HL2 + HL2 E1 & 2 on Xbox 360/PS3 + TF2 News

mxlegend99 · Post by **mxlegend99** » 14 Jul 2006 09:05 am

REDWOOD CITY, Calif.--Electronic Arts is upholding its annual tradition of hosting a gala summer press event with--you guessed it--another gala summer press event. The newly redubbed Summer Showcase, currently underway at the company's sprawling main campus in Redwood City, will feature a look at many of the juggernaut third party's upcoming titles for both current and next-gen consoles and PC. The event will begin with a stage presentation led by eminent company representatives, and will then move on to hands-on time with the EA's full playable lineup.

The horde of attendees from the states and abroad have assembled in EA's holding pen, and the show will be starting in moments. We'll be bringing you live updates throughout the presentation portion of the event, so you may ingest any particularly succulent morsels of information in the timeliest fashion. And of course, you can expect hands-on previews of any and all games shown as the afternoon continues.

2:09 pm The show is starting with a musical fanfare from the USC Trojan marching band and an introduction by EA's Jeff Brown. Think this will be a sports-centric program?

He went from teasing us about EA's PS3 plans to telling us bluntly not to expect anything on Crysis, Spore, or a number of other big properties today. Herumph. Products to look for in the next few hours include Godfather on the 360, Superman Returns, Warhammer Online from recently acquired Mythic, LOTR: The White Council, and--hey--Half-Life 2 Episodes 1 and 2.

2:16 Mythic pres and CEO Mark Jacobs takes the stage, starting by addressing his company's rapid acquisition by EA, going on to run down the company's history, focusing on its biggest success, Dark Age of Camelot.

Jacobs' talk naturally turns to Mythic's upcoming project, Warhammer Online, and we get to see the E3 trailer again. No real information though. Herumph again.

2:26 Valve's Gabe Newell is now on the stage to show us an updated trailer for Half-Life 2: Episode 2. There are some new images of a strider and smaller walker-like enemies decimating a group of human fighters in the forest. Otherwise, this is pretty much the same trailer we saw at the end of Episode 1.

Newell talks about getting players out of City 17 in the next episode (duh), as well as giving them new weapons and new enemies to use them against. Looks like the Source engine will be getting a lot of upgrades in Ep 2. A "cinematic physics" system is coming from former Weta Digital employee Gray Horsfield, along with new particle systems, better foliage, and more.

2:34 Newell's gone on to discuss the episodic-gaming business model. Short version: Valve likes it. It will even let them explore new types of gameplay in a new upcoming game called Portal (which seems to be a working title). It looks like they took the portal concept from Prey and slapped it on a gun--you can shoot them into walls and floors to solve all kinds of crazy puzzles, teleporting objects around and stuff. Looks like a total mindbender.

TEAM FORTRESS 2. WHERE DID THIS COME FROM? Hey, they're still making it! It's got a totally exaggerated, crazy art style now. Looks a little like Spy vs. Spy or No One Lives Forever, kind of a '60s spy feel. It's going to be the included multiplayer mode in Episode 2! Class-based, etc. You know the drill. Great news for shooter fans. We all thought this game was dead years ago.

And hey, Half-Life 2: Ep 2 wlil ship for Xbox 360 and PS3 simultaneously with the PC. The console games will basically include all of the HL2 back content, so you'll get everything on there that you can get on the PC. Who expected all this Valve news?

2:43 Steve Gray is now on, showing off the first concept art and now the first trailer from LOTR: The White Council. Looks like it's set before Bilbo finds the One Ring (i.e. before The Hobbit). Art style and even all the characters' likenesses are of course straight out of the movies, and there's new voiceover from Ian McKellen, Hugo Weaving and Cate Blanchett. Now Christopher Lee, too. Hard to say if any of this stuff is real-time, but they obviously want to immerse you in the lore of Middle-earth.

Okay, Gray says the impressive visuals in the trailer are the target for their final graphics, so we'll see how it shapes up.

2:48 Everybody's favorite Fight Night dude Kudo Tsunoda is here talking about stuff we can't tell you about right now. Sorry!

2:54 Yeah, I'm sure you'll hear about that soon enough. Now EA Tiburon's Dale Jackson appears to talk Madden. First up is 360 07, with a trailer showing off the new Superstar: Hall of Fame mode (more info on that coming soon). New gameplay camera perspectives in this mode and more. Our intrepid sports reporter will bring you all the dirt on this stuff later today.

Now Jason Armenise from EA Canada is up for Madden on the Wii. The Wii seems to have this uncanny ability to make you care about genres you don't even usually play, just to see how they've mapped existing concepts onto that wacky controller. There's a live demo with the controller and nunchuck, showing off the pointer-style "free-motion control." You can even use the nunchuck to juke and the remote to stiff-arm, or raise them both up to pump up the crowd. Lots of interesting ideas going into the control scheme here, looks like.

For whoever asked in the comments, from what I understood the console versions of HL2: Episode 2 will contain all things Half-Life 2, including CS: Source, Team Fortress 2 and Portal. Will amend that info if anything changes.

3:04 Tiger Woods, SSX, NFS Carbon, Godfather--all coming for the Wii. All featuring Wii-specific control features. EA seems committed.

Next up is EAC's Brent Nielsen, talking about NBA LIVE 07's new ESPN integration (EA has an exclusive deal with the sports network, you may have heard). Tons of ESPN content will be available in the game from the Internet. Again, more info coming from our sports guy real soon.

3:14 Finally, Larry LaPierre is onstage to show off Need for Speed: Carbon in a tense-looking nighttime canyon race. Don't forget to check out our recent coverage of Carbon for more info on this stuff.

The cusotmization features look wild in this. You can deform geometry in subtle ways all over the body of the car, the spoiler, hubcaps, everything. It's really impressive how distinctive they've managed to keep these NFS games, considering how fast they crank 'em out.

Now we're getting a fairly early look at a playable PS3 version of the game. Definitely looks good--right around the level of the 360 one they just showed.

3:19 Jeff Brown's back on stage to wrap up the presentation. I gotta say, way more exciting stuff came out of this thing than I expected (especially thanks to Valve--go figure). We're off to go play a bunch of games now and will bring you hands-on reports ASAP. And don't forget to watch On the Spot live at 4pm PDT for a look at a some of the games EA has on the way.

http://www.gamespot.com/news/6153984.html

lestat · Post by **lestat** » 14 Jul 2006 10:01 am

Sounds great except i want Ep3 included as well.

TF2 and hackerstrike source could be great on live too.

Ben · Post by **Ben** » 14 Jul 2006 10:05 am

That's pretty cool

I was almost going to pick up Half-Life 2 for the Xbox to play on my 360 since EB had it out for 60% off the marked retail price.. I'm glad it's coming out specifically for the 360 now though!

mxlegend99 · Post by **mxlegend99** » 14 Jul 2006 10:33 am

If this has KB + Mouse support, i won't bother with HL2 on PC anymore. Please support it... 360 has USB, and the keyboard works in the dash. It would be stupid not to. If PS3 version has it (and 360 doesn't)... that's enough for me to buy a PS3 the day this releases.

Ben · Post by **Ben** » 14 Jul 2006 10:45 am

KBAM support isn't so much of a worry for me, I've happily been playing console FPS longer than I have PC FPS and I find the controller very easy to use.

Southpaw mod controller now in tow (cheers Gen Chaos!) I don't even need to worry about the risk of no southpaw

GreyWizzard · Post by **GreyWizzard** » 14 Jul 2006 10:49 am

as long as there is source deathmatch I will be happy. God I could play that all day if my PC wasn't prone to reset.

General Chaos · Post by **General Chaos** » 14 Jul 2006 12:06 pm

Mutherfucking Teamfortress 2!!! GOTY -FACT! LOCKED. PREY AM GONEBURGER!

I'll pay up for HL Sea Saw puzzler 2 just for that alone.

Pat · Post by **Pat** » 14 Jul 2006 12:37 pm

I was thinking about picking up HL2 on XBox this week since it's 360-compatible. Not anymore. Let's hope it ships with multiplayer modes.

mxlegend99 · Post by **mxlegend99** » 14 Jul 2006 12:56 pm

It'll surely have either HL2:DM or CS:S if not both.

Ambrose Burnside · Post by **Ambrose Burnside** » 14 Jul 2006 02:46 pm

TEAM FORTRESS 2!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

TFC >>>>>>>>>>>>>>> CS + CS: Source

General Chaos · Post by **General Chaos** » 14 Jul 2006 02:51 pm

-FACT!

Now if they shaft the console versions out of TF2 my long delayed PC upgrade may finally happen.

skinner · Post by **skinner** » 14 Jul 2006 03:42 pm

Whoah! I nearly picked up HL2 for Xbox, but this is the shit! TF2 oh hell yes.

MiNiStRy · Post by **MiNiStRy** » 14 Jul 2006 04:22 pm

Excellent news, i look forward to playing them all again on 360.

Ambrose Burnside · Post by **Ambrose Burnside** » 15 Jul 2006 10:29 am

mech · Post by **mech** » 15 Jul 2006 11:32 am

w t f

ebe · Post by **ebe** » 15 Jul 2006 11:33 am

Aww crap.
I feel kinda bad for the guys at Fortress Forever now. They started that ages ago because nothing was being done with TF2, and now all that work is essentially for nothing.

The direction FF was taking was really exciting. I guess with the more cartoony look TF2's gone for, the 2 may be able to co-exist? Who knows.

luro · Post by **luro** » 15 Jul 2006 01:37 pm

i'd be interested in picking up HL2+ for Xbox 360 just for the fun of playing it on teh big screen + 5.1

i'm not familiar with team fortress, what's the skinny there ?

Muzza · Post by **Muzza** » 15 Jul 2006 02:04 pm

Yep that pic by Ambrose looks like thats the way TF2 will look.

A few internet sites are reporting that it will be Cell-shaded!

selfish · Post by **selfish** » 15 Jul 2006 02:22 pm

i reckon the new look is bloody awesome, especially if it's animated well.

Ambrose Burnside · Post by **Ambrose Burnside** » 15 Jul 2006 02:25 pm

luro wrote:i'd be interested in picking up HL2+ for Xbox 360 just for the fun of playing it on teh big screen + 5.1

i'm not familiar with team fortress, what's the skinny there ?

Team based gameplay.

Various classes (from left to right in the picture above you can see Pyro, Engineer, Sniper, Spy, Heavy Weapons Guy, Demolitions, Medic, Scout and Soldier). Obviously each class has different stats, weapons and abilities.

Different modes, most based around capture the flag but there is also Assassination maps where a team of Soldiers and Heavy Weapons Guys have to defend an umbrella-wielding Civilian against a team of Snipers.

Exaggerated physics - can't wait to see what the Source engine can do here!

It was originally a Quake mod that was ported to the Half-Life engine as Team Fortress Classic. It was designed and developed by Australians, too!

Wikipedia article on TFC

It's awesome. It craps all over CounterStrike.

The new graphical style suits the gameplay imo.

ebe · Post by **ebe** » 15 Jul 2006 04:16 pm

The original TF mod for Quake was an instant classic. Many hours spent playing that on a Friday night in the uni computer labs

TFC wasn't quite as awesome to me. Still hella fun but lacking a little something I could never quite put my finger on. Don't think it was quite as fast-paced.

I had high hopes for FF from the minute I heard about it. Now I'll be interested to see how both that and TF2 pan out.

And yeah, craps all over CS for a fun team-based FPS.

I'll also be interested to see how they go getting Natural Selection up and running on Source, although that's not of much importance to anyone looking at the console ports.

cloud · Post by **cloud** » 15 Jul 2006 06:32 pm

I never got to play HL2 so this is some good news

mxlegend99 · Post by **mxlegend99** » 15 Jul 2006 10:18 pm

Any idea when Episode 2 is due for release? I'm looking forward to getting this on my Xbox 360. TF2 looks fucking hot. Valve with some awesome artstyle to make it really unique.

Mmmm hope they come good as they did in the early Half-Life days. Half-Life 2 was great. Counter-Strike Source was fun. Episode 1 i've yet to play, but read a lot of good shit about. So i look forward to this all in one package... finally a game worth the $119.95 price tag.

mxlegend99 · Post by **mxlegend99** » 19 Jul 2006 08:27 am

http://youtube.com/watch?v=GWzmL05OlYA

Valve Portal Trailer. Fucking awesome!!! That shit is innovation!

Valve > *

edit
http://www.xboxyde.com/news_3186_en.html
Can download a 720p version from there.

GreyWizzard · Post by **GreyWizzard** » 19 Jul 2006 09:56 am

meh... it will be fun for about 2 levels. Mostly people will just sandpit the game, then get bored quickly.