Portal was such a masterful, smashing success because it was short, sweet and… a surprise. Even Valve didn’t expect the puzzle game with personality to become such an overwhelming, cultural phenomenon. And it scares Valve a little bit that they’re not trying to recapture that success without two of those elements: Portal 2 when it hits next year will certainly not be a surprise and... 

Who lives in a pineapple under the sea? EVERYONE. MTV Asia and GigaMedia are co-developing and publishing an MMO based on cultural icon SpongeBob SquarePants. The massively multiplayer oceanic online game launches in 2011 for the markets of China, Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Southeast Asia and India. It is the first Viacom (MTV’s parent company) MMO to be developed outside the US. The free-to-play... 

The Team Fortress 2 blog has revealed the impending arrival of one of Valve’s biggest games to the Mac platform. Tomorrow, Mac-owning gamers will be able to join the Team Fortress 2 … team. Well, Valve didn’t even confirm that it is Team Fortress 2 that is being released tomorrow. Sure, it was on the Team Fortress 2 blog, and the post was topped by the above image of Team Fortress... 

  The first add-on for zombie apocalypse shooter Left 4 Dead 2 may be more expansive than Valve originally lead us to believe. A new update on the downloadable campaign “The Passing” promises new “game modes.” Buried at the bottom of an announcement about a midweek deal on the full version of Left 4 Dead 2—it’s just $24.99 USD on Steam, $33.99 USD for Xbox 360 on Amazon,... 

Well, this is nice to hear. LucasArts’ big gamble – moving development of its signature properties back to its internal teams – continues to pay off with Star Wars: The Force Unleashed. The latest figure out of the House That Luke Built for what’s already been billed as the “fastest-selling Star Wars game ever” is that Force Unleashed has “sold seven million units... 

In January, Ubisoft revealed plans to streamline its DRM policy across all PC titles, making players log in to Ubisoft servers to authenticate before playing. Although it sounded dubious at first, Ubisoft’s Brent Wilkinson assuaged our fears, explaining the new process would allow gamers to play on any computer and continue a game’s progress through a cloud-based save system. According... 

Ellis: So, this one time, me and my buddy, Keith, we saw these infected Valentine cards on the internet. And Keith was like, “Hey, we could make some money selling those.” So he got out his little sister’s box of crayons and made a couple. Then, I was like, “Keith, we ain’t gonna make no money selling five cards.” So he spent a whole year drawing, like, a thousand... 

Finally, EA understands what it is we want out of our limited edition game bundles. Some extremely loseable keychains? Nope. A cat head-sized helmet which are awesome for roughly 23 minutes, then an eyesore shortly thereafter? Nope. In-game weapons and equipment which are useful as all-get-out, which also have the benefit of not taking up space in our real-life humble abodes? Ahh, now that’s... 

Question: What’s the only thing scarier than a looming horde of normal-speed zombies? Answer: A looming horde of normal-speed zombies with robot brains. That’s the kind of nightmare we’ll soon be facing once Valve puts the finishing touches on an update for Left 4 Dead 2, which will add Infected bots to the game’s Versus mode to help balance out one-on-one games. In addition,... 

Heavy Rain has you taking control of a number of playable characters. However, the game will only put you in the shoes of the heroes tracking down the elusive “Origami Killer.” In an interview with French site gameblog.fr, game director David Cage revealed that players will be able to play as the villain in an upcoming DLC episode of the Heavy Rain Chronicles. Other episodes of the Heavy...