Valve has announced today the addition of new modes for Counterstrike Global Offensive (Counterstrike: GO).

Targeted for release via Playstation Network, Xbox Live Arcade, and Steam (for PC and Mac) in early 2012, CS: GO will expand upon the team-based action gameplay that it pioneered when it was launched 12 years ago.

Arsenal Mode is based on the popular Counter-Strike: Source mod Gun Game. “Arsenal: Arms Race” and “Arsenal: Demolition” add eight new maps and expand on the classic Counter-Strike gameplay.

Valve is working directly with creators of Gun Game to create  Arsenal Mode. “We are excited that Valve reached out and is working with us to ensure Arsenal Mode is the best version of  Gun Game.”, Michael Barr project lead of Gun Game.

“What’s the differe-.. OH MY GOD.” sums it up nicely.

With Portal being released for free for a short while, it seems a good time in these dark days of the economy to highlight some excellent free games that everybody should try. The only things these vastly varied games have in common is their price tag:

Masq

A stylish black and white ‘decision’ game, Masq creates its own genre with multiple choices and endings set around a struggling business owner. While trying to gain money for your business decide whether you want to sleep with your secretary, hide it from your wife, rob a bank, blackmail the mob and sell out your friend. While the decisions sound over the top they feel grounded with huge consequences behind every action.

5 Days a Stranger

While not as well known as the other entries on this list, 5 Days a Stranger is by no means less impressive. A classic point and click adventure game with murder, mystery and horror (And made by ‘yahtzee’ himself), this game will hook you from the beginning and make you fall in love with the point and click genre all over again.

Farmville

Love it or hate it, Farmville has been an incredible influence on the Facebook gaming scene.  Nurture and grow a variety of produce including: Cabbage, Purple Asparagus, Blueberries, Apple Trees, Rainbow Trees, Snow Cone Trees, Pigs, Ducks and Unicorns. Even if it’s not your thing, everybody should have a go at one of the most successful social networking games ever made.

AlienSwarm

An intense co-operative top down shooter, AlienSwarm exudes a level of quality rarely seen in free games. Alien Swarm is water cooler gold, with tales of sacrifice; selfishness and carnage abound in every match.  It is as close an experience you will get to playing the film Aliens before the new game is released.

Team Fortress 2

Previously a retail game, Team Fortress 2 is now free. No other game shows so much polish, tweaking and balance without carrying hefty price tag. Trading and buying loot keep its quality afloat, but they are not required to have fun in this funny and entertaining game.

That’s right, folks! Valve’s surprise hit from 2007 is free until September 20^th. And believe it or not, this is all for the sake of education. They’ve launched a website called Learn With Portals, which they’re using to encourage educators to use the physics-based puzzle adventure to advocate that the game be used in educational programs. To add a little extra push, Portal can be downloaded free of charge.

“One of the biggest challenges in teaching science, technology, engineering, and math is capturing the students’ imaginations long enough for them to see all of the possibilities that lie ahead,” the site explains. “Using interactive tools like the Portal series to draw them in makes physics, math, logic, spatial reasoning, probability, and problem solving interesting, cool, and fun, which gets us one step closer to our goal: engaged, thoughtful kids!”

For those who are unfamiliar with Portal (you poor, lost souls), the game’s storyline involves you being used as a human test candidate by a homicidal, verbally abusive and hilarious AI named GLaDOS. All tests are spatial puzzles that can only be solved with the help of the “portal gun”. The gun let players create two different doorways on surfaces that connect to one another. Your goal is to escape the testing compound using proper timing and wits.

Get it while you can! As the website promotes… be intrigued. Be engaged. Be inspired. That, or simply enjoy the deliciously dark humour of Portal and abuse the heck out of the laws of physics.

They’ve got the iconic classic Half-Life under their belt. Their recent titles FPS zombie multiplayer Left4Dead 2 and comedic puzzler Portal 2 delight critics and fans alike. And now the long-awaited DotA (Defense of the Ancients) is on it’s way. The Valve Corporation’s unflagging success makes gamers wonder what they’ll do next. Will Valve set their sights on the growing handheld market?

For those hoping for Valve on the go, there’s disappointment ahead.

“We haven’t forayed into [portable gaming],” Chet Faliszek, a Valve writer, told Kotaku. “It’s just not a space our engine has been looked at or optimized for.”

It looks like there’s no portable Counter Strike in the cards for us, yet. Don’t worry; we still have Half-Life 2: Episode 3 to dream of..

Valve has announced today support for Russian gamers with the addition of Rubles, which is the currency for Russia.

Prior to this Valve was allowing gamers to purchase titles for PC and Mac to Russian gamers with payment methods such as WebMoney, Visa, Mastercard and ClickandBuy.

“PC Gaming has always been strong in Russia, and we’re excited to help improve the experience for Steam customers.” said Jason Holtman, Director of Business Development “We’re hoping to make gamers happy over the coming months by improving their access to great games.”

We saw this whilst making the usual rounds across our favourite websites and we thought we had to share. Be sure to watch the entire video, including the ever-so soppy ending. We can assure you it presents a feeling women undergo when watching a romcom (apparently). If you follow the watch on YouTube link you can even go and play the level. We wouldn’t condone modding it further for your own romantic entanglements, for the sake of emotions everywhere.

The new FREE downloadable content for Portal 2 will be available in mid-September. This is the first DLC for Portal 2, be sure to check out our review if you are unsure if you want to pick up the game. The title is available on Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC (Steam).

[Kotaku]

With a quirky atmosphere and quite a few challenging puzzles, the first Portal took on a life of its own from The Orange box. Although the game ran its course in a few short hours, is it possible for Portal 2 to stand alone in a much longer haul? Read on to find out.

Chell thought she escaped Aperture Science’s labs in the first game by destroying the passive aggressive AI known as GLaDOS However, after waking up from an extended sleep you find yourself back in the facility. You’ll also find that GLaDOS is still alive and up to her old tricks again, even though the place is in ruins. To combat her, you have the assistance of a brand new ally named “Wheatley” to help or rather “inform” you. Chell’s goal is to once again escape the facility (well we’re guessing that’s the case as she’s still mute, in typical Valve protagonist fashion). From here, the story takes several twists and turns. You’ll only catch glimpses of Chell throughout the game, but it’s the feeling of the unknown that’ll leave you guessing around every portal.

It was up to Valve to create a title much longer and grander than the first game and in that they succeeded. The game is designed in various sections and has you completing test chamber after chamber until it opens up to a more standard adventure game. A good chunk of the game has you entering various rooms figuring out how to escape and moving on into a lift that takes you to the next room to do it all over again. Although this might sound repetitive to some, it’s the variety of chambers and intelligent character design that keep things fresh in each level.  Helping to curve your advantage a little is the introduction of new tools along the way. The portal gun is just the beginning this time. For those of you not of a Portal disposition, you basically use the Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device to create both ends of a portal and travel between each one. Further along in the game you’ll be manipulating various objects, substances and physics to figure out how to get from the entrance to the exit of each room.

With the single player campaign much longer than the first title; Portal 2 extends its life even further by also offering a multiplayer stand-alone co-op campaign that you can play online or off. Playstation 3 and PC owners can communicate with each other, while the Xbox 360 version only supports other 360 players. Despite that, the puzzles are a lot more challenging and as they always say; two heads are better then one. The co-op plays entirely different than the main storyline as its essentially one test chamber after another without the cinematic story elements. Each chamber is designed for two players to complete so communication is vital to succeed. There will be times where you are split up but you can press a button to simply view what your partner is doing, which can be useful and voyeuristic (if you’re into that sort of thing you sicko). It also has a fairly robust system to communicate with your partner in-game to show where to place your portals and figure out what you need to do next to move on. All in all, the co- op campaign is well worth traveling through.

Overall, the presentation is pretty solid and you won’t find much trouble in the game outside of its long loading times between each level. You’ll definitely want to keep an eye out for different things in the environments such as wall paintings or messages left around each level as they provide depth to the story and help you understand what the Aperture Science Labs are all about. Trust us when we say there is a lot of back-story that Valve has integrated into the game in very unique places. You’ll find that the touch of sarcastic humor and brilliant writing help make the game a fun experience to go through on repeat plays.

The Bottom Line: Compared to the first Portal, Portal 2 is an excellent step forward for Valve in bringing the Portal universe to a complete circle. You’ll find plenty to do in this package and you’ll get your money’s worth, even if you buy the game at full price. There is plenty to do here from the extended single player campaign to the stand-alone co-op mode online or off that you can tackle afterwords with a friend. Don’t miss your chance to take a trip back into Aperture Science for another round of puzzles with your companion cube; cue smooth jazz music in 3…. 2…. 1.

After several delays, and frantic rushes to play some of the most random indie games, it has finally resulted in Portal 2 launching 7 hours early. One of the more interesting surprises has been the discovery of an in game store in which you can use to customize the look of your co-op bots. Enjoy everyone, look for our full review later this week.

Here is the final vid-doc showcasing how you can survive those long falls as long as you have some fancy new boots. Check out the video above.

Portal 2 will be released on April 19th.

Sorry for another Valve-related news story but the gaming leviathan has just sent this new Portal 2 trailer over and we thought we would share. There’s going to be one of these every week in the run up to the game’s release, so look forward to them! I think we can put our differences behind us, for science. You monster.

Valve has today released a Steam Client update that introduces the SILK voice codec. That’s the same codec developed and used by Skype. SILK is supposed to provide a “significant improvement to Steam’s voice chat quality”, according to the press release. Steam voice chat is available for both one-on-one and group chats. It works on both the regular desktop and while a user is in a game. We’ll send the office Steam-users to go take a chat/listen and report back.

Valve has lifted the lid on some of the features hitting the Steam-enabled version of Portal 2 on the PlayStation 3. To start off with, the game will include cross platform play, with PC/Mac gamers being able to take on PS3 players in multiplayer.

Moreover, there will be persistent cloud-based storage of PS3 saved games and cross platform chat (the press release cunningly didn’t mention if this will be voice or text based, we’re hoping for the former). Furthermore, those that purchase Portal 2 for the PS3 can unlock a Steam Play copy of the game on PC and Mac for free by linking their PSN and Steam accounts.

“We made a promise to gamers at E3 that Portal 2 for the PlayStation 3 would be the best console version of the product,” said Gabe Newell, co-founder and president of Valve. “Working together with Sony we have identified a set of features we believe are very compelling to gamers. We hope to expand upon the foundation being laid in Portal 2 with more Steam features and functionality in DLC and future content releases.”

“We designed the Portal 2 PS3 experience to be very straightforward for gamers,” said Josh Weier, project lead on Portal 2 at Valve. “PS3 gamers will be able to simply drop the Blu-Ray disc in the PS3, link to their Steam account from inside the game, and all their Steam friends (on PC and Mac) will be visible and accessible for chat and game invites.”

EA Partners has announced that they will be publishing Portal 2 on the PC, Mac, PS3 and 360 in shops on 21st April 2011. As always, Valve will be pushing title via Steam on the digital side of things.

“Portal 2 is Valve’s most innovative title in the company’s history and will be launched with a first-class launch campaign this April,” said Valve marketing boss Doug Lombardi.

“We’re excited to be working with Electronic Arts to deliver this title as we expand our platform strategy to include the Mac and PlayStation 3 platforms.”

The NPD Group has found that 29% of games purchased in the last three months were done so digitally. 47% of the digital buyers the group surveyed said they purchased their games from services like Steam. 42% bought their games through app stores or mobile phone carriers and 30% used console services like Xbox Live. People answering the survey said that they bought on average 3.1 (we’ll take that as three then) games during the past three months. 10% of purchases involved trading in old games.

Anita Frazier, NPD industry analyst, said: “With a wide array of content available for digital download, clearly the purchase drivers are going to differ depending if someone is downloading a frontline core gaming title versus a lower priced app or casual game. And the drivers for purchasing downloadable content are very different from those that spark a full-game purchase.

“This study provides the nuance into how various groups of consumers consider their purchases depending on the type of game they’re interested in.”

No, we haven’t gone back in time. Valve has just launched a new open, public beta for Team Fortress 2 just over three years after its release. The move is similar to that of the Football Manager Live beta. Valve will use the beta to test class, item and weapon changes “without the risk of breaking the game”. Also expect some “higher level, game-wide experiments” to contend with too.

“As you’ve probably seen by now, we like to change things in Team Fortress 2,” Valve said. “A lot. And while we’re perfect most of the time, we occasionally get something wrong. One reason for this is we just don’t get enough data from internal play testing, and another is that we spend too much time watching Tom Bui serenades on YouTube.”

To gain access to the beta, launch Steam, open the Library and install the “Team Fortress 2 Beta” from your games list.

Valve has launched the “Recommend For You” referral services on Steam. The services are available on both the PC and Mac clients. Essentially, it’s a recommendation thingy on Steam that will throw you info about new games and DLC based upon your tastes, recent purchases and games recommendations from friends. The recommendations will have their own page and will be chucked on your Steam Community News Blotter. Game pages will now also include recommendation info. We find it interesting that Valve can waste their time on this yet delay Portal 2.

Valve has announced that they have delayed Portal 2 to “the week of April 18th 2011”. Valve sent us a witty passage which we thought we would share with you. Observe: “This two month slip not only marks the shortest delay in Valve’s proud tradition of delays, it represents the approaching convergence of Valve Time and Real Time. Though this convergence spells doom for humanity, it will not affect the new Portal 2 release date.”

Telltale has confirmed that Poker Night at the Inventory will allow players to unlock items in their Team Fortress 2 inventory. If you pre-order the game from the Telltale Store, you will unlock the Heavy’s poker visor. More are available in-game when you take part in special “Item Rounds”. The items you are able to unlock include Max’s Lugermorph handgun for the Scout and Engineer, a Freelance Badge for everyone to wear, an Enthusiast timepiece for the Spy from Tycho, Strong Bad’s shades for the Demoman and Iron Curtain gun from and for the Heavy.