Right on the heels of 50% off weekend offer on Portal, Valve come sup with some more good news and this time it’s the turn of the Xbox 360 owners to celebrate. Taking a leaf out of Battlefield: Bad Company’s book, Valve has confirmed to 1up that Left 4 Dead on the Xbox 360 will have dedicated servers on Microsoft’s Live online service.

This news has brought a lot of cheer in the console community as many believe that’s the way forward, especially when we are paying close to USD 50 for Xbox Live annually. Dedicated servers translates into a better online experience with Left 4 Dead, especially when co-op happens to be the USP of the game.

Read the complete article to get some more juicy news about the game and a sneak-peek at the achievements.

If you happen to be one of those few people who call themselves a gamer but is yet to play the award winning Portal by Valve, we have some good news for you. Steam News tell us that Portal is now available for $9.99 i.e. INR 437.50 on the PC, which means Valve is giving the game away at a hefty 50% off.

Before the procastination bug bites you again, we would like to add that the offer is valid only for this weekend i.e. till September 1st. Take out your credit cards and get this game before the offer expires. Seems like Christmas has come early for PC gamers!

The market place is teeming with vibrancy and life to a point where you actually feel you’re in 11th century Jerusalem. However being an assassin in such troubled times means only one thing, you’re in the city on business. Your target, a town preacher with a hidden agenda.

You wait, watching from the roof tops as he makes his way to a secluded spot after spewing his half-baked propaganda. As soon as he’s alone, you descend from the sky, his back facing you as you hurl a few punches at him, beating him into submission. No one said this would be non-violent, or so god damned involving.

While he puts up a feeble resistance to your super-human combat skills, the trees sway, creating shadows that dance across the stone buildings in the mid-day sun, you can almost feel the breeze. The city crier concedes and vital information changes hands. You draw your sword to reschedule his appointment with god.

All seems well, until, from absolutely nowhere, a burly man decked in 11th century couture decides to amble down this lonely spot and manages to miraculously walk in between your blade and the victim. And come out unscathed. David Copperfield’s ancestor perhaps?

It’s amazing how an anomaly can reduce an experience like this to the rank of a mere video game with flaws et al.

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Everybody seems to be celebrating this time of the year. Except us, of course, who’re working harder than ever on the Game of the Year awards and getting those awesome prizes out to you guys. But it looks like the Valve team wants to wish us a very Orange-y Christmas this year, especially if you look at the nice little security camera footage that’s being aired from inside the secret Aperture Science Holiday Vault - complete with the Gnome, the Weighted Companion Cube (aww!), the cake, lots of supply crates and a cute little turret hiding near them all, just begging you to go for the cake.

You can watch the video online here, or download the Flash Video file (Flash Player required) straight off our site here.

Download Aperture Science Holiday Vault 07 Surveillance Video (FLV/20.5 MB)

And that’s not all, you can also buy the official Orange Box OST off the Valve Store now, with great music from Episode Two, Team Fortress 2 and Portal, along with a special version of “Still Alive” by songwriter Johnathan Coulton and singer Ellen McLain, which isn’t available anywhere else. Or if you want to spend just on your games, they’ve even got the greatest holiday promotion going where you can pick up great games at 10% to 50% off their usual prices. Good tidings for everyone!

We love Achievements! No, we’re not outright whores, maybe just Achievement Nymphomaniacs. And we love it so much that we want to see the system implemented in games across all platforms, which at least Steam seems be doing for the PC. With the achievement system in place for Half-Life 2: Episode Two, Portal and Team Fortress 2, Valve has let it slip at the official forums that more achievements are on their way for other games in the Source catalog as well. So for all those PC owners raring to go at the One Free Bullet achievement, you may be able to do just that soon enough.

Valve’s Erik Johnson has said that Steam users should expect to see a whole lot of interestingly difficult achievements roll out across Half-Life 2, Half-Life 2: Episode One, Counter-Strike: Source and Day of Defeat: Source soon enough, with some of the multiplayer achievements rolling out even before the end of the year.

And oh, in case you are wondering about that pic above, yes, I am still left with one annoying achievement in Episode Two - the goddamn grub squishing one. I somehow always manage to miss one grub, and yes, I got the one at the end near the mine exit. Damn grubs!

The Orange Box is already well on top of my list for Game of the Year. Sure, it’s not a game, but what the heck, Portal alone is worth any award heaped upon it, even if you don’t count the excellent Episode Two or the insanely fun Team Fortress 2. With Episode Two wrapping up with a gut-wrenching cliffhanger, fanatics such as yours truly are already salivating over playing Episode Three and Portal 2. That is, provided they are released some time before we die, considering Valve’s infamous release date hijinks.

Talking to Rock, Paper, Shotgun’s John Walker for an interview, Episode Two’s project lead David Speyrer has justified the lack of an Episode Three trailer saying that they are trying something “pretty ambitious” for the project, and didn’t want to overcommit.

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Yes, yes, we all knew this was coming, but now we have pictures, straight from the Steam Update News. Delivering on their promise of giving us all our own lil’ fluffy Weighted Companion Cube for Christmas, Valve has announced that it will soon be taking orders for the plush toy, along with fluffy Companion Cube dice for your car’s rear-view mirror. There’s no mention on the pricing yet, but it should sell for about $30 - around the same price all their plush toys seem to retail for. As for me, I shall call mine Fuzzy and he shall be mine… at least, until they start preorders for the Portal turret toy…