Half Life mod Black Mesa finally coming out?

News from Kotaku that’s sure to make fans of Valve’s crown jewel game Half Life happy: the renewal/modification known as Black Mesa will finally be available to fans in just over a week. Black Mesa is essentially Half Life recreated with modern graphics and the latest version of Source, the engine that powers such favorites as the Left 4 Dead franchise and Team Fortress.

One caveat, unfortunately; Black Mesa is still in beta and the version being released soon isn’t complete, but after the multi-year wait for this mod to come out I’ll opt for a partial game over more waiting.

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Summer games sale going on now at Steam

Mac Life announced a huge sale going on now at my favorite game source, Steam. For the uninitiated, Steam is essentially an iTunes for gaming- the free downloadable client acts as a multi-OS store (even supporting Linux), library, and social platform with other gaming enthusiasts. Whether you’re a hard core gamer or just an occasional casual game player, they have something to suit your tastes. 

The current sale has some fantastic offerings: Valve‘s Orange Box collection has been marked down to just $9.99. This includes Half Life 2, all following episodes, and Portal- some of the best First Person games ever made. Other favorites like Psychonauts, Portal 2, and Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas have been marked down to ridiculously low prices. If you haven’t enjoyed some of these classics now is the time!

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Quake 4 coming to Mac App Store

MacRumors has reported that the latest rendition of the serial game Quake (first introduced to OSX in 2006) is coming to the Mac App Store at the lowered price of $19.99.
While I’ve confined my game buying to Steam, competition is always a good thing. The OSX App Store matches two of Steam’s advantages as a vendor- updates and fixes are automatically pushed out to clients, and new titles are at your fingertips providing immediate gratification. With the addition of an OSX-centered version of iOS’ Game Center Apple with be able to compete with the social aspect of Steam’s client as well.

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Apple CEO Tim Cook’s visit to video game firm sparks rumors

The blogosphere is buzzing over a report that Apple’s CEO recently paid a visit to Valve, the video game firm that brought us two of the best games I’ve ever played- the Half Life series and the Left 4 Dead series as well as Steam, a distribution platform that’s been harkened an iTunes for PC gaming. On a personal note, Valve porting the Steam platform to OSX was the final deciding factor for me to abandon Windows and switch to an iMac for my desktop; if you’re a gamer of any degree you need the Steam client.

Rumors of the purpose of the visit abound, from the possibility of Apple participating in the development of new gaming hardware featured in a new Apple TV, to a project focusing on wearable computers to counter Google’s Project Glass eyewear. I’d even love to see this as an overture to bring a whole new line of games and development to iOS; Steam has an iOS app but it’s used only to access the Steam community (a games-only social platform) and the Steam store.

Casual gaming has been big from day one on the iPad, and more involved games have been cropping up over the past year (such as the recently announced addition of Max Payne). Whatever the purpose of Mr. Cook’s visit, I’m excited over the future of gaming in iOS.

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