It’s hard to talk about Portal games without spoiling them. However, it’s fair to say that a strong lineage carries a burden of expectation. Portal 2 rises to that burden with a combination of diverse content, expert craftsmanship, and brilliant writing.

I was originally planning to review Costume Quest today, but Valve just announced something worth a brief delay. According to a press release, the PS3 will be the first home console with Steam integration, and the flagship title for the service will be none other than Portal 2. “The features shipping in the PS3 version [...]

You knew it was coming as well as I did, but it’s finally here. Valve is launching one of its trademark deep-discount sales in celebration of Black Friday, and the sale started this morning. This year Valve is playing it like Amazon. That means the deals change every 24 hours, so you’ll have to keep [...]

In a terse press release, Valve has announced a new Defense of the Ancients. DOTA2 will will follow up the popular Warcraft 3 mod sometime during its release window in 2011. Additional details were limited to a gameinformer exclusive, but have since been released into the wild. The new game is planned as less as [...]

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.