Nearly 13 years after the debut of Portal 2, fans of the beloved first-person puzzle game were supposed to be rewarded with the Jan. 5 release of a prequel campaign from Second Face Software. The fan-made mod, dubbed Portal: Revolution, will add over eight hours of gameplay and 40 new test chambers to the sequel game.
“Right off the bat, I want to say that the game is done,” the message reads. “We could ship at any moment, but Valve has yet to review and accept the game for release.”
The note continues on to explain how all games on Steam are beholden to a review process by Valve before developers can even have the option to punch the release button. The Portal: Revolution developers first submitted their build for review Dec. 20 but had yet to hear back from Valve before the mod’s intended Jan. 5 release date.
“Even though we’re done on our part, we can’t ship,” the developers wrote. “In hindsight, we should have seen this coming and we definitely learned [our] lesson to not ship during holidays again.”
The developers acknowledged that they were, indeed, warned in advance by Steam Support that reduced staffing during the holiday season leads to much longer review times. Any other time of year, this process normally takes between 2-3 business days, according to the Portal: Revolution developers, though it’s advised games be submitted at least two weeks before their shipping date.
“Even though we’re done on our part, we can’t ship. In hindsight, we should have seen this coming.”
As the announcement was being posted to the Steam storefront, the Portal: Revolution team heard back from Valve that the build is now under review. Once accepted, the game devs said they would update fans with a revised release date.
We’re not sure what’s worse: having to stay patient for the mod’s inevitable debut or the fact it’s ready and simply not available. Either way, it’s a sad day for Portal fans.
The good news? This campaign is going to be well worth the wait. Eight hours of additional gameplay nearly qualifies this community-built mod as a full-length game in its own right. Plus, the new puzzles will force players to think outside the box (or rather, Companion Cube) by utilizing existing mechanics in a unique way.
Set between the events of Portal and Portal 2, the new content will send players back to the tattered ruins of Aperture laboratories. At the game’s onset, you awake as a test subject whose mission is to find a device that can restore the facility.
“Portal: Revolutions puzzle difficulty starts where Portal 2 stops,” according to the game’s developers, though challenging new mechanics will be taught to players as they go along, similar to the original games.
Baldur’s Gate 3 is crammed full of memorable, moving stories. At least one of those stories extends far beyond the Forgotten Realms into the real world too, as a fan has revealed the heartfelt tribute that developers Larian included to their father – a long-time CRPG player – diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease.
Games with miniatures and games with the Marvel licence are ten a penny, but back in 2019 the bright sparks at Atomic Mass Games had the idea to put them together. The result was Marvel Crisis Protocol, a skirmish game where teams of super-powered characters duke it out over tactical objectives. It proved a smash hit, and now it’s back in an updated edition, Earth’s Mightiest Core Set (see it at Amazon), with cool new characters and more dynamic figures. Owners of the original can still use their figures, however, as they’re different versions of the same characters, with slightly different stats and powers.
What’s in the Box
Like a lot of miniature game starter boxes, the contents of Marvel: Crisis Protocol – Earth’s Mightiest Core Set isn’t much to look at when you draw the lid off for the first time. It’s mostly a lot of gray plastic sprues. There are no assembly instruction in the game — instead they have to be downloaded from the website of the publisher, Atomic Mass Games. You’ll also need a craft knife, some polystyrene cement and a lot of time and patience to assemble the contents, although the figure poses are clean and obvious. No guessing games are required over whether you’ve got an arm or a leg at the correct angle.
Once you’ve put the time in, the results are spectacular. The 10 figures in this updated box are much more detailed and dynamic than their original counterparts. Doc Ock drips liquid from tentacle to test-tube, while Black Widow is captured in the act of tearing an Ultrabot in two.
In addition to the characters, there’s also a ton of scenery included, mimicking everyday street objects like lamps and cars. Some of the more spectacular pieces are wrecks and damaged buildings, enlivened by bits of crushed Ultrabots crawling out of the debris. Between them, there’s more than enough to start playing.
A pack of custom dice, character and crisis cards, a rules booklet and some sheets of cardboard sprues containing counters round out the box contents. As you can probably imagine given the wealth of comic art at the game’s disposal, everything looks bright and colorful with plenty of pictures to enliven the tiresome task of rules referencing.
Rules and How It Plays
For the most part, Marvel Crisis Protocol plays like a standard modern miniatures game. Characters get two actions which they can use to do things like move, attack or activate particular hero powers. Movement and range are measure with included custom tools to keep things fast and simple. Attacks are resolved by each player rolling a pool of dice and looking for hit or block symbols to attack or defend, with “wild” icons adding additional effects depending on the attack used.
With each character representing a superhero, you can probably imagine that these additional effects, along with their unique attacks and powers, encompass a wild range of wacky results. Spider-Man, for example, can slam enemy characters into the scenery, while Red Skull can warp both himself and other characters around the map. Most of the more powerful abilities require you to pay a resource called power which is in short supply at the beginning of the game.
However, in a twist of considerable genius, characters get extra power when they’re wounded and when they use particular attacks. This is a useful feedback loop that boosts a player taking hits due to unlucky dice, but it also results in an escalating feedback loop whereby the more everyone is punching and throwing each other around, the more options they have to punch and throw each other even harder. Characters also get dazed after accumulating enough wounds, which flips their character cards over and sometimes reveals even more powerful effects to bring into play.
The result is an ever-escalating fist-fight that feels like flipping the panels on your favorite comic. It won’t be long before characters are chaining attacks into other attacks, throwing the scenery around, throwing each other around — sometimes into the paths of incoming attacks — and criss-crossing the battlefield with energy beams or freeze rays and generally doing what superheroes do best: escalating craziness with every punch until someone finally gets hit for six at the climax.
Not only is this the thematic core of Marvel Crisis Protocol, it’s also where a lot of the tactical decisions lie. It all comes down to assessing the situation and trying to choose which heroes and powers will work best together to counter the enemy. While this is always an interesting challenge, the sheer number of different options at your disposal can also be overwhelming, even for experienced players. Most characters have two to three attack options and a further three or four passive powers. When you’re fielding a team of five or so operatives, it quickly gets hard to handle. As does the sheer number of tokens and tracking many powers require.
The remainder of the strategy comes from the game’s objective system. This is a clever concept that removes a lot of the rock-paper-scissors faction match-up issues that plague a lot of other miniatures games. You build a team of 10 models, and support that team with a choice of crisis cards, which determine the scenario, and team tactics cards, one-shot special powers. Each player draws a crisis card at random from their roster, and those two become the scenario objectives — one detailing objectives to hold and one with items or civilians to get off the battlefield. They also mandate a points cap, and players can choose which of their 10 models to use up to that points value.
This is essentially a kind of sideboard system which allows you to strategically prepare sets of cards and figures that work well together and then finalize them when the exact parameters of the mission become clear. In turn, it offers tons of variety and means you can be much more flexible in how you approach your goals each and every game. So you’re reacting to a new tactical challenge each time by making informed decisions rather than just showing up with a list and hoping your picks will be up to doing whatever job turns out to be asked of them, as a lot of these kinds of games do.
While Marvel Crisis Protocol does give you plenty of tactical tools to work with, it’s also a dice-heavy game. The custom dice icons take some getting used to, but they’re fun to use, especially when a power gives you lots of re-rolls or exclamation results give you extra dice for explosively powerful attacks. At the same time, that does make the game very swingy and prone to fate. This seems well-suited to the theme of the game, with fights often taking wildly unexpected turns just as one side thinks they have it in the bag, but those looking for a more in-depth strategic challenge probably won’t be considering a game about comic-book characters having fist-fights in the first place.
Some 22 years after it first released, the cast of Max Payne recently reunited for a strange but brilliant Alan Wake 2 moment, absent one key member.
Remedy co-founder Sam Lake captured the moment in a photo posted to X/Twitter, referring to the cast as “family and friends.” The group included Jani Niipola (Alex Balder), Carol Kiriakos (Mona Sax), Lake’s mother and father (Nicole Horne and Alfred Woden respectively), Aki Järvilehto (BB), and of course Lake himself, who was the original face of Max Payne.
Absent from the gathering was James McCaffrey, the voice of Max Payne, who died in December. His final role was Alan Wake 2, where he played Alex Casey. Lake paid tribute to McCaffrey at the time, calling him a “lovely man and a dear friend.”
Spoilers for Alan Wake 2
The Max Payne cast was on hand for a 15-minute Finnish short film contained within Alan Wake 2 called Yötön Yö (Nightless Night). The optional sequence features a ballroom dance scene that includes the original cast of Alan Wake.
The original Max Payne was praised for its innovative implementation of bullet time mechanics, then a relatively new film device, and helped introduced Remedy to mainstream audiences. Actors like McCaffrey who featured in Max Payne would go on to appear in many more Remedy games, including Alan Wake 2.
Having marked its 10 year anniversary last year, survival shooter Rust is seeing in its second decade by adding the long-awaited ability to boost your inventory with a backpack. The update will continue what developers Facepunch Studios say will be even more updates and improvements throughout 2024, even as other long-requested additions slide back to 2025 or later.
This past Christmas marked the anniversary of me playing Overwatch 2. 7 years of my partner and I swearing at seemingly impenetrable enemy teams, then whooping in victory when we finally pull together a plan that cracks them apart – or just as our chill W+M1 game while we chat about our days.
For the uninitiated, Overwatch is a bright, colorful, and very funny team v team FPS that ditches the dour gunmen for a cast that doesn’t all require raw aim skill. Spider-themed snipers and six-gun slinging cowboys share space with winged angelic healers and a talking gorilla with a Tesla cannon – characters who reward positioning and timely ability usage just as much as one’s ability to click on heads. When the game went free to play and slapped a 2 on the end in 2022, it got a more muted reception, but the dev team have displayed a great willingness to experiment. In fact, there’s never been a better time to give Overwatch 2 a go.
Happy new year and welcome to the first of our monthly physical release round-ups of 2024!
January is usually one of the quietest months of the year for new launches, but we do have a decent number of titles launching soon that we think are worth a good look. We’ve been busy rounding up our usual selection of games headed to retail in the coming weeks, including some highlights picked by us as well as lots of other games and accessories that are launching soon. Have a browse through and see if anything takes your fancy:
It’s a new year, but we’re still thinking about the amazing games we played last year. This week, we’re highlighting some of your favorite captures from 2023 in Share of the Year:
__Auron__shares Clive unleashing his power in Final Fantasy XVI
DCTLOUVPshares Abby grimacing while fighting near fire in The Last of Us Part II
TakaSanGamesshares a Na’vi raising their 4-fingered hand over their face in this portrait from Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora
jenniandgamingshares a horse and rider framed by a lasso in Red Dead Redemption 2
wingsforsmilesshares Darth Vader’s suit lit only by the red glow of his lightsaber in Star Wars Jedi: Survivor
Tohyan_vpshares a Tallneck wading into the waters of a ruined San Francisco in Horizon Forbidden West
Morph__1shares Ahti the Janitor singing some karaoke in Alan Wake 2
x__stardustgaming__xshares Astarion sharing some intense side-eye in Baldur’s Gate 3
reddeadgem4shares Basim cuddling a kitty in Assassin’s Creed Mirage
Search #PSshare #PSBlog on Twitter or Instagram to see more entries to this week’s theme. Want to be featured in the next Share of the Week?
THEME: God of War Ragnarök Valhalla
SUBMIT BY: 11:59 PM PT on January 10, 2024
Next week, we head to the shores of Valhalla to face new challenges in God of War Ragnarók. Share moments from Kratos’ journey using #PSshare #PSBlog for a chance to be featured.
As I settled back into the day-to-day work routine at IGN to start 2024, it randomly occurred to me that Halo 2 will turn 20 years old later this year – specifically, on November 9. That got me reminiscing about one of my favorite games ever – and probably my single favorite multiplayer game ever – a little bit early, so I thought I’d put those thoughts to virtual paper and share them with you because, quite frankly, there’s never a bad time to talk about the glory days of Halo 2 multiplayer.
I’m so grateful I got to be in the right time and place in my life, professionally and personally, to have soaked up that experience to the absolute fullest. I was 24 with no spouse, kid, or dog, thus allowing me to spend most of my free time playing Halo 2 multiplayer on Xbox Live. My life is very different now, in an equally great way, and I wouldn’t wish it any differently. And as also been pointed out to me, in 2004 there was no Call of Duty as direct competition for your online gaming time, not to mention the lack of social media, smartphones, and Netflix. Halo 2 was The Thing™, but it would’ve earned the lion’s share of my attention even if those other things had existed back then.
If you were too young for Halo 2, I promise you it was THAT GOOD. Not just the game, which was incredible (more on that in a bit), but also the Xbox Live ecosystem. You could send game invites with voice messages, which was neat. Even better, party chat wasn’t a thing yet, so people COMMUNICATED in-game. Proximity chat was used as a complement to team chat. Meaning you could broadcast to just your team or to anyone around you, which had both fun and strategic applications. And its then-revolutionary “virtual couch” online lobby and matchmaking system was light years ahead of anything we’d seen on console or even PC, making it easy and fun to get games together with your friends. Not only was there not a single dud [map] in the entire lot, they were all truly awesome.
Not only was there not a single dud [map] in the entire lot, they were all truly awesome.
But of course, the most amazing online infrastructure in the world (which Halo 2 had!) wouldn’t have mattered much if the game wasn’t incredible. And holy cow did Halo 2 deliver in the multiplayer department. It took everything great about Halo 1’s multiplayer and built on it. More vehicles, improved physics, dual-wielded weapons, the ability to board (read: carjack) enemy vehicles, and a collection of maps that I would put against any online multiplayer shooter in history. Bungie’s map designers were absolutely in the zone for Halo 2: Lockout, Midship, Ivory Tower, Ascension, Zanzibar, Colossus, Burial Mounds, Waterworks, Foundation, and the phenomenal remakes of two great Halo 1 maps: Beaver Creek and the evolution of Blood Gulch, known in Halo 2 as Coagulation. Not only was there not a single dud in the entire lot of them, they were all truly awesome. That Bungie allowed easy customization of the maps in the form of tweaking weapons, vehicles, etc. allowed every Halo 2 match to be whatever you wanted it to be.
Halo 2 in 2004 really was a perfect storm. In fact, if I could travel back in time to re-experience any gaming “eras” that are gone forever now, it would be the Halo 2 Era (i.e. the year between its launch and the Xbox 360 launch) and the Rock Band Era (2007-2009 or so – but that’s something to write about another day…). Yes, these games still exist and are still playable, but it isn’t and can never be the same. So happy early 20th anniversary, Halo 2, I don’t think there will ever be another multiplayer game like you.
Ryan McCaffrey is IGN’s executive editor of previews and host of both IGN’s weekly Xbox show, Podcast Unlocked, as well as our monthly(-ish) interview show, IGN Unfiltered. He’s a North Jersey guy, so it’s “Taylor ham,” not “pork roll.” Debate it with him on Twitter at @DMC_Ryan.
Did we put the Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater and Silent Hill 2 remakes on that list of our most anticipated games of 2024? The article is so voluminous I’m not sure I have the energy to check. I get halfway down the page and feel like I need to pitch camp below one of the paragraph breaks, like a mountaineer sleeping beneath a crag in one of those dangling tents. Assuming we didn’t, both have been slated for 2024 release by the PlayStation blog.
