And then Kozlov slipped.

The snow hadn’t settled around our sniper before he had seized the enemy’s attention. He hastened to find cover, but found only bushes and the trees that, when on the ridge, gave him adequate protection from enemy eyes, but offered none from enemy fire. The three of us still on the ridge watched in still silence as gunfire caused the trees, and Kozlov along with them, to fall. We were exposed.

The explosives came next, flung, propelled, and dropped from the sky. Popov, our medic, jumped right into the shit, hurrying to resuscitate the unsure-footed Kozolv. But he didn’t see the grenade in his way — the shit overcame him.

Sokolov and I were left on the ridge. I struggled with my fight or flight instinct as he mastered his, and flew. Torn, but thinking it the nobler thing to do, I dove into the white hell below. My AUG made two short bursts and let go of six rounds which made their new home in an enemy sniper. I searched our departed medic’s gear and scrambled to ready the defibrillator as I, like Kozlov, Popov, and so many trees before me, fell.

But death did not take me. Instead I lay in the war-stained powder contemplating our missteps. We had all made some. And then my vision went white; when it cleared I saw Sokolov, who held two whining paddles, moving for cover behind a rock. I joined him there and dropped a box of ammo at our feet. Moments later, the instigative Kozlov and Popov redeployed next to us, and we partook of medical supplies. All without a word, we prepared to have another go.

I’ve already written about Portal 2 and the build-up to this formal announcement, but there’s one thing I didn’t know then: Portal 2 has co-op. Besides that, I’m considering the creative marketing campaign as the PC version announcement; this press release and Game Informer cover are for Xbox 360 players.

Hopes fulfilled.

Bad Company producer Patrick Bach talks about what makes Battlefield Battlefield, and the differences between designing for console players and PC players.

Despite reports to the contrary, yes, Silent Hunter 5 is cracked.

Probably the worst thing Activision did this week.

They also did this. I’m less interested in what’s happening now, though, than I am in what’s happening in a year or two when West and Zampella have a new game.

This is several weeks old, but I’ve only just seen it this week. And it’s relevant again. It’s educational and entertaining, even though it’s from the Xbox 360 perspective.

My apathy may be due to my preoccupation with Valve this week. I usually think about Valve and Steam a lot anyway, and not always good thoughts. Sometimes I envision a future where Valve goes public and starts making Actiavellian decisions, such as developing Counter-Strike 2 as an Xbox 360 lead, charging $10 for the Engineer update, or releasing Half-Life 2: Episode 3 as three separate games. All of these belong to a future I don’t want to live in.

But this week Valve updated Portal with a cryptic achievement and change log that prompted a community investigation. After doing a bunch of things which I won’t pretend to understand, the forum sleuths uncovered a bunch of other things which I also don’t understand. Morse code, a BBS — ASCII art of turrets and Gabe Newell? I decided to just assume it was leading to a Portal 2 announcement.

And then Valve updated Portal to change the ending. I read the headlines and my heart skipped a beat. Back from the E.R. and to the article, I found yet more that I didn’t understand. But it seemed that an Episode 3 announcement was near.

We already knew Episode 3 and Portal 2 were on the way, though. Why are we so excited? Because it isn’t hollow; it’s not just a press release. Valve’s pre-announcement takes advantage of the one thing we gamers are sure to appreciate: interactivity. And although Valve makes games out of the same stuff everyone else does, only they could have put on such a performance, prodding that part of our psyche from which zealous devotion and unthinking admiration flows. The performance took not only creative marketing ideas and the will to take a risk, but autonomy — something Valve has spent the better part of a decade building for themselves in Steam. This week, they reaped the benefits. This week, everyone who makes games wishes they were Valve. Again.

Also Valve announced Steam for Mac OS X.

My words about it are over here.

Does game design work best when it’s analogous to film making, or to music composition? Neither, and I don’t think it’s important to make the distinction. Games shouldn’t imitate a specific art form, they should express the qualities of them all. Because they can. Video games are the culmination of art as technology, and technology as art. They’re amazing. We shouldn’t limit such a medium by trying to make sense of it in the context of less capable mediums.

Games as we know them today owe a lot to Carmack’s work. I can’t think of a person more deserving of this award.

This week also marks the first year anniversary of Quake Live, as well as the 14th year anniversary of QTest. In celebration, Quake Live received an update and event, and id employees past and present have reflected on QTest on the Bethesda blog.

Of course it is.

EA/DICE restricting dedicated server files to certain “partners” is leaving me conflicted about wanting Bad Company 2. They’re keeping dedicated servers on a leash, just out of reach of total freedom. But whether I like it or not, the market is changing, and we players seem incapable of shifting it in our favor. If EA’s restriction really is just to maintain statistic and rank integrity, and to sell maps (which seems benign in comparison to Activision’s or Ubisoft’s), I can be okay with it. Or I could, if it weren’t for EA’s history of shutting down online games.

But I’m probably overreacting. EA appears to deactivate games based on how many people still play. There’d be greater cause for concern if Battlefield 1942, despite its persisting popularity, had its master servers taken offline in light of a sequel being released. Besides, the Bad Company 2 beta was a heck of a lot of fun, and we haven’t had a successful non-Call of Duty, non-Valve shooter on PC in a long time. I’ll probably give in to temptation and buy it.

This is an hour-long “Quick Look” where every cut scene from Amped 3 is shown. I had no idea the game was so surreal.

My suggestion: Allow users to create and name groups in the My Games and Friends lists.

What they did: Half of this suggestion was implemented; we can now create and add games to “categories” in our games library. It works like a tag system on a blog in that games can belong to multiple categories.

Follow-up: Allow users to filter by “installed” and “uninstalled” regardless of which category they’re viewing. Also add an extra context menu item with a sub-menu where users can add games to existing categories.

What they did: This was added, though because of how Valve has changed the games library overall, it’s slightly different from how I imagined it. The games library now has a “details view” where, when a game is selected on the games list, a page is populated with game information, news, related links, and how many friends own the game in addition to their avatars and links to their profiles.

Follow-up: Nothing. This is just what I wanted.

My suggestion: Make the Community Blotter more sigificant.

What they did: The Store page now uses part of the Blotter by showing the last few games purchased by friends. Each game’s store page also now shows which of a user’s friends already own the game.

Follow-up: I’d still like to see the Blotter extended to Steam notifications.

My suggestion: Expand instant messaging features.

What they did: Nothing yet. We can’t access other services, and we don’t have tabbed chat containers. But we do have hope; Valve opened a section on the Steam forums for beta feedback, and therein is a thread where many people are asking for tabbed conversations.

Follow-up: Listen to the community.

My suggestion: Expand Steam Cloud

What they did: They did it. Favorite servers now synchronize across computers through Steam Cloud, and an icon now appears next to games which support it when in “list view.” This was the most practical and important part of my suggestion.

Follow-up: Nothing; the Steam Cloud feature is finally beginning to realize its potential.

My suggestion: Abandon Internet Explorer for WebKit.

What they did: They did this, too, and it’s probably the most significant change. Using WebKit instead of IE opens non-Windows platforms to Steam. We aren’t far from having Mac and Linux versions of Steam.

Follow-up: It’s done. The browser could be improved further by allowing custom home pages or bookmarks, but it may also be best to just keep it simple.

Valve has added or changed much more than what I imagined last month. The store page has been redesigned with purpose to make games easier to find; the games library was changed to provide more viewing options; and the overlay has been revamped both speed-wise and clockwise. What’s more, this beta may not be feature-complete yet. The Friends system and Community site are almost unchanged. If Valve’s out of ideas, the Steam community has many.

This is the worst that PC game DRM has ever been. I shouldn’t be as jarred as I am, considering Ubisoft’s history with StarForce. At the same time, I’d also think they’d have learned from how customers responded to those practices and not gone on to worse ones. Read as they try to justify it, and give major respect to PC Gamer for grilling them. They expect me to pay $60 for a game that was released on consoles 5 months ago in addition to being treated like a criminal? No. Fuck that.

These are better reasons (half-truths, as opposed to total lies), but it’s probably best for everyone if Remedy and Microsoft just stopped talking about the PC version of Alan Wake until they’re ready to announce it.

This is just wonderful. I’ve been worried that the console, hand-held, mobile, and social versions of Civilization were indicative of the future of the franchise. Civ IV has aged so extraordinarily well that it almost made sense. But Firaxis is simply colonizing every platform; I’ll consider all of those as practice games for this, a new, proper Civilization game. With hexagons.

This is Stardock using known gaming personalities to show games to customers. I love the concept, but I’d prefer if they did second takes (Bob Came In Pieces) and sound checks (Sins of a Solar Empire) for some of the videos.

An indie contest sponsored by Activision? Ah, I see Master Kotick has developed an appetite for the young and uncorrupted.

Yep, yep. Yep.

I resolved that, when I played Mass Effect on PC, I would play as female Shepard, and I’d also play as a Renegade. So I created Sarah Shepard; I expected playing her to be fun, but not superior fun. I also expected to hate her. I didn’t like myself as a Dark Jedi in KoTOR. Force Lightning was fun, but I was a selfish asshole. I didn’t save the galaxy, I took it. My choices on Mass Effect’s Renegade path didn’t all result in such extremes, though; I could save the galaxy without having to mollycoddle everyone. I’d do it efficiently, and by my own rules. Playing Paragon or Renegade is analogous to playing as Superman or Batman would — that is, if either approved of killing.

I began Mass Effect 2 the day it released, mere weeks after completing my second run through Mass Effect. I found that Sarah Shepard had changed, and so had Mass Effect. But my Shepard was still a hard-ass who demanded respect, and who had a galaxy to save. I proceeded to oblige, this time with a new ship, new team, and most importantly, no inventory. The very facet of Mass Effect that most bothered me hadn’t just been changed, it had been discarded. Direct sequels usually just bring about new gimmicks, not fundamental design changes. The Mako was removed, and with it, so was planet exploration, which abetted making each assignment unique and meaningful, when before they were generic and menial. The Mako’s absence also changed the way we gather resources. Now we gather them as any sensible future person would — with probes, from the comfort of orbit. These refinements, additions, and omissions coalesced to form the best sequel I’ve played since Half-Life 2. It’s going to be very hard for there to be a better game this year.

Almost as soon as I finished playing like Batman in Mass Effect 2, I moved to playing as Batman in Batman: Arkham Asylum. Everyone was right: that game is good. It was all I could think about for a few days. I finished with just under 15 hours played and all Riddler challenges complete. Partway through playing, I began considering that I may not enjoy the game as much if I weren’t playing as Batman. I decided that I wouldn’t have. I also decided that I can’t count that against the game. I don’t think I’d have enjoyed Mass Effect 2 as much, either, if it had been built around lesser fiction. Arkham Asylum played well enough to make me feel like as though I was Batman, the baddest ass mortal in American fiction — that’s no small feat.

Neither is following those two games with a third — nothing I have in my game queue can compare. While coming down from this video game high, I’ve been dabbling. The Bad Company 2 Beta has been fun, though it keeps making old man jokes about my computer. And despite an epileptic episode, I’ve played a lot of Lumines. I’ve tried to get into a Total War game again (Medieval II), but I think I play those games incorrectly. I also started Yakuza for Playstation 2; that game has style. Still, I feel as though I’m just killing time until Final Fantasy 13 releases in a few weeks. I’ve never bounced between games this much.

Maybe I’ll make a male Paragon.