For me it was because of the arguably still-unmatched Half-Life 2 series, combined with the first Portal – one of the most pleasant surprises to come out of any studio in this generation of gaming.

While the first Portal introduced players to the series’ now-trademark wit, charming art style and most importantly, the best 3D puzzle-solving action gaming ever conceived, ultimately it felt like rather a small, if perfectly formed little game.

And there’s a good reason that Portal 2 has taken this long to surface. It’s Valve we’re talking about here – and Valve seldom does things half assed.

GLaDOS is one of gaming's best loved characters. Will she still have the attitude this time around?

Portal 2 not only lasts as long as most any other full-price release you could mention these days, it also feels like a full-price epic in terms of its awesome production values, fantastic audio visual presentation, much broader art style, settings, characters and more developed narrative than the original ever set out to accomplish.

It’s one of the few games this year I was really excited about and after losing a night of decent sleep literally dreaming about how to solve one of the game’s trickier puzzles, I’m pleased to say I’m not disappointed.

My fear was that Valve would just offer some rehashed puzzles we already got in the original, tack on some random gameplay mechanics, while investing a bit more time, money and manpower to soup up the graphics and sound… but not much else.

You'll see a more diverse set of environments in Portal 2.

Well… they certainly souped up the graphics and sound. There are some scenes in this sequel that really blew me away. The whole art style of the game retains the character and charm of the original but does it real justice with a more elaborately constructed world and a richer palette, which features several further types of environment than we found in the clinical-looking box-world from before.

Admittedly most time is spent in Aperture’s “test chambers” (though even these exude a lot more personality than before, because of the decay that has occurred in the unknown amount of time since the first game was set), but you will also see jungle-like and factory-style settings that border on Pixar-like beauty at times.

And sure, some gameplay elements have been added, but fortunately not randomly tacked on. Just as every gameplay element was perfectly realised in the level design of the original, so too is the new stuff in Portal 2.

There are three different coloured “gels” (that look like big blobby coloured paint) that when applied to certain surfaces (often via portal use, obviously) produce different effects – running faster on red, jumping higher from blue, and the ability to convert many non-portal-able surfaces to portal-able ones using white.

The creative direction Valve's taken with Portal 2 can't be gleamed from screens and videos alone. The way story, characters and game experience come together is masterful.

Several other strange and funky new mechanics have been added but I think it makes most sense to let players discover them for themselves, because this stuff is better experienced than explained. Rest assured: it all works wonderfully in gameplay and puzzle-solving terms, and is exactly the kind of serving I was looking for above and beyond what I already got from the original. If you’re worried about just replaying the same levels or that Portal 2 might be more about nostalgia than innovation, don’t be.

Special mention must go the game’s audio production, which just like previous Valve work, is really outstanding. The soundtrack on the whole is suitably epic and on some levels, where tension is starting to build, the behaviour of (often essential off-screen) gameplay elements even affects the chords of the music, which is really proper next-gen audio production, folks.

But the audio also benefits in a BIG way from the excellent contribution of famous UK actor Stephen Merchant (of The Office fame) alongside the returning voice of GLaDOS, as well as the (at least to me) surprise introduction of J.K. Simmons (you know, the newspaper editor in the Spider-Man movies, and the CIA supervisor in Burn After Reading).

This cast comes together unbelievably well as it interacts with the Freeman-like silence of singleplayer character Chell not only in terms of casting and voice acting, but in terms of narrative as we continue to learn more and more about the personalities, stories and histories of this bizarre group, even after the game is finished. The cocktail Valve has come up with on this front is, simply, creative genius.

Plenty of surprises await.

While I did get stuck on two levels in the immensely entertaining singleplayer (for which I think Valve should consider a “hints” option after a very large amount of time in a level passes, or if less skilled players choose to play on an “easy” setting), I’d still easily put the single player at 8 hours+ even for players who don’t get stuck much. Challenge on the whole is rewarding, and about the same as the first game.

And when every level is so well realised, that makes this a smart, stimulating singleplayer experience that’s absolutely not to be missed.

Ed already discussed much of what works well in multiplayer in a separate feature, so I’ll take the easy option of echoing that – really this helps complete a superb end product from Valve. Having said that, while I appreciate the Directors’ Commentary that’s been included, it would have been nice to see some sort of time trials or other play-through extras to add longevity.

Buy it. For science.

Portal 2 is also the reason why, with talk concerning Half-Life 2: Episode 3 once again hotting up recently, I have new faith that the series’ send-off will not only be fantastic but hopefully a whole lot more than we got in the first two brilliant episodes.

At a time when so many games just look and feel more and more the same to me, Portal 2 is unique and wonderful. Clearly it’s going to be one of the best sequels in gaming this year, and it won’t surprise me to see people saying it’s the one they liked best.

Buy it on PC, Steam, Xbox 360 or PS3. (Xbox 360 version tested).

I'm too young to die!

Poor old Left 4 Dead. Just over a year old, and already consigned to the backseat of history by Valve’s uncharacteristically headlong rush to sequel-dom.

Well we’re not quite ready to let go, chaps – as befits the PC version at least. Here are some reasons to put off uninstalling the original zombie co-op FPS for a few months longer.

Because Left 4 Dead wasn’t broken, hasn’t been fixed.

Bit of an obvious point, this one. Left 4 Dead is still utterly, utterly fantastic, and worth experiencing alongside its younger sibling. Those soggy North American forest, industrial and residential maps aren’t getting any less gripping or well-balanced. It’s a whole five quid cheaper than Left 4 Dead 2 on Steam, too.

Because Valve’s keeping its word as to downloadable content.

OK, they took their sweet time bringing out Survival mode, the new “Crash Course” campaign and Versus functionality for the original maps, but Valve seems to be building momentum on the DLC front. We downloaded a 4v4 matchmaking update only a week or two back. Watch this space.

Because Left 4 Dead now boasts hundreds of custom maps and campaigns.

There are plenty of prolific would-be Valve employees out there, it seems. This writer’s favourite custom maps include Claustrophobia, a cramped, two-storey Survival arena featuring some stunning broken wood geometry and shadows, L4D Dust 2, for all the Counterstrike freaks in da house, and Who’s Laughing Now?: The Evil Dead Cabin, a bastard hard homage to Sam Raimi’s stuffed-crust B-movie classic.  Hunter Training is great for putting a little extra spring into your pounce.

Custom-campaign-wise, you might want to consider this Silent Hill remake, or this sequence ripped from Resident Evil Outbreak File#2. Cream of the crop, though, is Death Aboard, which takes you from the depths of a prison to a gloomy dockyard and onto a precariously balanced ship. Fans of the surreal should check out Night Terror and its daring hot-air balloon rescue. Gadzooks.

Because you can stuff all the original game’s content into the sequel.

Those lynch-pins of the underground code-breaking scene at L4Dmods have figured out how to transfer all Left 4 Dead campaigns (and, excitingly, custom campaigns) to Left 4 Dead 2 – well ahead of the release of Valve’s official SDK.

Hold on though, doesn’t this make the first game rather redundant, we hear you protest? Ah, my son, but you’ll need a fully paid-up, squeaky-clean legit copy of both games to pull the trick off. Plus a bit of technical know-how, naturally. And the patience to endure a fair few non-crippling bugs. Hit the link for a tutorial, and check out the video evidence below.

Because Zoey is way fitter than Rochelle, innit.

Look, let’s not beat around any bushes here (after all, one of them might contain a Boomer). If we had the chance to leap into the sack with either of the Left 4 Dead ladies, it’d be pasty girl-geek brunette Zoey all the way. Rochelle’s too respectable for our unhygienic, society-averse tastes. She’s a TV producer, for God’s sake. Plus she wears a Depeche Mode T-shirt (admittedly it’s got a stencil of Gordon Freeman on it). Stupid establishment chick.

So what’s keeping you glued to the original Left 4 Dead, oh well-informed reader?

Like its predecessor, Left 4 Dead 2 is a sort of hyper-violent personality test masquerading as a cooperative zombie survival shooter. If you want to know which of your mates you should trust with the water bottle after shipwrecking on a desert island, simply invite them over for a bout and let the game’s dynamic challenge factor weasel out hidden traits and flaws, profiling each player in sickly green strokes of undead gore.

Where other shooters are static, unreactive structures, brittle sandcastles awaiting the casually lobbed football of human intervention, the Left 4 Dead games give exactly as good as they get, altering the quantity, quality and positioning of enemies, weapon drops and obstacles in response to player behavior. Lone wolves will be pounced upon by terrifying cat-like Hunters, cowardly hangers-on showered in Horde-attracting vomit by repulsive Boomers, layabouts lassoed and dragged off by elusive Smokers. After half an hour’s play, you should have a lot of stories to tell and a couple fewer names on your Christmas card list.

Among the game's "Uncommon Infected" are clowns, who can summon the mob.

The Jack-Daniels-swigging sequel is a personality test in another sense, however. Its aim: to divide the gaming population up into those who are prepared to pay a full 30-40 quid for incremental advances on a formula, and those who aren’t. Calling it a glorified expansion pack is several steps too far, but if you’re one of those deeply misguided, patently untrustworthy and smelly individuals who somehow wasn’t blown away by the first game you should probably think twice.

Left 4 Dead 2 introduces us to four new Survivors – slack-jawed teen Ellis, hard-bitten gambler Nick, wannabe TV producer Rochelle and big poppa Coach – and five new campaigns, set in the humid fastness of a post-apocalyptic Deep South – a more colourful environment than the temperate Pennsylvanian suburbia of the first game, and no less abundant in memorable landmarks, from crashed passenger aircraft to mall-top concert arenas. Campaign formats are the same: the first four chapters challenge the Survivors to get from Safehouse to Safehouse with all limbs/organs intact, and the fifth culminates in an all-or-nothing battle against the ravening Infected while rescue takes its sweet goddamn time arriving.

Last week’s spicy news nuggets laced with the bittersweet herbage of half-arsed cynicism.

Cast a leisurely eye over the last seven days and you could be forgiven for thinking that all consoles and PC were designed exclusively to run Modern Warfare 2, all retailers founded in order to sell it, and all of human life ejected from the womb in order to play it.

Yep, Infinity Ward’s megaload of a gigaton of a killer app is responsible for most of the headlines, with Gamestop labelling the game’s 11th November release the biggest entertainment launch of all time. Not all news is good news, though – digital download operators Direct2Drive, Impulse and GamerGate are refusing to stock the title over the mandatory inclusion of Valve’s Steamworks software. Infinity Ward was also obliged to pull its controversial “F.A.G.S.” trailer on Monday after much anti-homophobic uproar over the weekend, and to top things off the first pirate copies found their way internet-wards on Tuesday.

Outside the Call of Duty bubble, Gearbox’s Randy Pitchford won this week’s trash talk trophy by labeling Valve’s antipathy to the PS3 “childish and narrow-minded”, and Bungie’s launch of the Halo Waypoint Xbox Live hub was comprehensively overshadowed by the maybe-possibly leaking of Halo: Reach screens.

DICE followed up its popular adherence to the dedicated server model by announcing a PS3-only multiplayer beta for Bad Company 2 (fortunate news indeed for those of us who evidently can’t play it for shit), and Epic declared open season on Unreal Engine 3 dev kits.

The financial news desk is awash in doom and gloom, with Ubisoft, THQ, Konami and – yes – even Nintendo coughing up negative statistics of one kind or another. Still more upsettingly, Rockstar wants pictures of your facial hair for its rootin’-tootin’ open-worlder Red Dead Redemption. Form an orderly queue.

Enjoy the weekend.

My body’s at work, but my head and heart are sprawled in front of my desktop at home playing the Dead Before Dawn beta. After all, life’s too short not to spend a sizeable portion of it sniping at Boomers from the cover of a faux-Hawaiian coffee stand.

You can download this user-built Left 4 Dead campaign here. Initial player feedback seems mixed, with some picking on the size of the five included maps (a sixth, the finale, is still in development) and others the prevalence of bugs. The campaign is standard co-op only at present, but Versus functionality is on the way.

What else? 200 custom models and props, new AI-Director-controlled music and some “professional” voice-overs. If you ask me, they missed a trick by not titling it “Dead B4 Dawn”.

The third part of Kristan’s epic retrospective.

1998 proved to be a watershed year for the First Person Shooter, with several present-day heavyweights making their hugely impressive debuts and bringing about a genre-wide shift in power.

The release of Epic Games’ long-awaited Unreal on PC in May of that year dovetailed perfectly with the emergence of 3Dfx’s awesome Voodoo 2 3D accelerator. Suddenly PC gamers (with deep pockets) were being treated to the kind of super-smooth, high resolution visuals that rivalled anything the arcade could offer at the time.

"Unreal city, under the brown fog of a winter dawn..."

Epic’s ground-breaking Unreal tech provided gamers with more of everything. More sophisticated enemies, bigger and more architecturally intricate environments, as well as vastly improved texturing, lighting and particle effects. Also significant was that Unreal delivered sprawling outdoor areas: exploring those opulent environments set the game aside from the claustrophobic corridor shooters we’d long grown accustomed to.

Another landmark title followed later that in 1998 in the shape of Valve Software’s Half-Life. Released in November after two years in development, it single-handedly changed the single player FPS landscape forever. One of the first games to license id’s Quake engine tech, this sci-fi masterpiece was a stupendous opening salvo for Valve, blending great action with subtle, scripted narrative. It sired a long line of cinematic, story-driven videogames.

When your first game's Half-Life, you needn't bother making a second, really.

As with Unreal, Half-Life’s focus was very much on the single player experience. It embroiled players in a narrative tour de force like nothing before. The game’s approach was more subtle, more enigmatic and far more convincing thanks to superb characterisation, excellent voiceovers and a compelling premise which made the game, at times, feel every bit as absorbing as a classic sci-fi blockbuster.

It had no cutscenes, and no traditional levels as such: the game’s ‘chapters’ unfolded end to end in front of you. The action itself was enhanced by naturalistic AI techniques and a variety of settings. Its Quake-powered visuals were a touch behind the times, but in every sense that mattered it was years ahead.