Valve's got a new game in the works, and it's quite the mind-bender. Portal is a puzzle/FPS hybrid that will utilize holes in space to do the impossible. From the Ars Technica post: "That video makes my brain hurt in all the right ways. The set up and voice-over are both hilarious, and at first it seemed rudimentary to me. Then everything goes crazy and you start to realize just how much you can do with this technology. I'm looking forward to seeing fan-made videos hit the 'Net with all the insane stunts and tricks you can pull off. This seems to be one of those games that you'll have as much fun playing with the game as you do simply playing through it." This is a title definitely worth checking out for yourself.

Wowzer writes "Valve's Gabe Newell revealed at EA's annual summer press event that Half-Life 2 will be coming to the Xbox 360 and PS3. It will include all extra content released on the PC and a new puzzle/fps game mode where you blast Prey-like portals into floors and walls. If that wasn't enough, Team Fortress 2 showed up in cartoon-style. From the article: 'The console versions will include: Half-Life 2, Half-Life 2: Episode One, Half-Life 2: Episode Two, Half-Life 2: Portal, and Team Fortress 2. The latter and possibly both will also be included in Half-Life 2: Episode Two on the PC.' Release TBD, but it's in 2006 alongside the PC's Half-Life 2: Episode Two."

All this week, 1up has been running an extended feature on Call of Duty 3. Despite the sometimes tired WWII genre, the CoD series has managed to keep things fairly fresh in their continued exploration of the FPS' greatest war. Articles include details on the making of the game, a look back at past installments in the series, and a discussion with Creative Director Richard Farrelly on the jump to next-gen consoles.

OpenFrag was founded in May 2003 and aims to create an open source first person shooter with commercial grade quality. All participants are volunteers and use some of their spare time to help in the development process. The project was recently featured last month at the Finnish game exhibition XPlay 2006. Some of the project's textures have also been featured in the news at BlenderNation, it looks as if there is a promising future for these developers.

cyclomedia writes "Late on 22nd June 1996 Quake was uploaded to cdrom.com's archives in the form of 7 1.44MB floppy disk images. Though it wasn't until the 23rd that everyone realised (or at least, that's my excuse for being a day late with the news submission). Cue much aggravation on the newsgroups as eager downloaders experienced glorious 2 FPS gameplay."

Jack Lancer writes "Gameworld Network (which is either a network of gameworlds or a gameworld of networks) has posted an epic collection of streaming E3 videos which clearly depicts each and every playable Wii game and how exactly one has to swing, wave, shake, point, wiggle and/or jostle the Wiimote in order to play." And once again this poses the question — is this the future of gaming UI? Sure seems like a great idea for a FPS.

WeAz writes "GameSpot has news that 3D Realms has no plans on rushing Duke Nukem Forever. Despite the $500,000 bounty that Take-Two Interactive was found to be offering for the game after a filing with the SEC last week, George Broussard, President of 3D Realms, has given his official response: 'We're certainly not motivated by that amount of money, after all this time, and getting the game right is what matters. I would never ship a game early (even a couple of months), for 500k.'"

wjamesau writes "How do you create a game in Second Life that earns you thousands of dollars and scores you development deals with outside publishers? One SL user did just that last year with a casual game called Tringo (sort of multiplayer Tetris with gambling). The game became so popular in Second Life that he sold the rights for a Web version, a GBA port from Crave, and coming up, a TV game show. While there's dozens of other games in Second Life, from FPS to RTS to a mini-MMORPG, none of them have come close to Tringo's success. Kotaku is running an article I've written, based on three years helping Linden Lab organize and run the annual Second Life game developer contest: a how-to guide for creating the next Tringo-big hit."

Half-Life 2 was worth the wait. Great story, beautiful graphics, and inventive gameplay made the game a worthy successor to Valve's 1998 classic. Last week gamers were finally allowed access to the next part of the story. Half-Life 2: Episode One is a fast-paced and entirely worthwhile continuation of Gordon Freeman's tale. It also raises some really good questions about the very idea of charging for small chunks of content. Read on for my review of this $20 experience, and a few comments on the episodic content debate.

Along with pale imitations, it seems the destiny of genre-defining games to provoke a reversal in design decisions. The success of 3D platformers has lead to a renaissance in 2D gaming, World of Warcraft has pushed online game designers away from the fantasy genre, and Half-Life 2 has prompted a lot of story-light brainless shooters. It's this last genre that houses SiN Episodes: Emergence. A traditional run and gun First Person Shooter (FPS), SiN is a blood-soaked five hour jaunt you can download from Steam for about twenty bucks. At that price and that length, this Aeon Fluxian gorefest may just be a happy start for the age of episodic content. Read on for my impressions of a good-looking throwback that proves you don't need millions of dollars to make a fun title.

The 360 is playing host to some non-traditional titles in the near future. Huxley is an MMO, one of the first on the console, and combines MMORPG elements with FPS shooting. From Gamespot's Huxley hands-on: "We saw a residential area that has room for 5,000 players, and told that you'll be able to purchase your own housing in the game." Meanwhile, Mass Effect is Bioware's next great opus, an RPG with energy weapons. From 1up's Mass Effect hands-on: "Everything for the E3 demo was in-engine, and the graphics are impressive. The dialogue scenes revealed characters with lifelike eye movements that conveyed real emotion. Excellent voice acting, distinctive music, and a beautifully formed world with rich, detailed environments show real promise."

Jay Cruise writes "The world's first 3D gaming mouse was unveiled at the 2006 E3 Expo. The Game O' 3D gaming mouse offers PC gamers an 'unfair advantage' by allowing them to execute moves that are not possible using just a keyboard and a traditional 2D mouse. For example, in FPS, Game O' offers gamers a way to move forward, backwards, sideways, jump, crouch, pitch, yaw and roll without using the keyboard." For a more cynical opinion, I submit to you Ars Technica's take on the device. From that piece: "Your head just explodes. It's a terrible thing, and the nub on the side for some reason randomly makes you crouch. The man showing me the product was quick to add that you could set up the controls however you wanted. The software to do this even looked nice. This doesn't help the fact that playing a first person shooter with one hand is a bad idea. You'd still need a hand free to like, you know, reload? You could probably use those buttons, but in the demo they were set to look up and down. What if you're playing a game where you can peek around corners? You simply need the keyboard."

adamp writes "Shadowrun has officially been confirmed as a squad-based FPS for the PC and Xbox 360. From the look of the trailer released at Microsoft's Press event yesterday, it's not the game we know and love. Fasa Interactive has decided to rewrite the universe in an attempt to not make anyone angry. It's currently not working."

At last year's GDC Nintendo President Iwata made the claim that the company was reaching out to everyone, in an attempt to expand the gaming market. They were planning to appeal to hardcore gamers, folks who used to play games, and folks who have never played a game in their lives. At the time, it sounded like a tag line. Today, I have impressions from three titles which suggest they've got what it takes to make us all into gamers. Hardcore players can sink their teeth into Metroid Prime Hunters, and have one of the most intuitive FPS experiences ever to come to a console. Folks looking for some nostalgia can enjoy Tetris DS, blockstacking like it's 1985. Even your grandmother can try Brain Age, proving to her bridge club that even though her license says she's 80 she's got the brain of a 20 year old. Read on for my impressions of three titles that give powerful evidence to support Iwata's grand claim.

Gamasutra reports on an update to one of the longest running jokes in the games industry, Duke Nukem Forever. The title, already ten years in development, may (possibly) see release this decade. From the blurb: "3DR's George Broussard also demonstrated world interactivity that includes Duke standing in front of a computer and emailing the player, if he provides his email address for the game. But, according to the piece, Broussard was bashful, overall, about showing off the game, commenting: 'The problem is that when we show it, people are going to be like, Yeah, whatever. Honestly, at this point we just want to finish it.'"

rafemonkey writes "Looks like the first hard info on a revolution game has hit the internet. The game, from Ubisoft, is called Red Steel. It's a FPS where the Revo's positional controller takes the place of the mouse. And, for those of you that were worried, the graphics look nice." PointlessWasteofTime points out that it doesn't actually look like an FPS, but more of a GunCon title, in a piece called A FanBoy Intervention. Elite Bastards has a brief history of the Revolution console. From the Waste of Time article: "Look at the Red Steel screens again. Never mind that Ubisoft has a habit of publishing concept renders and claiming they're in-game screenshots, and never mind that shots like that in magazines tend to have usually been 'touched up' a bit. Just look at the screens, then look at the inset photos of the people pointing and shooting with their Rev controllers: Guys... it's just a freaking light gun game. Tell me it's not. This isn't a badass 'Halo killer.' It's next-gen Duck Hunt."

1up has taken several of the more popular recent PC titles to Apple Boot Camp, and report back on how they handle the MacBook Pro hardware. From the article: "With all settings on medium, F.E.A.R. is absolutely playable. Again, none of the silky-smooth 60 fps that hardware freaks clamor for, but it looks good and plays well even with tons of characters onscreen. Annoyingly, F.E.A.R. offers a really pitiful selection of resolutions, all of which are constrained to the old-fashioned 4:3 aspect ratio -- meaning that play on the MacBook's widescreen is stretched, and kind of ugly. That's not a hardware issue so much as limited programming, and presumably anyone with a widescreen PC is in the same pickle."

Gary Mullins writes "GameApex has a nice article up meant to inform other gamers about the presence of cheating in online games. The article covers the types of cheats to be aware of, the type of person the average cheater is, and even includes plenty of information from anti-cheat experts from PunksBusted, United Admins, and The Cheat Police." From the article: "If recording a demo is not an option then you can always use screenshots. While these are not as effective they do work. Once reviewed by you, if you do suspect the player is cheating, forward the information to the server admin. This information is always in the listing of the server or even in scrolling messages on the server in-game. Speaking as someone who has been a server admin, when you have a player who you suspect is too good to be true make sure you check them out before immediately kick or ban them. Sometimes it is better to err on the side of caution and presume the player is skilled, than to assume they are cheating. If they really are cheating it will be proven sooner or later anyway."

In San Jose, the first big keynote finished up delivery about twenty minutes ago. Phil Harrison from Sony laid out some of the future plans the company has for the games industry on the whole. The PS3 featured heavily, of course, but new announcements centered on the PlayStation Network and online functionality. Read on for my take on Sony's chance on the big stage, here at the Game Developer's Conference 2006. Update: 03/22 21:57 GMT by Z : Fixed some typos. I was typing fast and was already late for the Ron Moore Keynote. Additional views on the event can be seen at the Wonderland blog and Joystiq, with Kotaku offering impressions from the Q&A that followed.

Console First-Person Shooters have come a long way in the last few years. While titles like Resident Evil 4 and FarCry Instincts were moving the genre forward for gamers with joypads, Criterion Games was working on the FPS title simply called Black. Touted as 'gun porn', the game offers a fully destructible world where every bullet's trajectory is a story of its own. While such precision is laudable, the focus on the game's physics and mechanical feel has resulted in mediocrity elsewhere in the title. Read on for my impression of the good and the blah in Criterion's Black.