Half-Life : Brown Edition
Valve spend three months turning Half-Life into Quakeworld. Oh dear.
Way back in 1998 Valve released their critically acclaimed first person shooter Half-Life, and they've been re-releasing it every six months since then in various bundles. We've had the Platinum Edition, the Game Of The Year Edition, Half-Life Generations, Counter-Strike, and soon we'll be enjoying the dubious pleasures of Half Life : Blue Shift. You certainly can't fault them for their continuing support of the game, and it's no doubt contributed to the on-going success of Half-Life. But at the moment Valve are working on a new single player version of Counter-Strike called Condition Zero, while the main team's work on Team Fortress 2 is still a long way from completion, and any possible Half-Life sequel is apparently little more than a glimmer in the milkman's eye at this stage.
The latest addition to the Half-Life pantheon is downright bizarre, with GameSpy reporting that Valve are about to release three new multiplayer mods for Half-Life, including one which turns the three year old Half-Life into the five year old Quakeworld. Yes, a team at Valve has spent the last three months developing Deathmatch Classic, which recreates all of the weapons and maps from Quake deathmatch for Half-Life. Although the graphics are somewhat sharper than in Quake and the textures have all been redesigned from scratch, the result is, as you might imagine, decidely .. brown. With bits of grey. The sight of Gordon Freeman and pals running around this murky world in their bright orange encounter suits is truly one to behold.
"I think people are going to be surprised when they boot this up", Valve's Doug Lombardi told GameSpy. Well, that's one way of putting it. What a senseless waste of talent...