Celebrityscraps

So unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last 6 months you’ll know that Valve are just over a month away from releasing their new smash hit “Left 4 Dead“.

It’s based on the standard genre Zombie film where you control a band of survivors fighting their way thru a load of zombies!

It uses Valve’s “awesome” source engine which powered gems like Half-life 2 and Team Fortress 2 so it’s obviously going to be a treat for gameplay…but…. here’s the most excellent and new twist that Valve have added to the gameplay experience…. THE A.I. DIRECTOR!

Now you maybe asking…. “WTF is the A.I. Director???” …. I’ll tell you!!!!

The A.I. Director generates a unique experience each time the game is played. Like in hollywood films the “A.I. Director” will call for new monsters, sounds, actions etc….  both a combination of the team’s performance and random event. This dynamic system for game dramatics, pacing, and difficulty is truly awesome. The A.I. Director also creates mood and tension with emotional cues such as visual effects, dynamic music and character communication. Thus it creates a completely different experience each time it’s played.

There’s also an alternate game mode where human players can control up to four mutated “Boss Infected” with special abilities and cooperate to stop the Survivor players.

Left 4 Dead is now available for Pre-Purchase on Steam’s online store with a 10% discount!

I got mine today… go get yours now!!!

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So anyone who is a fan of software centralization will agree with me on this one… STEAM ROCKS.

For any of you who don’t know Steam is a digital distribution, digital rights management, multiplayer and communications platform developed by Valve Corporation who are the awesome brains behind the best gaming experience in the world…. the Half-life series.

Steam is used to distribute and manage (sometimes exclusively) a wide range of games and related media entirely over the Internet, stretching from one-man independent efforts to some of the world’s most popular games. Steam is set apart from its peers in terms of functionality primarily by its residency in the system tray, and the desktop tasks that the client software performs.

As of 2008-10-01, over 450 games are available on Steam, and as of 2008-10-10, there are over 16 million active user accounts.

The Steam Community also allows you to keep track of when your friends are on-line, what they are playing and (if it’s an online game) which server they are on. I’ve been an advocate of Steam for many years now but it only just recently struck me how useful it is.

I’d just bought a new laptop. I installed Steam and then left it to do its thing. 4 hours later Steam had installed over 70% o the games I had on my old PC. AWESOME!

Of course this type of software centralisation is not to everyones taste as the on-line store takes away the physical aspect of buying a game. I have no issue with this, but people like my housemate (who i have debated this with a lot) like the feeling of buying a game… getting home and opening the box and reading the manual while it installs… and i can see where he’s coming from.. however i value software centralisation as a better solution as you never have to worry about losing a game CD/DVD or losing the manual which has the game activation key in it.

Bottom line - Steam is a very versitile tool and I’ll definatly continue using it in the future.

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