When not dowloading Unreal Tournament 2004 mods, why not check out the latest 1024x768 Half-Life 2 video in Bink format. "Coast" shows about three more minutes of footage from Valve's upcoming first person shooter sequel. Thanks Eurogamer.

As noted on the Steam website news page, the third phase of Half-Life 2 preloading has now started. Sign in to Steam to get the majority of Half-Life 2 models installed on your PC. Thanks nachowray.

Half-Life2.net has two new high-res Half-Life 2 screenshots, first shown in a recent issue of PC Gamer US. According to some recent stories Valve will be submitting a release candidate of the game to Vivendi by September 15.

The Steam website has been updated, mentioning that the second phase of Half-Life 2 preloading on Steam has started. This new preload will focus on the audio part of the game.

The FiringSquad has rerun their Half-Life 2 benchmarks, after being informed by Valve that the GeForce FX needs to be forced to use DirectX9. The article offers a full feature list for the DX7, DX8, DX8.1 and DX9 codepaths and has several image comparisons as well.

If you're a Steam user, you've probably noticed that Half-Life 2 is now available for pre-loading. Though the game has not yet gone gold, Valve is sending out certain parts of the game that will not change until the game ships. Of course, if you intend to buy the game in stores you don't need to pre-load the game through Steam. Valve sends over the following note which mentions Steam purchase options for the game will be announced soon

Half-Life 2 pre-loading begins to Steam account holders today. Over the coming days, those who have selected the pre-loading option will have encrypted Half-Life 2 files delivered to their PC. No purchase is required to pre-load HL2, but is required to activate the game. Purchase options will be released soon. Then, the moment the game is made available, those who have pre-loaded and purchased Half-Life 2 via Steam will be authenticated and ready to start playing. For more information, please visit www.steampowered.com

So we've seen all the Counter-Strike: Source / Half-Life 2 engine graphics performance testing, but what about some audio benchmarks? After reading some threads on the Shack here, Geoff at Tech-Report decided to find out the differences between various audio cards. Results might surprise you, depending on how much you hate or don't hate Creative.

We have two more Half-Life 2 videos for you guys, Tenements and Ravenholm. Both movies offer several minutes of high-resolution ingame footage (in the usual Bink format), first shown during May's Electronic Entertainment Expo.

[ download Tenements, download Ravenholm ]

Two more high-resolution Half-Life 2 movies from this year's Electronic Entertainment Expo have found their way online, thanks to Games Domain. First up is the G-Man video, which is just him talking to Gordon. Then there's the train station video, which shows Gordon arriving in City 17. Both movies are in the usual Bink format. In other Half-Life 2 news Valve's Erik Johnson made this post in our comments, mentioning the preloading of parts of the game has been slightly delayed.

Half-Life 2 preloading is set to begin on Steam some time today although you cant really do anything with the preload considering the game is a couple of gigs you might want to leave Steam running for a while.

Well it looks like as fun as that preloading of Half-Life 2 for launch on Steam is... it does come with a bummer for Valve. It appears that Valve didnt notice one of the files was a GCF file with the entire game dialogue that people have been able to open. This was first reported by the guys at HL2World and then GameSpot confirmed it. Although Valve hasnt made any official comment.

Planethalflife has a brief Q&A with Valve Software asking a fairly random assortment of questions about Half-Life 2 / Source / Steam / Yogurt / etc.

Lets start out with a bit of Half-Life 2 this morning! Sogamed is sporting an interview with Yahn from Valve Software asking a good number of questions about the demo recording and other questions related to spectating in Half-Life 2 (and of course CS: Source)

I think the high level commands are pretty similar. The playback fidelity of the HL2/Source demos is much smoother now. We have a couple of new tools, one is a VCR/DVD like Play/FF/Rewind UI element that lets you pause a demo. We made it so you can 'fly around' in a paused demo, which is really handy for getting exact screenshots. You just pause the action and fly around. Demos now can have an associated 'metadata' file (.vdm - Valve demo metadata) which can do things like screenfades, titling, issue console commands, change fov or playback rate etc. There’s a built-in GUI for playing with that stuff.

Also, a new Half-Life 2 trailer has made it way out onto the internet over the weekend that many of you will want to check out. Although the areas shown in the trailer arent anything new it does manage to give a good feeling of what it may be like to play the game.

Oh and on top of that, Maarten put together some videos and screenshots of the latest Counter-Strike: Source beta.

According to a new post by Valve's Gabe Newell on the Half-Life 2 Fallout forums, some Half-Life 2 assets will start preloading through Steam soon. Things that won't change until the game ships; like textures, audio, etc, should be appearing on your harddrive starting August 17. Of course this doesn't say anything about a release date, but it can't be months away if they are starting to do this.

Though Doug Lombardi told IGN just a few days ago there wouldn't be any more Half-Life 2 media until the game's releases, here are three new screenshots from Valve's upcoming shooter posted on the Half-Life 2 website.

In other Valve news CSNation reports that the Counter-Strike: Source beta pre-loading has been delayed. It was scheduled to start loading onto computers through Steam today, but that won't be the case. There will be more info soon.

PC.IGN has a new Half-Life 2 preview, offering impressions of what they got to play at G4's G-Phoria awards show. According to Valve's Doug Lombardi, we won't be seeing any more media from the game until release so nothing gets spoiled.

According to Half-Life Source Half-Life 2 is getting pretty close to completion, with the game going gold in August and then hitting stores in September. Here's what they had to say

According to recent conversations we've had with Valve's Doug Lombardi, Half-Life 2 will be passed on to publisher Vivendi for final mastering and duplication within days for it's early August target. The official appearance will make store shelves sometime in mid to late September.

After checking directly with Gabe Newell at Valve Software to confirm this quote we've got a couple of pieces of news from Valve for you guys. Here's the quote from Gabe himself:

Right now we are looking at our bug numbers.  Each day you fix some bugs and you find some new bugs.  The net number tells you how quickly you will get to zero. At our current rate of find/fix bugs, we'll be down to zero bugs in 16 days.

In addition to that, word has come out that August 10th has been set as the tentative CS:Source beta program to begin. Keep in mind these timelines are not set in stone though. Thanks to HL2World for the tip.

A brief Half-Life Q&A has been posted at Computer Games Online. Valve's Doug Lombardi is asked about the state of the game, SDK release plans, Counter-Strike: Source, demo plans, the HL2 Collector's Edition and system upgrade recommendations.

CS-Nation has some Counter-Strike: Source impressions, posted by one of their readers. The Half-Life 2 engine powered version of the game is being shown off at a special event in South Korea. There's also media here.