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.

It's March, and that means that Women's History Month has rolled around again. The latest event put on by 'Women in Games International' was held in February; Both Wired and Gamasutra have rundowns on the event. Wired's coverage highlights the two camps of female gamers, the 'Frag Dolls' and the 'Casual Gamers' that populated the event. Gamasutra's piece discusses the exploration of women in all gamer roles. That, indeed, was the focus of the event: Women as players, designers, and gamers. From that article: "Margaret Wallace (Skunk Studios), also on the panel, railed against the industry for disenfranchising women. 'There's a push against women gamers from within the game industry,' she said. Games have been made 'with puke-humor' thought to be edgy, she said, wondering why developers don't see the direct correlation between the 'sophomoric' humor put into the games and women not liking them. 'They treat women as a mysterious nut to crack.' Wallace's advice: 'Make a game mechanic accessible.'" GameSetWatch also a blog post linking to some advice for female FPS players, especially 'aggressive young girls'.

Gamasutra has a piece looking at the good news in digital distribution. Getting games to consumers with bits, rather than boxes, seems to ensure that we'll have a wider variety of titles to choose from in the future. The path looks at indie title Red Orchestra on its path to our desktops. From the article: "Of course, with a digital distribution deal, there is usually no big marketing push from the distributor like there is with a big publisher. But, through Steam we would be selling into the hardcore FPS gamer market. And as a result of the Valve deal, Red Orchestra got solid editorial exposure in major PC game publications, including two page 'preview' articles in PC Gamer US and UK."

If you look down the line, into the future of Xbox 360 titles, you see some pretty complicated games coming our way. The likes of Elder Scrolls IV and Mistwalker Studios' Lost Odyssey and Blue Dragon are designed to change gamer perceptions of Microsoft's console. Out of the gate, though, Xbox 360 titles have fallen back on the themes that made the original Xbox so popular: sports, FPS games, and racing. The Xbox already has two popular racing franchises to its name. The exclusive Forza Motorsports is a powerful sim, while the multiplatform Burnout series finds its shiniest home on the Xbox. Full Auto, by developer Pseudo Interactive, tries very hard to interest the 360 owner with a brand new way to race. Strapping weapons to cars can only lead to good things, right? Unfortunately this modern title, in the vein of SJ Games classic Car Wars, fails to do much more than explode prettily in the interested gamer's face. Read on for my impressions of this disappointing title.

The history of videogames is a subject that has been remarkably well documented. From Pong to the launch titles of the 360, games have always had historians. Now that gaming is taking its place beside movies and music as a recognized art form, new players have to be informed of the hobby's past. Smartbomb: The Quest for Art, Entertainment, and Big Bucks in the Videogame Revolution tells the tale of modern gaming's formation via the personal stories of the people who make them. It's a well-considered look at the early days and recent history of interactive entertainment. Read on for my impressions of a book with not only a sense of history, but a handle on what's fun.

jayintune writes "An article from an editor at 2old2play.com looks at the diverse 'voices' that people use online for the different genres of games, and how they differ from each other. It is a nice guide of etiquette for people moving from one genre to another. What you might say in WoW often differs from what you would hear in CS: Source." From the article: "Many online racing gamers take things very seriously. You may find your XBL reputation drops like a squirrel shot with a horse tranquilizer if you speak as though you're playing an FPS. Racing gamers do such things as apologize, notify a racer when they're coming up for a pass (and usually give a direction), complement you on your racing prowess when you pull off a slight win over them, and typically end a game with "nice game guys." "

IGN has a look at some of the many high-profile First-Person Shooter titles slated for this year. From the article: "At any rate, as we near the realm of photorealism some fifteen years later, brave and storied heroes like id Software, Epic Games, Valve, and DICE continue to evolve the genre with things like voice communication, fancy lighting, and flying limbs. So today we bring to you our list of the upcoming shooters of 2006 whether they make us giggle like little girls or not. Some of these are expansions, some of them are fever dreams of the future, and others simply games we know are gunning for 2006." Appropriate, then, that Gamespot just released another 'Greatest Game' article this week. Doom certainly deserves the spot they give it.

beastiecube wrote to mention a GameDaily article going into detail about some accomplished European game developers. American and Japanese companies seem to get most of the press, but there are several development houses in the EU that are producing solid work. From the article: "Criterion is certainly no stranger to never before seen products. Its critically acclaimed Burnout series introduced us to the most terrifyingly amazing crashes ever seen in videogames, and it's looking to spice up the shooting genre with Black, a highly intense FPS where the guns are the stars. Most of them are nothing new, because after all, you see one AK-47, you've seen them all, but unlike in most games, Black's weapons are extremely loud and in your face. But what's even cooler than the hot assortment of deadly toys is the environmental interaction."

Eurogamer reports that Sony Online is moving Planetside to a free play for a year deal, somewhat similar to the Anarchy Online pricing scheme. From the article: "Access to the massively multiplayer FPS will be limited in terms of BattleRank and CommandRank. 'Essentially, new players will be able to have access to any part of the game but they will be limited on the diversity of their arsenal,' said developer Enrico Pallazzo in a recent forum post outlining various new additions to the game." Limited free play in an environment with ads. I guess I'm glad they're trying new options.