Wired has this pretty cool article on Valve's attempts to catch a German hacker who hacked into the Valve systems and posted Half Life 2 source code on the internet. A very intriguing story with fake job interviews, Feds, and arrests. Sounds like a real life "Catch Me If You Can." OK, well not quite but an interesting read nonetheless.

LINK: Valve Tried to Trick Half Life 2 Hacker Into Fake Job Interview

Those who pre-ordered Left 4 Dead at GameStop were treated to access to the demo a week before the general public. I downloaded the demo early this morning and gave it a spin. I actually played through it a few times. I tried both single player and online co-op modes and the game is very fun. Left 4 Dead is frantic first person zombie action. I love it! The art style which is similar to the Half Life 2 series just works. Its realistic but not over done. There are no shiny CG looking charachters. The environments are detailed and varied. I was able to find an online game pretty easy and I did not notice any lag issues.



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From my time playing the demo Left 4 Dead seems like a good mix between Resident Evil, Half Life, Halo 3 and Call of Duty. If you play the game in single player mode the computer AI takes control of the other three on your team. The Zombies come at you but they are varied in size and speed. Some will just stand there and some will rush you. There are different weapons including an machine gun, shot gun, pistols that can be dual wielded and you also have melee attacks.

In multiplayer your friends or those matched up randomly on Xbox Live are added to your game and control the other players on your team. Full voice chat is enabled during multiplayer which is great. A very cool feature in multiplayer mode included is called "Take Break." Break mode is like pausing a multiplayer game but your not actually pausing anything because the computer AI takes over for you and continues to play for you with your online friends. You become a "spectator" and when you are ready you can take the game back over from the computer AI. Pure genius. In a nutshell this demo sealed the deal and my pre-order will be a final purchase.

Here are some screens from my demo run through:

Gamestop (love'm or hate'm) has been doing a lot in the past few months to one-up their competition. In an attempt to get an early jump on gamers (and moms) purchasing what promises to be one of the best multiplayer shooters coming out this holiday season Gamestop is offering $5 off the purchase of Left 4 Dead for anyone who pre-orders the game either in-store or online. Pre-order customers will also receive early access to the game's demo running November 6th through the 11th (the day Call of Duty: World at War comes out...go figure).

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This Motorcycle racing game just reminded me of Hang On. Admittedly this looks infinitely better.

Here are some new Tomb Raider Underworld screenshots. This game is looking pretty damn good. Hopefully the developers of this new Tomb Raider game played Uncharted.

There are rumors circulating that Google may be in the process of trying to buy Valve. Yes, the same Valve that made that Portal game we all loved so much. Also the same Valve that is about to drop Left 4 dead that we are looking forward to playing. The PC game download store Steam which is currently owned by valve may be the biggest reason that Google may be eying Valve.

TEXT ADS IN THE NEXT PORTAL! ZOMG!

Source: Google to buy Valve