Videogame Music; Crusader No Remorse Soundtrack

Crusader: No Remorse Soundtrack

New Doom WAD; Custom music replacement

But not just any custom midi replacement mod.  Brand new tracks created from the ground up, featuring some pretty known names, including new tracks by Rise of the Triad and Duke Nukem and other Apogee games musician: Lee Jackson!

Ultimate Midi Pack for Ultimate Doom. Description: A community music replacement for the original Doom.

Mod Analysis: Thunders Leaves - Become A Living Tesla Coil

Jarek Gaming reviews a cool Halflife 2 mod - "Thunder's Leaves" that adds new weapons, NPC's, and gameplay elements.

CounterStrike:GO and TF2 source code leaked in retaliation to SJW!!

Link to the story.

Pretty good summary of the article:

At the same time, he was leaking the codebases, he was also airing Valve’s dirty laundry. 

 ...

Half-Life 3 and Source 2:
>Source 2 is literally Source 1 with Rubikon on top of it.
>The biggest feature of Rubikon is thermal physics which are not even present in Alyx.
>Thermal physics were to debut in Half-Life 3.
>Half-Life 3 was to take place 10 years after HL2 and be a completely separate story.

Left 4 Dead 3:
>Left 4 Dead 3 was 95% completed and made in Unity.
>Gaben is pissed about this because releasing an Unity game is an “image problem”.
>Old guard want to port the game to Source 2, but Source 2 is not ready.
>New people are most familiar with UE4 so they want to port L4D to UE4 instead.
>Gaben wants it to run on Source 2.
>Source 2 is not ready.
>Project put into the freezer forever.

Continued, other interesting shit.
>SteamVR was in reality basically developed by Oculus while Valve rather focused on the controllers.
>Oculus wanted to support SteamVR by default and they were all for selling Valve’s games on their platform and selling their games on Steam.
>Just ahead of release of CV1, Valve’s head of VR Alan Yates out of nowhere accused Oculus of industrial espionage and threatened them with lawsuit if they don’t remove SteamVR support from their games.
>Yates is very happy about this because people blame Oculus instead of him. 

Continued, more stuff from the leak:
Half-Life and Nintendo:
>Nintendo offered Valve $300k for a Half-Life game that would be exclusive to NX (Switch).
>Valve wanted to go with it and make an RTS game for Switch with touch controls.
>Father Grigori was supposed to be one of the “playable” heroes.
>Gordon Freeman was supposed to make a cameo and TALK because “he only doesn’t talk because he’s a protagonist”. Valve didn’t understand why this would raise a backlash.
>Valve was not aware that Lambda Wars exists.

"Bisounours Party" HL2 mod on RTSL

Saw this map called Bisounours Party on RTSL.

Colorful map with rainbows and carebears.  Visually interesting and eye-catching; have not played yet.

Pretty colours.

HalfLife 1 mod - Echoes"

Halflife 1 mod - "Mod of the Year" according to Jared from Subway Dragon.  See his review here.  Another Black Mesa/Halflife 1 mod but with the added bonus of assets from Halflife 2.

ModDB - Official ModDB with latest version
RTSL - Alternative download link with mostly positive reviews
ModCorner overview

….and full playthrough below.

"VALVe is not your friend..." Good article on Polygon

Valve is not your friend, and Steam is not healthy for gaming - The illusion behind the “Good Guy Valve” reputation.

If you were to ask the average PC gamer, they’d swear up and down that there’s no way they’d ever give their money to such a corporation [such as Google]. They’d not only be caught dead before helping a company like that come to power, they might even join the resistance to stop them. 

And yet, that sort of operation is exactly what the PC gaming community has been supporting, promoting and defending since 2004 when Valve more or less forced us to install Steam by bundling it with Half-Life 2.

 Basically gamers are dumb.  Who'd have thought?!?

Way to the Woods

This game looks interesting.


Official website.

TODO LIST: HL2 maps and an L4d2 campaign

I used to be obsessed with playing every single HL2 map, but now I realize a lot of them are garbage.  The ones that I do plan on downloading to be at least 50mb and have high ratings *OR* have some kind of unique look about them before I even consider downloading them.  These few have caught my eye on PlanetPhillip recently and have been taking space on my browser tabs, so I might as well put them here.

HellSound Dreams
Size : 829MB
Horror type map.  Recommended for fans of "Cry of Fear" and "Afraid of Monsters."

DoomED
Size : 91.60MB
I only put this here because I remember playing this a long time ago and it recently appeared again on PlanetPhillip.  It's a non-action map that starts out in a London train station during WW2.  There's walking, exploring, and puzzles.

HuntDownTheFreeman - 24 Hour Remake
Size : 13.80MB
It's a parody mod and only 13mb, but it's just for a laugh.  The author that made this loved "Hunt Down The Freeman" so much he remade the campaign in less than 24 hours.  From the description: "To sum up, play this if you want a laugh and a wry smile, but don’t go looking for fun gameplay or cool situations."

The Transformation
Size : 10.3MB
Low file size but PlanetPhillip got 25 minutes of playtime out of it and I like "Rats"-style shrinking maps.

L4D2 - Crash Bandicoot Return of DR Cortex
Size : 160MB
This looks so goofy but interesting.  I never played the Crash games, so I can only comment that if you like weird, funny, low poly maps that gets straight to the point then play this.  And maybe if you're feeling nostalgic.  Video playthrough here.

HL2 - "Hunt Down The Freeman"

Really bad commercialized Halflife 2 mod: "Hunt Down the Freeman".  It costs $30 $17, but from what I read, it seems there are better Halflife 2 mods out there.  Why does VALVe and Steam allow their IP to be raped and humiliated like this?  Oh yeah, because money lol.  You can buy it here.  I will personally buy it when the price goes below $4, which I feel will happen in the next Christmas sale.

Also playthrough video which I have not bothered watching:

HL2 Mod Review: ICE Expansion - IT HAS PENGUINS!

Jarek4GamingDragon reviews HL2 mod "ICE Expansion."

Wolfenstein3d Source and Halflife 2 de-make

A remake and de-make...

ReWolfenstein 3d - A source mod

Halflife 2 - a "De-make" on GoldSource

Nostalgia - The Lost Episodes of Duke Nukem 3d

One of the first mods I found myself repeatedly playing was a Total Conversion for Duke Nukem 3D called "The Lost Episodes of Duke Nukem" back in the late 90's.  It was more a series of maps and some slight enemy sprite re-colorizations than a real TC.  Most of the level design was good, original and creative with levels revolving around a theme or some kind of wacky gimmick - ie a level revolving around a bottomless pit with a Buddha temple theme, or another level where Duke walks into a growth ray and the level takes place in a miniaturized city, and even a level that takes place in a Command and Conquer Nod base.

The one thing memorable that really stuck out about this mod was the awesome custom midi soundtrack created by the author, Mark Hadley.  If you were ever a fan of the soundtrack for Rise of the Triad you may enjoy this one, although most of the tracks are roughly 45-60 seconds long loops and could be slightly repetitive if you're lost on a level trying to figure out a puzzle.

The name Mark Hadley stuck with me and I always wondered if he ever created more music or got into videogame production - and yes - the Mark Hadley behind "Slenderman" games was the same guy that created this TC.

Hadley apparently worked on other mods which I never knew about until now including Mercs 2 and Murder: The EDF Conspiracy.  I never played these but I am interested in looking at them now after not having touched Duke 3d in over 15 years.

Detailed info on this TC at Duke 3d Wiki page.  Link to download here at ModDB (which, curiously, for the length of the campaign and content, it only weighs in at 419kB!)

Good info for getting back into mapping

Notes for getting Source SDK 2013 working.   Hmm... Basically it's three years old and to this day Faceposer still doesn't run properly without crashing, but at least mapping mostly works.

Classic HL Mod: Absolute Redemption

Really old mod.  Can't seem to remember playing this but it came out in 1999 and it is touted by mod aficionados as a classic, so I dunno - judge for yourself.

Download via Planetphillip

Halflife Wikia Entry

Halife 3 won't come out because "gamers are idiots"

Basically what they're saying is Halflife 3 won't come out because Gamers are assholes who will rape, riot and kill if it turns out to be another Duke Nukem Forever.

A cute HL mod - Minimicus

A short, clever Halflife mod called minimicus - where you play a scientist who steps into a shrinking ray.  It's kind of old, but it's still one of my favorites just because it doesn't try too hard and it's funny.  It can be beaten in under fifteen minutes.

Official ModDB page
Planet Phillip Review with download

Steam Skyrim Workshop charging for mods

Gopher: "Whelp, it's officially all over.  Bethesda has killed the modding community."

Annoying kids in multiplayer games

 

The last bit of some kid's crazy racist rant on Team Fortress 2.  He spent a total of 30 seconds actually playing the game and thirty minutes talking about how he hates black people.  Gotta love the types of people that play Free-To-Play games on Steam!  Actually his Steam profile is http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198192367582 , but I'm pretty sure it's the same guy who's trying to evade our server ban by creating a new Steam account.

Video - "Halflife 3 Footage - Everyone Dies"

Sounds about right.