As a video game company, Valve means so much for the industry at large, particularly the PC gaming world. As the owners and operators of Steam, Valve is directly responsible for pulling PC gaming back from the brink of irrelevance in the mid-2000s and helping to foster the golden age of indie games. It can be easy to forget that they also occasionally make games. The world got a big reminder this week with the release of Half-Life: Alyx, the most-impressive VR game to date.
Hot on the heels of the Half-Life: Alyx release, we asked our staff what classic Valve franchise would they like to see the studio focus on next?
What Valve franchise would you like to see come back?
More Half-Life – Asif Khan, Half-Life: Alyx reviewer
I want more fun adventures with my buddy Gordon Freeman. The VR adventures of Alyx Vance were amazing, but I just want more games in the Half-Life universe. Please understand.
Team Fortress – Ozzie Mejia, Might be a spy…
I’m living in a world of Overwatches, Fortnites, Apex Legendseseses, and (in a few months) Valorants. But you know where team-based shooters started for me?
(No, it’s not Quake, Chatty.)
They started with Team Fortress 2, a game that consumed over 2,000 hours of my life. I loved this game. It was a big part of my life for many years. It rekindled my love of gaming after college made me step away. But to see TF2 fall by the wayside and lay forgotten in a field of the newer hotness, it’s definitely time for this to come back. We’re living in an esports era and if CS:GO and DOTA have shown me anything, it’s that Valve can make games that are fun to play and fun to watch on the professional stage. Get the old cast back together (or wrangle up some new characters) and let’s go back to capturing control points and pushing payloads the Valve way, the way it was meant to be.
Give me Portal 3, you cowards! – Blake Morse, Still waiting on that cake
What can I say? I love me some Portal. The puzzles, the humor, the companion cubes. It’s all delicious video game gravy to me. Why would I not want to be ridiculed more by a sadistic GLaDOS or make friends with a potato? Maybe we’ll get lucky and Stephen Merchant will show back up for the next game as well. Or maybe we’ll make some new friends? All I know is there’s a Portal 3-shaped hole in the world right now and it needs to be filled by the people who are still alive using science!
Gimme mo’ Half-Life – Chris Jarrard, Likes to shoot stuff
In my honest opinion, the shooting in the Half-Life games is second to none. I love the feel of the shotguns in Half-Life 1 & 2, even more than those from Doom and other more acclaimed games. In these games, just fighting the grunts are so much fun, from the groundbreaking A.I. of the commandos in the first game to the satisfying ragdolls of the second game.
As I currently am without a dope VR headset, I have yet to play Half-Life: Alyx, though I’m told it is mega-dope. I have no doubts that once I do play it, I will still want more Half-Life, so please Valve, keep ‘em coming.
Portal – Sam Chandler, Now You’re Thinking
While Portal did see a spinoff with The Lab and Bridge Constructor Portal, we haven’t seen a fully-fledged sequel to Portal since 2011’s Portal 2. With the popularity of Half-Life: Alyx, there’s a great opportunity for Valve to see the potential in experimenting with their other franchises.
Portal is already too disorienting for some players and the added layer of VR might be too much for some to handle. However, it could be a really mind-bending experience to see what sort of puzzles Valve could create in the Portal universe with virtual reality.
In saying this, I’d appreciate another normal sequel to Portal that doesn’t use VR. I had such a great time playing through the co-op campaign of Portal 2 with my partner, solving the incredibly tricky puzzles and feeling like two geniuses. At the end of the day, I’d just love to explore more of Valve’s worlds.
Left 4 Dead – Donovan Erskine, Dope Boy Fresh
I’m still clinging on to hope that Valve will one day decide to return to their zombie-slaying franchise. As with other Valve sequels, the prospect of a “Left 4 Dead 3” has been highly speculated on. I think I’d be a fun twist to give Left 4 Dead the Half-Life Alyx treatment. A co-op VR zombie survival game developed by Valve could be incredible, and I hope they give it some strong consideration.
Left 4 Dead – Brittany Vincent, Senior Editor
I spent dozens of hours playing Left 4 Dead when it first came out. It’s actually the place I got my nickname Molotov Cupcake, based on the way a teammate pronounced “molotov” like “muh-lot-of.” That’s another story entirely, but I spent hours trying to get the “Cr0wnd!” Achievement learned all kinds of ways to contain the zombies and savored every moment and lull in the action after mowing through enemies. I’ve been waiting for a third entry in the series for quite some time, and for my girl Zoey to come back. It’s high time we had a new L4D, and I’m frankly shocked that we got a new Half-Life before another entry into this series.
Portal 3 – Bill Lavoy, Awoken Hunter
I’m going with Portal 3, although I really wouldn’t be against Valve firing up new installments of most of their games. They have some real bangers in their library, but when I browsed through the list Portal is the franchise that stuck out to me the most. I also figured not a lot of people would choose it in the face of Left 4 Dead, Half-Life, and Counter-Strike, but I’m seeing a lot of Portal in these entries. Oh well, maybe we can wish Portal 3 into existence.
Left 4 Dead – Josh Hawkins, Pills here!
What can I say? Despite my love for pretty much every series that Valve has released, Left 4 Dead has a special place in my heart. Sure, I’ve dumped over a thousand hours into Team Fortress 2, a few hundred in Day of Defeat, and even spent multiple hours playing through the Half-Life and Portal series. But for me, Left 4 Dead and Left 4 Dead 2 were the climax of my early gaming days.
See, back in 2010, when I first graduated high school, the shitty laptop I bought to write on wasn’t really that good. I could sometimes play a few matches of Bad Company 2, but mostly all I could get to run on it were Source games like Half-Life and of course, the Left 4 Dead series.
The action-packed zombie mayhem that made up Left 4 Dead was a staple of my late-night gaming sessions, and I made a lot of friendships and memories throughout my time playing the game. With Half-Life: Alyx making such a triumphant return to the series, I say it’s about time for Valve to take us back to the blood, guts, and fun that made up the Left 4 Dead series.
Portal – TJ Denzer, Just GlaDOS to be here working News
I do have to say, some of the most interesting games to me in the past few years have been asymmetrical titles like Dead by Daylight… and Maker games like Super Mario Maker. And I guess as I sit here looking at Valve in its current state, what if there was a Portal game that combined those concepts? A game in which one player plays as a GlaDOS-type entity, designs puzzle rooms filled to the brim with murder traps, and the players that play those rooms play either as the robots GlaDOS had working for her in Portal 2… or the very many humans discovered in a spoiler?
Now I don’t know how that would all fit together, but I think taking on Valve’s new VR grit from games like Half-Life: Alyx gives us an excellent perspective for the many hinged eyes and ears of GlaDOS throughout her domain. I also think giving players the opportunity to play the game from human or robot platformer perspectives would be a cool way to introduce gameplay that everyone could enjoy if they can’t handle VR for very long. Certainly, you’d have a bit of a split in the community over creators and players, but I think the same can be said of nearly any Maker game anyways.
Playing as the GlaDOS entity in a Portal game is an angle we have not really experienced yet, and I think it would be quite fun to exercise some dastardly control and machinations over Portal runners the same way we already do with Super Mario Maker designs.
Half-Life 3 – David L. Craddock, long reads editor
Half-Life 3. Everything else is a stopgap. I’ve said for years that the greatest thing in gaming history would Valve to put out a package called Three that contains Half-Life 3, Portal 3, Team Fortress 3, and maybe even Left 4 Dead 3. Like The Orange Box, only the absolute greatest value in the history of time and space.
Left 4 Dead – Steve Tyminski, Probably the best Steve on staff
The valve franchise that I would like to see brought back to the forefront is the Left 4 Dead franchise. We haven’t seen a full game from the franchise since 2009 and it’s coming up to the 10-year anniversary for the franchise. I can remember coming back home on breaks from college and playing it with friends. Who doesn’t like trying to survive a zombie outbreak? The game had everything at the time it was released; multiplayer, online, and a survival mode just to name a few. Zombies are popular so a new addition to the series now would be a perfect addition to the franchise.
It would appear that our staff is very fond of Portal and Left 4 Dead. Which franchise would you choose for Valve to focus on next? Let us know in the comments below!