Marc Laidlaw, a lead writer for the Half-Life series, has just posted the plot for the third instalment on his website. Hold your breath while reading, because this is the closing curtains rather than a confirmation for the game.

It seems like Dr Gordon Freeman, the protagonist of the series, has had an epic adventure to excuse his absence. The silent doctor struggled in the desperate the crusaded through time in the Borealis, invented teleportation devices, and saw his infamous rival, G-Man, snatch away Alyx Vance. Now, he’s back in a world where the resistance no longer thrived, his friends gone, and his legacy forgotten.

And here we are. I spoke of [...]

CyberPowerPC, best known for their custom gaming PCs and laptops, unveiled several new products today at this year’s CES in Las Vegas. The new products include the new Pro Streamer Series PCs, a 34-inch curved screen All-In-One, a new line of gaming laptops, and several gaming PCs which are “VR Ready”

CyberPowerPC’s all-new 2-in-1 streaming and gaming PCs, dubbed “Pro Streamer Series” are an all new series of systems from the company which feature Phanteks’ Mini XL Dual System chassis to house two complete Mini ITX and MicroATX systems.

The systems will be available in three [...]

Way back at CES 2014, Valve made a huge splash at the show announcing their intent to popularize PC gaming in the living room. In order to do this, Valve was building a custom Steam OS which would either be installed by an end user to their own gaming PC, or be bundled with Steam Machines – Valve approved gaming PCs manufactured by their PC OEM partners.

While Valve and their PC OEM partners created a lot of hype during the show, the Steam Machine concept has pretty much fizzled out in the past year as Steam have made no big announcements regarding the status of their Steam OS or Steam Machines. With [...]

The biggest tech news this past week has been Facebook’s unexpected $2 billion acquisition of Oculus, and with that the Oculus Rift VR assets. Without a doubt there has been a lot of community backlash from donors, devs, and the general public – a lot of it unfortunately being overwhelmingly negative.

Personally, I’m not quite sure how I feel about the acquisition. People definitely have a point in their dissatisfaction of this acquisition primarily due to what Facebook has become over the past few years. Just looking at the obtrusive advertising and privacy infiltration Facebook has adopted recently is certainly enough of a reason why. [...]

Four years ago Nvidia launched the 40nm based Fermi GPU, two years ago Nvidia launched the 28nm based Kepler GPU, and now, two years after Kepler’s launch, it’s now time for Nvidia to launch their latest and greatest GPU – Maxwell.

Back at GTC of last year, we first officially received confirmation of Nvidia’s Maxwell GPUs, with Maxwell’s main goal of continuing the trend Nvidia began setting with their Kepler GPUs – better performance yet not at the expense of increased power consumption. Prior to Kepler, Nvidia had traditionally not worried too much about power consumption as long as performance increased by [...]

Membrane switches and high-end gaming keyboards don’t mix very well; they’re often overshadowed by the much more tactile and responsive mechanical switches. Although we tend to see membrane switches on budget end keyboards, we do encounter a company that tries to break the norm from time to time by putting them on high end gaming keyboards. Gaming peripheral giant ROCCAT is one such company. A couple months ago, we reviewed the ROCCAT Isku gaming keyboard and was fairly impressed by its beautiful styling, huge programmable macro count and great performance.

However, the Isku isn’t ROCCAT’s only trick in the bag; [...]

Valve has just released a video showing its recently announced Steam Controller in action. The video demonstrates the Steam Controller’s unique controls style in four different titles.

Portal 2 is up first. We can see that the two trackpads simulates a typical keyboard and mouse combo. The demo is shown on a legacy version of the game with no modifications added to support controller.

Next is Civilization 5, a RTS normally restricted only to your desktop unless you’re willing to deal with a clunky mouse and keyboard on the couch. Finding a surface for the mouse to work on can also be challenging. The Steam Controller shows us that it can remove that [...]

Following the recently announced Steam OS and Steam Machine, Valve closed the curtains on their mysterious three-day unveiling by introducing the Steam Controller.

Similar to the Steam OS and the Steam Machine, the Steam Controller is looking to break out of the usual conventions in multiple aspects. While an image of the final unit has yet to be released, the prototype image shows that the controller uses two trackpads as its primary method of control as opposed to conventional joysticks. This design more closely resembles a desktop mouse with its higher level of accuracy, and may ultimately win over the hearts of the traditional keyboard/mouse loving PC [...]

Step 1. Steam OS. Step 2. Steam Machines.

With Valve’s unveiling of the Steam OS, Valve paved the way for the eventual release their very own hardware platform. Earlier this year at CES 2013, Valve generated a lot of buzz over what they were calling at the time the Steam Box, which apparently is now going to be the Steam Machine.

Now, actual specs/images of the Steam Machine hasn’t necessarily been unveiled yet as Valve is still developing the unit, but they’re planning on running a beta test by inviting 300 Steam users to participate in the testing program. Those in the beta program will receive Steam Machines free of charge in exchange [...]

At CES earlier this year, the hottest thing on the showfloor was Valve’s Steam Box, which was supposedly a Linux based gaming system designed by Valve to stream games from an existing gaming PC that could be had as low as $99. While this was all the rage earlier this year, the actual Steam Box itself had only been a concept without a clear indication from Valve of when it’ll ever actually materialize.

Today, Valve unveiled their very own operating system (OS), which they’re calling SteamOS. As expected, SteamOS is a Linux based OS custom built by Valve which essentially converts any PC into a “Steam Box”.

According to [...]