Crossovers in the world of gaming seems fairly common now, what with Sackboy having tons of costumes of popular video game characters and Commander Video and Tim scheduled to make an appearance in Super Meat Boy later this summer. So it makes sense that the guys of  Sam & Max and Team Fortress 2 would team up to.. wait, what?

That’s right, folks. From now until April 23rd, if you pre-order Sam & Max’s latest adventure, The Devil’s Playhouse, you’ll get three items to spruce up your gameplay in Team Fortress 2. The first of these is a purely cosmetic severed Max head hat, but the latter two are both both functional weapons you will be able to use in the game.

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Over the weekend word got out that the upcoming DLC for Left 4 Dead 2, dubbed ‘The Passing,’ will not make its original release date of “late March.”

While this is disappointing news, gamers will be pleased to know that the DLC will only cost 560 Microsoft Points ($7) on the Xbox 360. Not a bad price considering the content the expansion adds: a golf club for melee, an M60 machine gun, multiple new game modes, a new ‘Fallen Survivor’ special infected and a ‘Witch Bride.’ Read more… »

Late last night Valve announced that it has updated Team Fortress 2 to now allow user made items.

Since that announcement, people have already been finding all kinds of new items including: new outfits for every class, new melee weapons for the Demoman, soldier and Pyro, and a new snack for the Heavy. Read more… »

Today Epic Games announced that it has teamed up with Valve Software to help integrate Valve’s free Steamworks tools into all Unreal Engine 3 licensees.

This means that in the future games that use the Unreal Engine 3, like Batman: Arkham Asylum and BioShock, will be able to utilize some of the features that make Steam so great. These include auto-updating, social networking, matchmaking and a non intrusive DRM (and we all know how important that is). Read more… »

The Team Fortress 2 WAR update has been the largest update to TF2 yet, with both the Demoman and the Soldier receiving new unlocks and a bloody war in which to participate, not to mention the massive community contributions that went into making the WAR update a successful one.

In addition to updating the game, Valve ran a propaganda contest for the artists of the community to submit their best works. After receiving a whopping 11,000 entries, the team finally had a chance to go through them and pick out the cream of the crop. While the winners have already been announced, the runners up show just how hard a decision the TF2 team had when it came to picking out just three.

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Today developer Valve released some details about its Steam service, specifically pertaining to how its user base grew in 2009.

According to Valve Steam now has over 25 million active accounts, a 25% increase from 2008. Another note worthy statistic is that software sales on Steam increased by over 205% during 2009, “marking the fifth straight year the platform has realized over 100% year-over-year growth in unit sales.”  Read more… »

Well as you can probably tell there was a positive reaction to my first L4D2 scavenge guide, so I figured I better make good on my promise and get going on Part II. If you happened to miss out on Part 1 of my guide, click here.

While my last guide focused on helpful, general tips for beginners, this guide will go slightly more in depth with map specific strategies for three of the most popular maps (Dead Center, Dark Carnival, and The Parish) and more advanced tips and tricks. Like the previous guide, I’ve split this one into three sections: Survivor tips, Infected tips, and map guides. Read more… »

Well, those people who still maintain that Left 4 Dead 2 is an expansion are about to be really confused, as Valve today announced the first of its DLC add-ons for the popular zombie apocalypse simulator.

The ironic part? It’s expanding by looking backward, tapping the four survivors from the first game for encore appearances.

But that’s not all–not by a long shot. Check out the rest of the post below to get the gory details.

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For those who live and die by Team Fortress 2, there’s something new to get excited about.  As you all know, Valve has been continually releasing small updates and patches for the game that has prolonged the lifespan for much longer than anyone would have imagined.

Well, those crazy tech-savvy geniuses have given us something new to get excited about: crafting abilities.  That’s right, now you can turn useless weapons and excessive hardhats into scrapping metal.  Read on for more information. Read more… »

Today developer Valve proudly announced that its zombie slaying shooter Left 4 Dead 2 has sold “over 2 million retail copies” since its November 17 release.

The announcement that Valve sent out today reads, “[Left 4 Dead 2] appears to be on target to become one of the top selling Xbox [360] and PC titles for the month of November.” The developer added “sales to date are more than double the original [Left 4 Dead]” and that L4D2 has “already been played by over 1 million Xbox LIVE Gold account holders.” The announcement ends with “news regarding L4D2 DLC 1 is coming very soon.” Read more… »

In the history of gaming, developing quality AI partners has always been a tremendous challenge.  While very few dev companies can pull off the miracle, many fail utterly.  And no matter how grand Valve’s latest title may seem, it suffers from incompetent AI as well.

Since Left 4 Dead 2 focuses on multiplayer, we can never get too upset toward dumb AI.  In fact, the only people to blame is yourself for playing single-player in the first place.  Nonetheless, this is quite hilarious and should be seen by everyone. Read more… »

It seems that Modern Warfare 2 can’t keep away from controversy. At first it was the lack of dedicated servers. This was followed by the controversial “Fight Against Grenade Spam” video. Then there was the leaked scene where you can kill civilians. Now digital distributors Direct2Drive, GamersGate, and Impulse are refusing to carry the game.

Why? Apparently these distributors aren’t fans of Steam. According to a statement from Direct2Drive, “We believe strongly that when you buy a game from us, you shouldn’t be forced to install and run a 3rd party software client to be able to play the game you purchased.” The company went on to say “We don’t believe games should force the user to install a Trojan Horse.” Read more… »