal Half Life FPS series (or you just happen to be a dirty pirate), Valve has discounted the whole lot to fire sale prices. This weekend, you’ll be able to download Half-Life, Half-life 2, both episodes, and Half-Life: Deathmatch from Steam for 66% off regular price. For Steam neophytes, that means about $1-6 for each of the games. If you’d like to just up and download the lot of them, it comes out to about $17 (which is probably cheaper than Episode 3 will be whenever it arrives).

The Half-Life series is famous for popularizing scripted events as a way to integrate narrative into gameplay without using cut scenes. Subsequent games made great strides in physics-driven gameplay and facial animations that made characters warmer and more believable. So even if you aren’t a huge FPS fan, you can still have a piece of gaming history for less than the price of a budget game.

Valve’s entire collection is also 10% off, which adds Portal, Team Fortress 2, and Left 4 Dead (among other notables) to the deal for a grand total of $90. Whether you’re in for a penny or pound, there’s a lot of gaming for just a little money over at Steam this weekend.

In the wake of fan outrage that Valve could be so audacious as to release Left 4 Dead sequel a year after the first game hit, the company has announced that a new movie will soon be up for download. Titled Crash Course, the new content will bridge the gap between the first two movies, [...]

In a move you’d expect from the Umbrella Corporation, Valve is trying to merge two zombie concepts into one multi-headed brain-devouring chimera. Marketing VP Doug Lombardi told totalvideogames.com that Valve was “trying to work out the details” to make it possible for fans of the first game to play alongside their sequel-adopting counterparts. This decision [...]