Long read: The beauty and drama of video games and their clouds

"It's a little bit hard to work out without knowing the altitude of that dragon..."

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Half-Life 2 Tunnels vid released

But has it slipped? Looks like it.

Cuh, Half-Life 2, eh? We must be getting bored of that by now, right? Bzzt! Wrong! Valve still hasn't officially commented on Vivendi's proclamation that the game has slipped, but they have released another high-resolution Bink video via Steam, virtually confirming for us at least that September 30th is no longer the day of reckoning for the FPS genre. Why? Well, if you were Valve and your publisher was running around lying about your game's release date, you'd hardly stand idly by and then release a video in the evening, would you? And we're hearing reports that Gabe Newell's supposed denial yesterday was a forgery, too...

Still, "Tunnels", it's called, and it deals with the section where Gordon is making his way through an eerie underground bit of City 17, dealing with flying circular saws (or buzz-saws - see what we did there?) which he eventually outwits by flinging a mesh gate closed on their twirly machinations. After this, he scoots down some stairs, pausing to ignite one of the Special Forces troops that seem to be after him, and capping a couple more, before dropping down to rendezvous with Alyx, just in time to see a trooper skewered by a giant blue tentacle reject from The Abyss. Ahh.

If you already have Steam, then the chances are this is already on your PC, and if you don't then there are a whole bunch of places you could go for it. But then you know that.