Sundays are for wheeling my old gamer chair to the curb, before flopping back in my new ergonomic office chair with the same awful posture and whining, "Why doesn't it work?! Who knew that furniture named things like Titan, Pro and Conquer aren't the most conducive to lumbar support?" Before I go, "Aaaaaaahhhhhhh" so loudly I give the local cats tiny heart attacks, let's read this week’s best writing about games (and game related things!)
]]>Escape Simulator does a great job of virtually scratching that escape room itch I often get, with the added appeal of not having to leave the home comforts of my house or chair. You know what’s also a pretty great puzzle game set in successive rooms you need to escape? Portal. You may have heard of it. And now the two are set to collide in an upcoming bit of free DLC that brings Portal’s test chambers to Escape Simulator.
]]>How does one make a sequel to a basically perfect game? 2007's physics-platformer-in-a-weird-science-facility Portal is a lodestar piece of game design from top to bottom. It's one of my favourite games, and I went into 2011's Portal 2 with many a reservation. But it's very good! And there are so many things I love about Portal 2 that it's quite hard to pick just one thing to write about.
I could do "the joy of Portal 2's retro science", where you fall through the floor into the old school Aperture Science labs and see the 60s-ish version of all the big buttons and testing chambers you were put through in the first Portal. I could do "the joy of the corrupted personality cores in Portal 2", a group of corrupted AI spheres including Rick The Adventure Sphere, which is largely just Nolan North making up his own action theme song. I could even do "the joy of potatoes in Portal 2". And then I realised that most of the things I like about Portal 2 also intersect with Stephen Merchant's character Wheatley, a weird little guy (in the most pejorative sense).
]]>After zhuzhing up Portal with a shiny RTX version last year, Nvidia is at it again. This time, it’s ray-traced the cube-shaped edges of Portal: Prelude, the fan-made mod that serves as a full-length prequel to Valve’s beloved puzzler. You can go and download Portal: Prelude RTX for free now, as long as you’ve got the hardware to run it.
]]>Whether you like to visit space, indulge in an RPGs or a grand adventure, get spooked by horror or get uber techy with hacking, the chances are that there's also a puzzle game for you - hence our list of the best puzzle games on PC. The queen genre straddles many others, so our list of the 25 best puzzle games has all that we just mentioned and more. Take a look to find a new favourite puzzle game today.
]]>If I were a PC graphics bigwig, choosing which aged game to spruce up with ray tracing as an elaborate mod tools advert, I wouldn’t have gone for one with as timeless an aesthetic as Portal's. Maybe that’s why I’m not one – Portal with RTX is a gorgeous return to Aperture Science, a borderline must-play for anyone with a premium GeForce RTX GPU, and a mightily impressive demonstration of the Nvidia RTX Remix tools that built it.
Admittedly, that’s in spite of some shortcomings, including utterly broken performance on even the strongest Radeon RX graphics cards. Equip yourself with RTX hardware, however, and this free mod is a real Christmas treat.
]]>A lot of people claim foisting modern graphics on older games just results in compromising the original's artistic vision. I am a chump who likes shiny things, so the release of Portal with RTX on Steam pleases me. It's free if you own Portal, but fellow chumps should be aware that it's not running too hot for everyone, with reports of crashes and literally too-hot GPUs. Ray-tracing does not come cheap.
]]>Portal with RTX now has a release date, so anyone with a) a copy of Portal on Steam and b) a ray tracing-capable graphics card will be able to explore a freshly polished Aperture Science from December 8th.
]]>As expected, Nvidia have announced the GeForce RTX 4090 during their GeForce Beyond livestream – and confirmed the RTX 4080 for good measure. Both GPUs are based on Nvidia’s new Ada Lovelace architecture, and will launch this year: the RTX 4090 on October 12th, and the RTX 4080 sometime in November.
Key features of Ada Lovelace, and thus these new cards, include 3rd Gen RT cores, 4th Gen Tensor cores, and a new streaming multiprocessor. These supposedly add up to twice the performance of Ampere (that’s the RTX 30 series architecture currently dominating our best graphics card guide) in standard rasterised games, and up to four times the performance in ray traced games. And since Nvidia were clearly in a ray-tracey mood, they also took the opportunity to reveal Portal RTX: a semi-official mod for the original Portal that upgrades it with RT lighting and reflection effects. Corrrr.
]]>On this week's episode of the Ultimate Audio Bang, we select a few of our favourite non-traditional guns that aren't really guns. You know, the sorts of weapons that don't just spew bullets but generate portals or even clean filth off car bonnets. What really happens is we go off on a massive tangent about Deathloop, because we can't help ourselves.
]]>Earlier this month, RPS turned 15 years old, so it only seemed right that this month's Time Capsule entry should be the year of our birth: 2007. Looking back, it was a good year for PC gaming, with the release of Valve's Orange Box alone giving us three new stone-cold classics to enjoy. But what other games from the year of our Horace deserve to be preserved and saved above everything else? Find out which games made the cut below.
]]>When Katharine told me about this idea to take a look at RPS Advent Calendar winners of years past, I thought it was a good idea. But when she said she wanted me to do the first one, and that the first GOTY awarded on RPS was 2007's Portal, I almost laughed. Does Portal hold up? Why even bother asking? Shut this whole article down. Of course it holds up. It's Portal.
Of course, conventional bait-and-switch writing would dictate that this is the point where I tell you that, aha, after playing Portal again in the blinding light of 2022 it's actually a heap of rubbish, such as could only otherwise be found on the streets on day ten of a two week bin-lorry strike. But obviously that is not the case, because we're talking about Portal. If anything it's even better than I remember. Like. It's fuckin' Portal.
]]>I'm replaying the first Portal at the moment, so maybe I'm just extra-susceptible to the Valve man coming around selling tickets for his hype-train, but playing Aperture Desk Job was like sitting in a nice warm bath. It's a "playable short" - basically a 30-minute tech demo designed for the Steam Deck, to show off how to use all the little flaps and controller bits on Valve's new handheld PCxGameboy toy (like the Aperture Hand Lab for VR from a few years back). Crucially, though, Aperture Desk Job is: a) free; 2) playable on a regular PC; and iii) set in the Portal universe.
In fact, it has surprisingly large implications for said game series (no spoilers in this post, btw). And it just reminds me how good Valve are at, you know, making games. Please, Valve, make more games.
]]>I'm constantly in awe of the wild tricks that speedrunners discover in just about any game they set their collective minds to. It's always a treat to hear developers being equally astounded though, and Valve's developers are no exception. Three of them recently got to have a chat with Portal speedrunner "CantEven" to ask about extremely calculated trick shots, weird save glitches, and all the other things that game developers don't always know about their own games.
]]>Ten years ago, Valve released Portal 2. I’d like to think that the ultimate goal of Portal 2 was to get me to write an article about its tenth anniversary, so my ego wouldn’t let it go by. 10 is a nice age to celebrate, and it’s also the perfect number of random facts to pluck from the history of one of Valve’s most celebrated games. Also, I get to call them “decafacts”.
]]>The skins in Fall Guys are excellent. Mediatonic's Total Wipeout-like battle royale will let you wobble round its obstacle courses dressed as all manner of silly things - from cacti and hotdogs, to Half-Life's Gordon Freeman and Team Fortress 2's Scout. Now a leak claims that more cutesy crossover outfits are on the way, ones that will let you dress up as Pedro (the banana) from My Friend Pedro, and Chell (the human) from Portal.
]]>If you plumb the depths of human ingenuity you will resurface with a wet box of penicillin and 100 million bits of different-coloured plastic. We people are very good at making useful things, and then killing ourselves with them. But videogames, my friends. Videogames hold the solution to our self-destructive ways. That tech utopia your pal Start-up Stan is always talking about is in reach, we just need to find a way to make these 12 practical devices from videogames appear in real life.
]]>An obscenely rich teenager throws his VR controller across the room in a fit of blind panic while playing Half-Life: Alyx. It leaves the window of his bedroom at 5m/s. It falls 10m vertically and hits his neighbour’s greenhouse, smashing the glass. How many metres did the controller travel horizontally before coming to a stop in the tomatoes? Use a kinematic formula to determine your answer and show your wor--
UGH, physics. Here are 10 games where physics is not boring, but good.
]]>Well, it's finally happened. On Monday, Apple released the feared MacOS "Catalina" update, killing compatibility for dozens of 32-bit games. From this week onwards, updated Macs just flat out won't run 'em. In the constant churn of developing newer, faster, and sleeker operating systems, the Mac makers have given curators of older games a simple choice: put in the work to bring your games up to speed, or we're leaving them behind.
For some publishers, updating countless classics simply isn't worth the effort, leaving many 32-bit hits in the ground for good.
]]>This is the shipping forecast; the synopsis at 5pm. Solid Snake just west of cloak room, expected to move towards Sam Fisher on dance floor before midnight. Wrecking Ball from Overwatch, mild at 1am, becoming rabid with lust at 3am. Agent 47 from Hitman: confused, occasional peeping, becoming horny later. Red Prince: cyclonic, mainly drinking alone, peering at Steve from Minecraft with questionable motives, occasionally licking lips.
(Yes. We did a podcast about romantically matchmaking game characters.)
]]>I hope you didn’t have anything planned this week, because speedrunning extravaganza Awesome Games Done Quick starts today at 4:30pm GMT.
If you’ve never tuned in before, AGDQ is a weeklong, 24/7 marathon of games, all played as fast as possible, while streaming on Twitch and raising a whole shedload of cash for the Prevent Cancer Foundation. What’s not to like?
]]>Hooting echoed across the virtual valleys and mesas of the Internet this week after those who pan the digital stream in search of anything ending with "3" got an inkling that former Valve writer Erik Wolpaw had returned to the Half-Life mob after leaving in 2017. And yep, Wolpaw has confirmed to me that he is doing work for Valve these days - because he never really stopped. Apparently he's been contracting for them all along, working on this and that as needed, on top of working for his niece's juice shop (which was not a joke). Looks like the digipanners found Fool's Three.
]]>It strikes me as very silly that anyone is trying to declare VR a failure or a success, given that we're still working out the most basic of control systems for it. Valve's latest VR project is a new alternate controller for the HTC Vive called Knuckles, and by all accounts it's a big step in the right direction, allowing complex finger motions to be tracked, on top of offering analogue sticks and buttons. To demo the new hardware, Valve put together Moondust, a Portal-themed minigame collection designed to put the new hardware through its paces.
]]>Not every game needs to reinvent the wheel. Or even involve themselves in this business of wheels. Sometimes you need only grab a few universally beloved things and jam them together. If you had an arena multiplayer shooter that combined the best levels of Halo with the constant world-bending of Portal and added a dash of the best parts of Overwatch, well, that's what Wormhole Wars looks like it wants to be. And that's what I want it to be too.
]]>It's not the Portal follow-up we were expecting, but it's the one we got. Bridge Constructor Portal is a crossover between Valve’s comedy science puzzler and the strut-straddling engineering of the Bridge Constructor series. You’re still making bridges that wobble from A to B, and sending small vehicles across your creations. However, you also have the distraction of portals, turrets, proulsion gel and catapults, as well as a passive aggressive computer that passes judgement on your techniques. It feels fruitless to review such a straightforward cocktail - it's two flavours you may already know so let's just see how they blend together. And the opening chapters are reassuring. This is a decent wee nugget of a puzzler.
]]>The Orange Box turned 10 years old this year, and by extension Portal celebrated its anniversary too. Sitting alongside continuations of well-loved games, the short puzzle adventure could have been quickly forgotten. Tacked on to bulk up the box. It was, however, a surprise hit, winning over players with its smart spatial puzzles and writing that fans continue to quote. And while I can list lines off with the best of them (don’t even get me started on that cake), this classic’s hold on my heart comes from a person who never speaks one.
]]>Two fiendish physics puzzlers come together today in Bridge Constructor Portal, challenging players to build bridges that shuttle vehicles through deadly labs with the help of Portal's teleportation portals and gels. And, of course, Ellen McLain returns to voice the dastardly AI GLaDOS and taunt us. I have enjoyed the recent resurgence of bridge-construction games, carefully balancing beams and lacing cables then watching it all go wrong, and I'm feeling about ready for one a little different. Observe:
]]>Here’s an odd fusion. Portal is being mixed with the Bridge Constructor series to create a spin-off game about making fragile bridges that transport forklifts from one side of the Aperture Science facility to the other. In Bridge Constructor Portal we'll see GLaDOS, the robot marm of the passive aggressive puzzler, return to torment the player with what I presume will be a characteristically snide voiceover, provided by Ellen McLain. Here’s a brief teaser.
]]>Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives. One a day, every day of the year, perhaps for all time.
Is there any greater testament to the power of writing in games than all the fandom that spilled forth from Portal? Valve's first-person puzzler recently turned ten years old, and when I think back on it, so much of what I remember is otherwise plain and functional.
]]>The Orange Box is one of the strangest quirks of gaming history. Never before had a developer released three brand new, entirely separate games at the same time in one package, and thanks to digital distribution, it probably won't happen again. What makes The Orange Box truly remarkable though is that it contained two of the most-anticipated games of 2007, and what proved to be the biggest surprise hit of the year (some might argue ever).
The company was Valve and the games were Half Life 2: Episode 2, Team Fortress 2 and Portal.
]]>When we meet the creators of fictional worlds, we often want to kill them. Whether its Bioshock's Andrew Ryan and his deadly Rapture, GlaDOS and the sadistic test chambers of Portal, or Kirin Jindosh and the Clockwork Mansion. The urge to destroy these builders is partly down to the nature of their constructions - deathtraps and mazes that make the architect a cruel overseer - but there is perhaps more to it than that. With spoilers for the above, Hazel Monforton investigates the role (and the death) of the author in a medium that invites the audience into the action.
]]>I am dad, hear me whinge. Too many games, not enough spare time, for all my non-work hours are spent kissing grazed knees, explaining why you cannot eat the food in that cupboard, constructing awful Lion King dioramas out of toilet roll tubes and being terrified that the next jump from the sofa to the armchair will go fatally wrong. I'm lucky in that my job to some extent involves playing games, so by and large if there's something I really want to check out I can find a way to, but I appreciate that there are many long-time, older or otherwise time-starved readers for whom RPS is a daily tease of wondrous things they cannot play.
Now, clearly I cannot magically truncate The Witcher 3 into three hours for you, but what I can do is suggest a few games from across the length and breadth of recent PC gaming that can either be completed within a few hours or dipped into now and again without being unduly punished because you've lost your muscle-memory.
]]>Every week we expose Brendan to the radioactive chemicals of the early access laboratory. This time, the time-bending puzzles of ECHOPLEX [official site].
I am stuck. There are 15 short levels currently available in ECHOPLEX, a first-person puzzler along the lines of Portal and Antichamber, and I am stuck on level 11. It is a toughie. The thing is, I’m not sure if the game is working as intended. Bugs are part of the early access merry-go-round, for sure, but if they show up in the strict logic of a puzzle game they can be boldly destructive. But there’s a bigger problem than that: I don’t know if what I’m seeing is a bug, or if it is simply part of the puzzle that hasn’t been explained.
]]>Happy 20th birthday, Valve! Yesterday. Happy 20th yesterday. Sorry, I only just saw the Facebook notification. On August 24th, 1996, ex-Microsoft employees Gabe Newell and Mike Harrington made a beautiful baby who was mighty eye-opening.
In the dreamy game of "What if...?" one curious hypothetical is: what if Valve never existed? There can't be many companies who've had nearly as much impact. Steam (eventually) revolutionised digital distribution, changing the entire landscape of PC gaming. Half-Life was seminal; its mod scene was legendary. That'd be plenty, but Valve have made a load of other really good video games too.
]]>The Lab is a free, semi-Portal-themed collection of minigames and vignettes from Valve, designed to show of the capabilities of their new VR headset, the Vive. It's out now, but clearly most of you won't be able to try it - even if you ordered a Vive, you're weeks or more away from receiving it. Given this is, in theory, the first new Valve game in quite some time, I thought I'd tell you all about it.
]]>Half-Life and Portal movies are "in development", according to JJ Abrams. The director told IGN that "We've got writers, and we're working on both those stories. But nothing that would be an exciting update." Which means clearly Abrams isn't familiar with Half-Life fans, who can see excitement in a cloud shaped like Gordon Freeman's face.
]]>A free Portal-themed set of cosmetic items and flourishes will arrive in Rocket League [official site] tomorrow. There are gel trails for your nitro boosts, cake hats and decals, and heart-breaking Companion Cube antennae. There's plenty more along those lines as well, and it's all free, but I'm perhaps unfairly disappointed by the lack of actual portals. I hadn't even considered how amazing it would be to attach a portal to the area above my own goalmouth, causing stray shots that enter to emerge right by the opponent's goal. And if the cars could dash through portals as well? Beautiful chaos.
]]>If you were a Mega Driver back in the day (or Genesis-er if you live Stateside) then you'll know Sonic 2 was the best Sonic. The original Sonic the Hedgehog introduced the concept and set the tone, whilst Sonic 3 tried too hard with its dodgy boss melodies and pain-in-the-arse bonus levels. Anything after that was mince. Sonic 2 was the sweet spot in the series.
Why is this relevant here at RPS's House-O-PCs, I hear you ask? A ROM hacker has given Sonic something very cool from our home: an Aperture Science portal gun.
]]>Hello youse.
A few years back, there was an obscure little indie game on PC called “Portal”. It was about using portals to solve environmental puzzles, and those of us in the know had an absolute blast with it. It was followed by a sequel, called “Portal 2”, which was also great fun – but too long and with annoying voices. Now, not many people have played these games, but that hasn't stopped Cryptozoic releasing a board game based on this little-known property. Let's take a look at Portal: The Board Game.
]]>It takes a very special something to make me excited about a pinball game. I played Pokemon Pinball to death, way back when, but very few pinball games since have really captured my attention. Until now. Until the Aperture Science Heuristic Portal Pinball Device. It’s a Portal themed table for Zen Pinball [official site] and it looks fantastic. See for yourself in the trailer below the cut.
]]>Industrious internet users at Reddit have dug up brief footage of Valve's Portal 2 VR demo, the one which was playable at GDC last week and which made me so giddy.
]]>GLaDOS, GLaDOS, oh so monstrous, How does your garden grow? With portable cells and many dead Chells, And propulsion gel all in a row.
The original Portal's Test Chamber 17 is notoriously the level in which the Weighted Companion Cube made its first appearance... and met its fiery doom. Though not before it became the cube with a face that launched a thousand memes.
Thanks to an enterprising level designer, laakkone, that Chamber can now be played in Portal 2.
]]>In almost every strategy, management or sim game I play, I will immediately turn off the music which comes with the game in favour of my own. That means that Steam Music Player sounds like a good idea to me even if I long ago abandoned mp3s in favour of streaming. The built-in functionality, which lets you browse your music library and control playback from in-game using the Steam overlay, has just left beta after its initial announcement back in February.
To celebrate, Valve have made the soundtracks for some of their games freely available to those who own the associated games, including Half-Life, Half-Life 2 and its Episodes, Portal, Portal 2, and the Dota 2 documentary Free to Play.
]]>Consider this your daily dose of nice. Artist Joey Spiotto, aka Joebot, draws films and videogames as the covers of children's books. His game work includes imagined covers for Half-Life 2 (above, in part), Skyrim, BioShock, Portal, Mass Effect and more.
]]>Words by Hamish Todd.
Portal has the best-designed first-person puzzles I've ever seen. They’re surprising, focused, and concise. They are also designed very perceptively, and we can learn a lot from looking at this perceptiveness. Read on for an analysis of Portal's level design, and some lessons about what learning from it can do to improve game design.
BE WARNED: This article uses multiple animated .gif images on the same page, and might be tough to load on slower connections.
]]>With yesterday's news that Valve and J.J Abrams are working on a potential Portal movie, RPS immediately sent its spies into action. Infiltrating Valve HQ, we managed to steal three pages of script before the turrets woke up.
]]>I'm off in the strange, far-away land of Las Vegas right now, and I just got done watching Gabe Newell and JJ "Warring Trek of the Stars" Abrams chat each other up on stage. I'll have more from the talk for you soon, but here's the big take-away: Valve and Abrams are officially collaborating. "What we're actually doing here," Newell said at the talk's conclusion, "is recapitulating a series of conversations that have been going on [between Abrams and I]. This is what happens when game and movie people get together. And we sort of reached the point where we decided that we needed to do more than talk. So we're gonna try and figure out if we can make a Portal movie or a Half-Life movie together." Meanwhile, Abrams added: "And we have a game idea we'd like to work with Valve on." Finally, Gabe wrapped it up: "It's time for our industries to stop talking about potential and really execute on it."
]]>Interrupted while coiling his precious cables, the sound guy glowers at me. "Scarface? What?" Now, the way you can tell games journalists aren't like other journalists is our shame. We're shy, we lack the killer instinct, mostly, that enables tabloid hacks to doorstep grieving families and hack murdered children's phones. I'm a case in point - 6' 1", 13 stone - and I'm being intimidated by a diminutive roadie. "His assistant is called Scarface," I repeat. The roadie shrugs. As he shuffles away, he's obviously assigned me to the same aberrant category as everyone else still hanging around at the Jonathan Coulton gig - No 1 Fans, all of them.
After the gig, from the gallery of Union Chapel, I look down on the accretion disc of fandom. They're loitering but not mingling, in the hope of catching another sight of their hero. With its non-conformist heritage, this old Gothic church is a strangely perfect venue for Jonathan Coulton, whose music is packed full of liberality, anti-authoritarianism, irony and inclusiveness - and for his reverential fans. While he's best known in gaming circles for endlessly singable Portal ditty Still Alive, Coulton is the high priest of geek music. This former programmer's songs about geek culture are so well known he was made 'Contributing Troubador' at Popular Science magazine.
]]>The Sourceruns team have completed a 8:31.93 run of Portal, which is absolutely ridiculous, brilliantly devious and laudably investigative. The latter descriptor is appropriate because of the level of understanding required to complete the run. These glitch-hunters have an in depth knowledge of each chamber, of the Source engine and of the strange ways in which portals work. You can watch the run below, and read about the techniques used and the analysis of each chamber in an extensive document. Oddly, the closest I think I've ever come to exploring a game in this way was when I played deathmatch Doom for an entire year without stopping. I knew every layout and every trick, and I was still rubbish.
]]>Does P-Body sound at all like 'oddity'? I don't think it does, does it? That's why I'm torturously explaining my lame gag here. That's why they pay me the almost adequate bucks. Not to mention that the gag, if it can indeed be called a gag, is entirely redundant as this story doesn't involve Portal 2's co-op robo-chum P-Body in the slightest. Rather, it's solely to do with the Space Core, who's found himself - or at least his image - on a trip to the International Space Station courtesy of an anonymous fan at NASA.
]]>Welcome to RPS' first (and probably only) edition of Box News, an attempt at providing fair and balanced coverage of that most marginalized of objects in this digital age - the box - on the first day to conveniently feature more than one box-based news item in 437 years. On today's show, we'll be bringing you up-to-the-minute analysis of the developing Portal Lego set situation and having Limbo's lavish new Special Edition box set live in the studio. So then, let's dive right in.
]]>The first time I ever played Portal was damn near magical. Each room I walked into held promise of some diabolical new assault on both my brain and the laws of physics, but I made them look like child's play. At the time, I was certain it proved I was a genius with an IQ so huge that even my bulging genius brain couldn't count that high. Of course, I soon came to find out that everyone experienced Portal that way. So I wasn't a genius. But the puzzle designers at Valve were.
To this day, Portal stands as the most masterful example of invisibly intuitive teaching I've ever discovered. It slowly builds upon itself - sneaking new techniques into your repertoire until you're snoozing through puzzles that would've short-circuited your synapses maybe 20 minutes earlier. Is it a fit for classrooms, though? My first inclination would be to think not. I mean, it's not exactly a hyper-accurate physics simulation - even with science jokes making up the bulk of both Portal 1 and 2's brilliantly witty dialogue. That, however, is precisely the point, according to Valve director of education Leslie Redd and designer Yasser Malaika. It's how Valve games teach - not what they're teaching - that could help save a rusty, way-behind-the-times education system.
]]>Year after year, many schools struggle to teach kids basic math and reading skills. Portal, on the other hand, taught my childlike, directionally-crippled brain a slew of hyper-complex spatial reasoning abilities. In about 30 minutes. So I guess maybe it could be a good fit for the classroom. And hey, what do you know (aside from a Portal-imbued slew of hyper-complex spatial reasoning abilities)? Valve seems to think so too. The resulting program's been dubbed Teach With Portals, and it's just the beginning of Valve's new Steam For Schools initiative.
]]>Portal has been a surprisingly prolific source of inspiration for many high quality products, so a short fifteen minute film based on its universe isn't that big of a deal any more. However, what I love about Synthetic Pictures' Aperture: Lab Ratt (as spotted by The Sixth Axis) is how, in making a film based on Valve's Lab Rat comic, how successfully they portray the evil of GLaDOS.
]]>The movie Cube, the TV show Lost and, Portal are all broken down and reassembled in CUBE, a Half-Life 2: Episode Two mod about self-assembling test chambers. Unsurprisingly, I spent a lot of time stuck, but in a good way. CUBE’s an odd one: accomplished and beautifully designed in most respects, but always on the cusp of crashing. Engine errors are as ubiquitous as new puzzles. I'm still working my way through it: there's hours of content and multiple endings to complete, but it’s worth picking up and persevering if you miss Valve’s elaborately designed roomy puzzles.
]]>Imagine a Portal 2 with no GLaDOS, Chell, nor portals. Set in the 1980s. With competitive multiplayer and quantum co-op. And multiple endings. At various points, those were all things that could have hapened, as revealed by Valve last night in San Francisco.
]]>We'll just have to come to terms with rule #89: if it exists, it's in Minecraft. As proof RPS (RedstonePistonSpawner) readers, here's a look at the newly updated Portal gun mod that, when combined with the Portal 2 gels mod, manages to drop some Aperture Science all over Blockland, or Blockworld. What the hell is the name of the world that Minecraft creates, anyway? I'm calling it Cubea (pronounced like Cuba) from now on. Amazing video and instructions herein.
]]>You, there! Does your t-shirt say 'I Love Portal, Especially Mods'? And is that a giant foam handheld Portal device? Say, aren't you the chap who runs pleasemakemoreportalsmodes.com? Didn't you name your twin sons 'Blue' and 'Orange'? Is that a map to Erik Wolpaw's house in your back pocket? Nope? I was wrong on all counts. Well this is horribly awkward. You've never even heard of Portal, and you're now calling the police. Fine: I'll just have to find someone else to talk to about this marvellous Portal mod I've been playing. The mod is Rexaura, and it's more Portal in the best possible way.
]]>As science has proven, everything is better with portals. And that, it seems, includes Mega Man. Which we can totally justify posting a Dorkly video of below, because it's got portals in it, and they're from PC. OKAY?
]]>Indie dev Arthur 'Mr. Pondukian' Lee was so wrapped up in mashing together Portal and Snapshot for this physics- and time-warping tech demo that he forgot to even give it a name! Silly boy. That's breaking one of the golden rules of self-promotion. In every other respect, Lee is very clearly not silly: this is a flat-out astonishing proof of concept. What if... instead of simply opening a doorway to another area, entering a portal you created also rewound time to the point where you created its exit, which was itself done by taking a screenshot of your desired destination point/time? Ack, my clumsy words plum don't sum this up at all satisfactorily. I'm going to have to ask you to watch this video. It's worth it, trust me.
]]>Goodness, that happened with absolutely no fanfare. The original Portal, if you somehow don't already own it, can now be installed and played for free via Steam. I've just checked it on a spare Steam account and it works just dandy. This is true of both the PC and the Mac version, by the way. If you're determined to pay money for it, you can still cough up for The Orange Box or the Portal 1+2 package, but just Portal itself now defiantly costs no-pennies. Grab it from here.
Update: transpires that this is only available until September 20th, as part of a games and learning initiative from Valve. So get your skates on, yes? As long as you install the game before the expiry date, it's yours to keep forever.
You can see more on Valve's "Learn With Portals" program, wherein they're encouraging kids to create Portal levels themselves, in the rather charming video below.
]]>When one of the original designers of Portal reveals a new game, it's time to pay attention. Kim Swift, now of Airtight Games, has been chatting to Gamespot about her new project, Quantum Conundrum. Even the title should tell you that science remains high on the agenda. The game has you searching for your mad scientist uncle whose home, a gigantic mansion, has been converted into a series of perplexing science experiments. I don't think there will be any neurotoxins this time around, though I have been wrong before when it comes to neurotoxins. It didn't end well. Launch trailer and video with commentary by Kim below.
]]>It's a pretty fantastic short film. You can watch it below. The film was apparently directed by Dan Trachtenberg, and stars Danielle Rayne. It was first shown at SDCC earlier this summer.
]]>Well, looky-here. Valve's put out the winners for its Portal 2/The National make-a-video contest - which is a bit of a relief, as people kept mailing us with their videos like we had some sort of judiciary power. We don't! We only have that over the life and/or death of every sentient being on the planet. We cannot, repeat cannot, decide the winners of other people's competitions.
So, here are the two victors, which I shall refer to as Sad Puppet and Cut-Up Lab Rat. Warning: watching them will require you to listen to a maudlin piano song that may affect your mood for the worse.
]]>Over the last few years, Valve have been quietly honing the fine art of viral marketing in an online age, and comics have been a big part of that. A cartel of in-house writers and the excellent pencils of Michael Avon Oeming (and others) have created some rather splendid words'n'pictures. Of course, they were merely digital. HOW DARE YOU INSULT OUR EYEBALLS WITH YOUR CRUMMY JPEGS? Why, that's for philistines and people too damned lazy to turn paper pages. This horrendous oversight and offence to everything that some angry guy somewhere probably holds dear is about to be corrected, thanks to a hardback compilation of Valve's various Portal, Left 4 Dead and Team Fortress 2 comics due from august comic publisher Dark Horse later this year.
]]>Speaking of Portal-based competitions, it's about time we took a look at how things are progressing with Valve's other challenge - to make a music video for gloomy The National song Exile Vilify, which played a minor role in the game. There aren't quite as many submissions as I'd have expected so far (either that or people keeping forgetting to tag their Youtube videos with PORTAL2NATIONALEXILE), but I've gone through and picked out a few below to demonstrate both the variety and, in some cases, the skill on offer.
Featured: cats, lego, crying, animation, more crying, stop-motion, yet more crying, Half-Life 2, wow these people are unhappy, Mirror's Edge, CHEER UP and penguins.
]]>It's out! It's here! If you a) loved Portal 2 and want more and b) were one of the lunatics who claimed it was only five minutes long or c) felt it didn't get as hardcore as it might have done, you may in one or all of those cases be very pleased to hear that the official modkit has been released - a flurry of fan-made extra game content hopefully awaits.
]]>I remember the game that inspired Portal, Narbacular Drop, looking a bit like Minecraft, so you could say that Extreme Portalcraft - a Minecraft mod that offers new Portal puzzles, featuring everything from the portal gun to pressure plates - takes Portal back to its cube roots. That's a science joke! Sort of.
You can download chapter one of the mod here, and chapter two here. You can also watch of trailer for chapter one after the jump, if only to admire the craftsmanship that's gone into this. Thanks to RPS reader Matthew "Fingers" Jones for the tip.
]]>Well, this perhaps goes some way towards making up for the whole over-priced robot hats thingy. Official word has just arrived in our inbox from Valve that the first full-on DLC for the lovely Portal 2 will be free (on all platforms), and promises "new test chambers for players, leaderboards, challenge mode for single and multiplayer modes, and more." That news again: free. The list of planned content also suggests there'll be something a little more challenging than in the main game (the arguable ease and signposting of which we had a slight but affectionate moan about in our verdict yesterday), and a chance to really push Portal 2's crazy physics as far as they'll go.
]]>Things that are good + LEGO = Happiness. It's a sum we were all taught in school, and it's as true today as it ever was. So when a clever person, Catsy [CSF], builds a customised GLaDOS and Chell out of LEGO, I'm so sold. Have a look at a couple of the splendid results below.
]]>In the week of Portal 2's release, it seems apt that Valve's games should dominate the mod scene's output. While the range of titles you can mod these days is impressive, and so many of the tools are easy to learn, I've still yet to come across a moddable engine that's quite as intuitive and flexible as Source. I can't wait to see what people can do with Portal 2 when we're able to mod that. It's going to be very interesting to see the results. Onwards, then...
]]>Okay, what. All this diligent, web-wide meta-potato-harvesting to apparently get Portal 2 unlocked early, and now something's gone all weird, just when the end was in sight. The GLaDOS@home site is showing the work so far seeming being undone at a rate of knots. We don't know why, we don't know the result. But we damned well hope people haven't spent money on a collection of indie games purely because they thought it would win them early access to Portal 2 that they now may not get.
]]>While the GLaDOS@Home distributed potato-collecting event is still ongoing, hints are emerging that there may be even more to come following its conclusion. Portal 2 being released early is the apparent plan, but could there be something more?
The latest Steamcast (an unofficial fan radio show) apparently aired with a brief Morse Code signal playing over the chatter, which the hosts claim to have been unaware of. You can hear it for yourself below and ponder upon its authenticity, but if it's real this is what it says:" it's not over the others have been compromised."
Ah.
]]>It's hard not to think that musical blocks weren't added to Minecraft with the sole intention of ensuring a trillion new YouTube videos that we all can't resist posting. Double that down with the internet's endless love for Portal's Still Alive (how will they ever compete with that in Portal 2?), and you've got a post that has to be there first thing on a Monday morning to correctly start your week. And this isn't a half-arsed job. Incredibly only taking five or six hours to put together, this is a remarkable piano rendition of the Coulton song.
]]>The other day I was thinking about games in which you would occasionally fall out of the bottom of the map. San Francisco Rush was good for that, on the console toys. You could spill out of the map and race around in infinite pale green. "I remember when games used to be full of glitches," I thought to myself. And then I saw Portal completed in ten minutes and realised that they still are. You just need to find them.
In other news: Why would you find them? Unless you were playing Söldner! or something, where that was the point of playing it. Ten minutes of your life below. Imagine what that means in minutes of his life.
]]>Just clearing out my phone and found some footage and shots I took at the MCM Expo last weekend. It's of a Portal cosplayer who caught my eye because she had a remote control Companion cube*, which is pretty fancy. Also, now I look again, looks a lot like a teen version of Ex-Edge Ed now-designer Margaret Robertson. Spooks! Click through for the full photo, and find the snippet of MOVING CUBE is below...
]]>Last night at PAX, Valve released a new collection of co-op screenshots from Portal 2. I got to thinking that you might like to look at them. In response to this thought, I've put them up on popular PC gaming website Rock, Paper, Shotgun. They're below. As usual, click on them for largess. And largeness.
]]>Delirium Wartner altered us to this fascinating snippet. Michael "Braingamer" Abbott's day job is working at Wabash Liberal Arts college in Indiana. In the new (compulsory) Enduring Questions course they'll be engaging with a variety texts with a general theme of humanity, across all ages. So we'll have Gilgamesh rubbing shoulders with Poetics, Donne's poetry, Hamlet, the Tao Te Ching and... Portal. The full story behind it is fascinating, but the core story is that a long-established (1832) college have decided that it's worth putting a videogame on the syllabus for study. Abbott also talks about other games he considered - Planescape Torment and Bioshock - but decided on Glados' star turn. Which does make me think... well, if you were in the same situation, what games would you put on a liberal arts reading list? I suspect I may have made the same call as Abbott. Or Robotron, obvs
]]>O frabjous day. For the first time in some three years, we're treated to brand new words from the world's second-favourite homicidal AI (SHODAN still has the edge, right?), Portal's GLaDOS. Her lilting synth-tones narrate a lovely animated ad pimping yesterday's free release of the original Portal, returning us to the heady days of Aperture Science motivational videos. That's not at all. The deceased (OR IS SHE? (she isn't)) robocrazy slips in a little tease for Portal 2 at the end, confirming that co-op play will be front and centre in the next round of physics-abusing adventures. Welcome back, missus.
]]>If I had my way, Portal guns would appear in all other games. Far Cry 2, Dragon Age, World Of Goo, Freecell, the lot. And they'd appear in real life. Imagine how great things would be if I had my way. However, if the modding project of one Pawn from 3-PG manages to escape some awkward obstacles, we could soon be seeing a mod that allows the Portal gun in Team Fortress 2. Called, rather wonderfully, Team Portress, the video below explains how the gun works in game, first demonstrating what it's capable of, then showing you the weapon in a proper game. The catch? According to the poster, Valve has recently introduced a ban on custom items being given to players to prevent the anarchic distribution of hats.
]]>Portal is completely free to play until May 24th. Not that you haven't already bought it. Right?
]]>Valve appear to have decided to own March, in what's an increasingly frightening/thrilling internet invasion. Yeah, that's two Valve stories in a row - but we can't not post about such things. Just a few minutes ago, Portal updated itself again - the patch notes reading simply "added valuable asset retrieval." What could it mean? Is it the final piece in the (potentially) Portal 2 puzzle? Given Valve's predilection for making TF2 update drip-feed news last a week, I suspect we're not quite at the end yet. What this is, though, is a clear sign to load up Portal and hunt for mystery changes right away.... Already, I'm told, facepunch.com and Steam forumites have uncovered two new dinosaur.fizzle files and the ominously-named body_drag_01.wav. I'm hearing hints there may be a new map in there too.. Ooh! Ripe for mystery-harvesting, surely?
Update: it's a (slightly, but tantalisingly) new ending. Video beneath the cut. German robots? Parties? Oh yes. Portal is getting a sequel - which leaves the resounding question of whether it will, as is widely speculated, be linked to HL2: Episode 3 or not...
]]>More revelations from the ongoing ARG-decoding, which is currently neatly summarised here. The latest is that they've been able to dial into an Aperture Science bulletin board and download a load of ASCII art. It's quite clearly Portal / Weighted Companion Cube-related stuff, but it wasn't giving much away. But then someone tried rotating some of it...
]]>You might have noticed Steam downloading an update for Portal and HL2 Episode 2 earlier. Just a routine patch, you probably thought. You're wrong, stupid! Learn to be more paranoid, why don't you? Important secrets are being revealed...
]]>Over at Eurogamer today I have a great big interview with Kim Swift, the project lead on Portal who has recently moved to head up a team at Airtight Games. It's part of EG's Retro Sundays, so the focus of the interview was on Narbacular Drop, how that game came into existence, and the path it took to become the seed that inspired Portal. We also discuss that games that preceded it at DigiPen, and later Swift's philosophy of gaming and where she'd like to see the medium heading. Also she mocks me. Here's a chunk of it. The rest of it is here.
]]>As mentioned on the podcast (what you don't know about that podcast is Kieron and I fought to the death afterwards. He killed me. These are in fact the words of Kieron wearing Alec's skin as a hat), we're not entirely sure why we haven't mentioned the surprisingly elaborate ASCII re/demake of Portal on the site as yet. Let's correct that. Did you know there's an ASCII re/demake of Portal in the works? And that it's surprisingly elaborate?
]]>Been online for a while, it seems, but Shawn Elliot's Tweet-o-thing expose us to the above lovely fanart by Peganthyrus of the 'shipping of ur-AI-hottie Shodan and fairly-ur-AI hottie GladOS. Above is her humourous take on it. And beneath the cut, the more slashy approach. Click through to go to the full images on her deviant-art page at much better image quality.
NSFW? I think it's fine, but I'm a big old pervert.
]]>Oh, your face just then. It was all like WTF ZOMG NO WAY!!!!!! Like, rilly.
Sorry, but this isn't a reveal of the rumoured official prequel to the gamette that stole our hearts and minds around about this time last year. Instead it's a mod, but considering pretty much every other Portal mod has been little more than a level pack, this is a particularly ambitious one.
Specifically, it has a storyline. It even has NPCs that aren't cubes or turrets.
]]>Via the big K, Mirror's Edge, as recreated in Portal.
]]>The horrible rumour: a follow-up to Portal, available only on console. Well, that's no rumour - Portal: Still Alive is definitely due to crop up on Xbox 360 later in the year. What we didn't know was exactly what this apparent sequel would comprise. There's been some outrage from the good people of PCinia, concerned that they may been shirked by Valve. Imagine - new levels, new GlaDOS, new Cube, new theme music, all denied to Portal's true devotees.
The happy truth: nah. In fact, you can play Still Alive's extra bits right now.
]]>[Stares down-page in faint terror.] What a lot of arguments we're going to have today. So, for those of you currently visiting us in search of gaming rather than debating, hopefully this will do the trick.
]]>More Portal fan-gaming, this time documenting the tale of one of GlaDOS' former guinea pigs. It's a so-so room escape game of sorts, hinging solely on simple clue-deciphering to unlock a sequence of doors, but hell, it's got Aperture Science stylings, so you'll probably dig it. Edit - or maybe not, given the venomous reaction to it in comments.
]]>Lego Portal, now there's a franchise collision we could all get behind. Anyway, it's not a game but rather an animation by designer Nick Larsen. You can view the full thing here. It's moderately amusing. In other Portal fan news: this.
]]>After the cosplay, on the way back to the station, I passed the London Scientology Office, scene of the recent Anonymous demonstrations against Scientology being rubbish and evil and stuff. Now, I'd heard about protesters chanting The Cake Is A Lie, but hadn't seen how they'd repurposed nearby traffic crossings...
]]>IGN delivered an interesting quote in yesterday's Scott Miller interview, regarding the direction 3D Realms are taking with the new projects they're working on:
]]>Aw, it's so cute when the big, mainstream newspapers try so hard. Yeah, I'll patronise them until the day they give me a high-paying job. It's coming. I can feel it. Smell it.
Covering the rise of the indie game, the Los Angeles Times gets all frothy and excited with a plucky-underdogs-make-good approach as the little people take on the behemoths of the gaming industry. Like, for instance, Portal!
]]>Two quick Valve-related happenings for you info-starved masses. And, for once, to do with actual games, rather than about some guy laser-etching a Weighted Companion Cube into his pelvis.
]]>It seems churlish not to link to all this madness.
First up, it's TF2 in Lego!
Follow the link, as there's lots more of these, and it's obligatory that you look at them.
Next, how about a Weighted Companion Cube made of balloons?
]]>Gaming SA have this, which is pretty cute. One Thrashbarg - we suspect not his given name - decided to actualise the end sequence and a suitably creaky old terminal to play the tune. The processor is a Intel 2Mhz 8080. The sound is a Commodore 64 Side. The Code is assembler. And the video of it can be seen here. One question remains - since it's a YouTube link, why didn't I just post the code linking to the video and save myself the effort of cropping and uploading a screenshot? I must have kidney beans for brains.
]]>Well, a tease of it anyway.
Gamasutra have posted a little of a Portal post-mortem, written by RPS-crushes Kim Swift, Erik Wolpaw and Jeep Barnett. It's taken from the January Issue of Game Developer, which can actually be bought in a PDF format for (er) money. Man, I wish people would give us money. Anyway, the two quoted sections involve the development of the game's fiction and overcoming the technical stuff. Since I'm feigning ignorance of tech-stuff, let's quote from the origins of GladOS bit. That sounds like an RPSy thing to do.
"Before the writing started, we met with Erik and discussed our list of narrative constraints. Since at the time we were using some Half-Life art assets, and because we wanted to leave ourselves the option of someday using the portal gun in a Half-Life game, we decided that the story should in some way connect to the Half-Life universe.
]]>
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