Portal 2, About Fucking Time!

Last week a new update to the classic Valve title Portal was released. For those who don’t know, Portal was a first-person puzzler, A unique genre, that revolved around the concept of Portals and was first released two-and-a-half years ago. For those of you who have never played Portal, I suggest you do so, or at the very least play the free demo available on Steam, or play the game that kinda sorta inspired Portal, Narbacular Drop. It maintains the same game play mechanics and was made by the same people but has a completely different story.

Anyway, I’m a big fan of Portal for one major reason: I wish it was real. I know that sounds odd, but it’s true, and that is why I think the best games are ones that people wish were real, that’s why I love Myst so much, because I wish I could visit other worlds that easily, and why I wish someone could come up with a really good game involving time travel, because time travel is awesome, and why I wish I had a Portal gun. Though one must use it responsibly.

There are other reasons I love Portal, but really, they come secondary. Continue reading

Left 2 Spend Eternity In Development Hell

So in a little more than a week Left 4 Dead 2 is being released. Left 4 Dead 2 is a sequel to Left 4 Dead, a game developed by Valve that was released a year ago next week. So assuming Valve immediately saw how successful the first Left 4 Dead was and started development of Left 4 Dead almost immediately, Left 4 Dead 2 took one year to design, develop, test and tweak before it’s final release. So keeping that in mind lets look at Valves other major franchise, oh who am I kidding, their only major franchise, Half-Life.

A while ago…I can’t remember when exactly, probably about a year ago, I bought The Orange Box and for the first time got a chance to play through Half-Life 2 and it’s two episodic follow ups, as well as Portal and all three games are fun and worth the $50 I spent. Oh and Team Fortress 2 is in that set but who gives a shit especially when the sniper gets you before you can take two steps? Continue reading