"You can’t say “ground-breaking first person shooter” without mentioning the Half-Life series in the same breath. Since its initial release on the PC in 1998, the series has garnered overwhelming critical acclaim as well as commercial success. Crowbar-wielding Gordon Freeman fanboys have been frothing for Valve’s next concoction – Half-Life 2: Episode 3 – for over a year. When E3 came and went with nary a whisper about the next installment, it stung like a headcrab bite. Good news is—Episode 3..."

"Valve marketing boss Doug Lombardi said that the next installment in the Half-Life franchise would not be showing up at E3 2008, shooting down rumors that began circulating the Internet yesterday.

But, he said that a "playable Left 4 Dead will be on display in a Valve-hosted suite."

Half-Life 2: Episode 2 launched relatively recently (October 2007), but the franchise's loyal fanbase is already ready for more.

In the absence of Episode 3, Left 4 Dead will be Valve's focus at E3. The g..."

"At a conference on Steam and the future of PC gaming at its Seattle headquarters today, Valve announced that it would be introducing a new feature to its digital distribution platform that allows remote storage of all game data for Steam games.

Steam already allows you to play any games in your Steam library from any PC. Steam Cloud will extend that service to game data - examples given were a progress save from Half-Life, or your keyboard bindings and option settings from Team Fortress 2...."

I read HERE (thanks Naked Snake3) that NVIDIA (The graphics card production company) is giving away some free games to anyone with an NVIDIA graphics card.

I imagine this applies to both pre-installed (manufactured PCs), and separately purchased (user installed) graphics cards.

The Games:
Portal: The First Slice (demo)
Half Life 2: Deathmatch
Half Life 2: Lost Coast
Peggle Extreme

Total Size = ~6.8GB

I've set up a (free) Steam account, and my PC qualifies. I have a dated Nv...