Steam’s family sharing feature Steam Families is now available to everyone on the platform, letting up to six total people share games from a single library, with each individual having access to their own saved games, achievements, and workshop files.
This means that, yes, when you all sit down together in the evening, you can enjoy a hearty family meal in the knowledge that between you, you technically own six copies of the Cities Skylines Big Butt Skinner Balloon.
Each person on the account will have one of two roles: adult or child. Adults can manage parental controls, set hourly or daily playtime limits, approve purchase requests, and control store access. Valve appear very proud of making it easier for parents to spend money, streamlining the “time-consuming” task of buying games for their kids.
]]>Portal: Revolution is an eight hour fan-made Portal 2 prequel, with 40 new test chambers, voiced characters and new puzzle mechanics. It looks seriously impressive and it's out now, with a trailer below.
]]>Devolver have released a Let's Play for robo-philosophical puzzler The Talos Principle 2 in which the Let's Player is GLaDOS, nemesis of Valve's Portal games, with which The Talos Principle has a few things in common. They've brought on original Portal voice actress Ellen McClain to narrate the footage, and the result is genuinely quite funny. As you'd expect, GlaDOS isn't that impressed by Croteam's work. I score this a 7/10 on the Hoot And/Or Holler scale.
]]>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).
]]>Portal 2 is obviously brilliant, in part because each of its chapters possesses a distinct charm. GLaDOS’ return, for instance, is a stretch of pure puzzling with just a dash of dread, while your first steps into the abandoned 1960s Aperture facility interrupt a fairly hopeless tone with an upbeat sense of discovery. For me, though, Portal 2 peaks late. So late that by the time it begins, your journey through the 'true' puzzle chambers are essentially over, leaving you as little more than a loose end in the big glowing eye of a former buddy. It’s Chapter 9: The Part Where He Kills You! Mmm, love that part.
]]>Unlike buses, Valve games do not come in threes. That isn't about to change anytime soon, but one of the main writers behind both Portal games has revealed that they've got a "pretty awesome" idea for Portal 3. Erik Wolpaw say he and fellow Portal 2 penner Jay Pinkerton have even floated that idea around Valve, to a positive response. It's totes on the cards, is what it sounds like.
The news comes from Wolpaw's recent interview with YouTuber DidYouKnowGaming, which is also worth a watch to learn about all the ideas Valve didn't wind up using in Portal 2. At one point it had bullet time.
]]>It's been a hot minute since we last gathered round the RPS Time Capsule vault (thanks, Gamescom), but at long last we have returned with another cracking year of PC games to preserve: 2011. In hindsight, it's a bit of an interesting year for Time Capsuling purposes, as we're now getting to the point where games from this era are getting their own remakes and remasters, or fancier, super duper director's cut special editions. We've included the original 2011 release of one of these games in this month's Time Capsule, but there's another notable exception we've decided to save for further down the line. I mean, seriously, would you really recommend vanilla Skyrim from 2011 over 2016's Special Edition?
]]>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.
]]>Valve released Portal 2 over a decade ago, but there’s always something new to play for it. Portal 2 map makers can easily and quickly create puzzles from within the game, and that’s resulted in more maps than are humanely possible to play in several lifetimes. I tried. I’ve been reincarnated three times and only made it through one tenth of my list.
Something has to be done. So I made a smaller list of the best mods that I know are worth playing. Then I cut it down some more, because RPS ran out of RAM. Seriously, there’s far too much good stuff to play. But you have to make a start somewhere. So let’s do that here.
]]>Portal 2 has some of the best editor tools Valve ever made, and the game's community has responded by using those tools to create ten years of regular new puzzle rooms and mods. Now a small update to Portal 2 has made a big change, lifting the 100MB file size limit on uploads to Portal 2's Steam Workshop.
]]>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”.
]]>Portal 2 has just turned ten years old, and what better way to celebrate than by adding some extra head scratchers to Valve's tricky puzzle box? Portal Reloaded is a Portal 2 mod that adds 25 new puzzles and a brand new type of portal. This new, green portal lets expert portalers travel 20 years in the future and solve Aperture Science rooms across both space and time.
]]>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.
]]>It’s Friday the 13th, the day of Saint Badluck, patron saint of ladders and casinos. And it is a fabulous holiday. Out there, parades are getting ready to be rained on, and children are looking forward to tonight’s shenanigans, when they will dress up as mirrors and knock on doors, declaring: “sweets or I’ll smash myself”. I love Friday the 13th. So many cherished memories. So many splinters of reflective glass.
So, Happy Bad Luck Day. Here’s a list of the 9 unluckiest characters in videogames. Spoilers for pretty much every game mentioned. So, watch out.
]]>Playing games with other people is one of the beloved traditions of liking video games at all, and if you're the friendly type like us at RPS, then you'll enjoy games where you work with others, rather than against them. That's why we've put together our list of the best co-op games on PC for you to find common ground with your besties. Whether you want to shoot monsters together, shoot robots together, or get a divorcing couple to work together as they run around their own home as tiny doll versions of themselves, then you can find something to enjoy on this list of co-op games.
]]>That squeaking noise is 2019 slowly deflating in the corner. You’re done now, noble year. Thanks for trying. Uh-oh, I’m getting introspective and thinky. I’d better distract myself. With the holidays all but over, how did you manage to survive them? Tell me what you played and what sort of fun you had. I'll go first! I survived with Portal 2.
]]>Just after Portal 2 was released, Valve and Geoff Keighley also released The Final Hours of Portal 2, an interactive book about the making of 2011’s best potato-based puzzle game. The most revealing story in the book was about how Valve had spent some time making a game that was Portal’s follow-up in name only. It was set in the past, without Chell or the GlaDOS that we know, and had a new mechanic called “F-Stop”. It was essentially a different game and was never released.
Valve remained coy about what F-Stop was in the hope of eventually using it, but they never did. In an unlikely twist, a developer using the Source Engine for their own game were given permission to show off F-Stop’s secrets. It was based around the “Aperture Camera”, which could copy, paste, and rescale items in the world.
]]>It's been an eventful decade for PC games, and it would be hard for you to summarise everything that's happened in the medium across the past ten years. Hard for you, but a day's work for us. Below you'll find our picks for the 50 greatest games released on PC across the past decade.
]]>I reckon that when I was growing up I spent longer reading the manuals for games than I did playing them. The thicker the better (as the someone said to the etc.), and if it were up to me every game would come with a chunky instruction booklet. The standard these days is the in-game tutorial, and many of them feel like afterthoughts. Either they’re too bare bones to properly teach you how to play, leaving you to scroll through Wikis, or they’re so boring that you rush through them and then forget everything you’re told.
]]>Speedrunning charity marathon Summer Games Done Quick is barrelling towards us at top speed, and it’ll be here in just a few hours. Raising money for Doctors Without Borders, players will be rushing through more than a hundred games for a non-stop week. If you’ve never seen a speedrun before, imagine how fast you could get through your favourite game. Now throw that idea away, because these people get weirder and glitchier than you could anticipate.
]]>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.
]]>Then the bus EXPLODED. Hello, this is the RPS podcast, the Electronic Wireless Show, and we are here to talk about the best game openings and intros. Whether they are cold opens or slow burns, we love a good first impression.
]]>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.
]]>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:
]]>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.
]]>Rather than marvel at digital houses we couldn't even dream of owning an armoire to put in IRL, let alone the whole building, we've turned our attention to the world of videogame apartments. These chunks of partitioned living are often just modular, nondescript spaces designed to house clues or bolster the sense of people living in a city, but occasionally there are apartments which offer up a real sense of their owner's character or palatial penthouses which ooze nouveau riche luxury.
]]>Dark days for the world. Maybe videogames can save us? Haha yes of course they can haha.
Here are some really good videogames, though. They'll take you to a better place for a while. These are the RPS team's 13 personal favourites from the current Steam Summer Sale: we believe in these games, and we believe that you should play them 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.
]]>Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives. One a day, every day of the year, perhaps for all time.
Remember how recently Portal 2 [official site] came out? IT WAS FIVE YEARS AGO. Sorry about that. I have a suspicion those magic windows might be having unsuspected effects on time dilation.
]]>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.
]]>Gosh, the work and dedication that goes into some mods can still surprise me. Look at Portal Stories: Mel [official site], a new Portal 2 mod which launched this evening.
Mel brings a new protagonist with a new companion sphere, boasting over 300 new voiced lines, an hour of original music, and 22 levels that its creators say may take anywhere from four to twelve hours to complete depending on how well you think with portals. It looks quite pretty. And it's entirely free (if you own Portal 2, natch), available direct through Steam.
]]>Say, remember when Robert Yang interviewed a load of neat-o level designers while collaborating on a Portal 2 level with them as a sort of playable journalism? I enjoyed the Level With Me series back when I only read RPS, and now I'm here I'm glad I get to post about it.
The first Level With Me creation, made with folks including Brendon Chung, Dan Pinchbeck, Davey Wreden, and Ed Key, had been brokenby a Portal 2 update. Oh no! But this week, Yang released an updated version you can find over here. It's a fine opportunity to revisit a classic RPS feature.
]]>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.
]]>Have you ever idly wondered whether GLaDOS might have been up to more research and testing than the Portal games let on? A study from Florida State University into the effects of playing Portal 2 on a variety of skills won't do much to ease your fears, then.
According to the study, spending eight hours playing Portal 2 is more effective at improving a range of cognitive skills than a dedicated brain training program called Lumosity.
]]>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.
]]>Every year Valve hold the Saxxy Awards to encourage and round-up the very best Source Filmmaker creations, and every year the submissions are almost solely set inside the Team Fortress 2 universe. That's perhaps because they're Valve's most expressive characters and because TF2's manic world is most easily bent towards drama and comedy, but for the just-announced 4th annual Saxxy Awards, Valve are encouraging submissions from other games. Mainly: Portal 2.
]]>A Portal game without portals? "Why, that's like removing puppies from the Puppy Bowl," you might say. "What is even the point?" The point, fellow small dog enthusiast, is paint. Physics-affecting paints (think bouncy gel, etc) were part of Portal 2, but they weren't the main focus. Paid standalone mod/game Aperture Tag: The Paint Gun Testing Initiative puts them front and center, and it looks like sticky, slippery, hundreds-of-feet-in-the-air-hurtling fun. It's out now, and a trailer's below.
]]>An oversized revolver, a chunky pump-action shotgun, a bolt-action rifle, and seeing my own legs: the four things I most want to see in first-person games. Perhaps the first three wouldn't fit too cleanly into Portal 2 but that fourth, yes, certainly! And joy of joys, a new mod has added that very feature, so I spent half an hour this morning running around staring at Chell's toes as if the mod turned Valve's puzzle-platformer into Kyphosis Simulator 2014.
I suppose technically the 'main feature' in the Thinking with Time Machine mod is a time machine which'll have you creating time loops to solve puzzles with the aid of your past self, which is great and all but look, LEGS.
]]>We've heard tell of the Steam controller's ins and outs (and ups and downs and lefts and rights and Bs and As and starts) from many a developer, but still skepticism reigns. And with good reason: Valve's haptics-powered Franken-pad is kinda bonkers. But now, at the very least, we can see - with eyes or echolocation - how it functions moment-to-moment. Go below to see it power through Portal 2, Civilization V, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, and Papers Please.
]]>Portal 2 wasn't nearly as messed-up as it could have been. I loved it, and still pop in now and again to enjoy the physics and writing, but I always wish they'd went further and curly-wurlied the gravity and surroundings. Every time a room was fixed in front of me, I wished the same tech was used to just turn everything upside down, inside out, or that it would twist the testing chambers into odd, broken configurations. I am a very needy person. With that in mind, I'm interested in this Greenlight begging puzzle game, Tri. A FPS puzzle game where you drag out triangular walkways to cross the world.
]]>You might remember that DOTA 2 officially launched not too long ago. This may in part be due to the fact that it's one of the biggest PC games ever, making it difficult to forget about in the same way that a herd of rhinoceroses just kind of hanging out in your living room would at least spend a fair amount of time in your peripheral vision. It is, of course, already quite good, but Valve plans to continue updating it until the Earth molts away its wriggly organic shell, leaving behind naught but dust and roaches. The first step in that process? A (very) soon-to-be-launched update fittingly titled First Blood. It includes LAN play! Also lots of other things, including Portal's own wise-cracking cracker of psyches GLaDOS as an announcer. Details below.
]]>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.
]]>We're waiting for you, Valve. In the sweat chamber. Show us what your mad wearable computing tech can do, instead of all this teasing. Latest report is that they've come up with kit which can measure assorted bodily responses, including heart rate, facial expression, brain waves, eye movement, pupil dilation, body temperature and, indeed, sweatability. Based on how you appear to be feeling, the game will alter factors such as difficulty and intensity to suit.
]]>I preemptively think I'm gonna be sick. Don't get me wrong: there are few things in this world I want more than Oculus Rift virtual reality for my mad dash through Mirror's Edge's theme park of parkour, but now that it's probably going to happen, I realize that I should probably bid farewell to any lunches I've had in the past couple months. And who will I have to thank for my sudden bouts of violent nausea? Interestingly, it won't be EA. Instead, a third-party toolset called Vireio Perception is primed to add Rift support to Mirror's Edge and other older titles.
]]>I don't think it's possible to have any misgivings over an update officially titled "Mechsgiving." As for Portalmas, well, that one's a bit more up for debate, seeing as it's just a word I made up. But generosity's officially in the air, and both Piranha and Valve are doling out fairly significant updates to their breadwinners, MechWarrior Online and Portal 2. Unfortunately, neither involves gigantic mechanized turkeys, but I suppose beggars in the midst of celebrating a decadent holiday of feasting and lethargy can't be choosers. Still though, that's far from a reason to mope. So let's look under the ol' turkey tree and see what we got.
]]>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.
]]>Until this weekend, I hadn't revisited Portal 2 since the release of the Perpetual Testing Initiative. I vaguely assumed that user-built test chambers would fall, broadly speaking, into two types: so easy that they made me appreciate the complex genius of the originals, or so difficult that they made me appreciate the simple genius of the originals. Replaying Portal 2 at the end of 2011 also made me realise that the puzzles were the bits in between the prattling robots and the archaeological ascent through Aperture. I spent more time smiling than thinking with furrowed brow. Naturally, then, a set of user-made levels that form a story appeal more than standalone levels. Designed for Danger is such a thing and, from the little I've played of the eight levels, it's high quality stuff.
]]>Yesterday, you probably read the first part of my chat with Valve's Erik Wolpaw and Double Fine's Anna Kipnis. If not, it's right here- but FOR A LIMITED TIME ONLY. By which I mean until the Internet ceases to exist, which, you know, could happen someday. Anyway, in today's installment, we branch out a bit from yesterday's story-centric beat. Valve's newfound love of wearable computing, virtual reality, heaps behind-the-scenes info on Portal, crowd-sourcing, and more are all on the docket. OK, there wasn't actually any sort of docket involved. I'm not entirely sure why I said that.
]]>It all began one sunny, seemingly inauspicious afternoon in a Starbucks. It also ended there - but, you know, later. Ragged and bone-weary from three days of wading through PAX's diseased hordes, Valve's Erik Wolpaw, Double Fine's Anna Kipnis, and I huddled around one last vestige of civilized humanity: a table. Then we spent nearly an hour talking about this year's sudden upsurge in crazy-interesting videogame stories, because it seemed like the thing to do at the time. It isn't anymore, but - if you'll believe it - it was considered cool back then. Those were the days. Anyway, here's part one. If you behave yourself, you might get part two tomorrow. And maybe a cookie. But probably not.
]]>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.
]]>We looked at Portal 2's puzzle creating Perpetual Testing Initiative, a streamlined, user-friendly application for making your own Portal 2 rooms, and then cried. So instead we got Craig "Fearless" Pearson to take a look, because we knew without a doubt that no one else can create a box with some boxes in it like him.
]]>Finding your true calling is tough. Perhaps, for instance, you have the diabolical, mustachioed mind of a puzzle designer, but some horrific mutation has left you with the largely unhelpful hands of a pirate, ghost, or lobster. And also, you're kind of lazy. Well, so much for coding your dreams into virtual reality. Guess you'll have to settle for a life of convenience store tedium or awesome high-seas swashbuckling. Fortunately, you're exactly who Valve had in mind when it created the exceedingly easy-to-use Perpetual Testing Initiative mapmaker.
]]>Once Valve gets around to releasing its magical future goggles, I'm hoping it'll just start constantly beaming clever trailers for its games straight to my eyeballs. Between TF2's "Meet The ___" series and Portal's cavalcade of comedic excellence, I could spend all the rest of my days awkwardly cackling to myself on buses, in restaurants, and while committing the most unforgivable crime of them all: wearing sunglasses at night. Everyone will hate me and take tremendous pleasure every time I stumble blindly into low-hanging signs or taller-than-ordinary children. Which brings us to Valve's latest bit of advertorial brilliance: the story justification for the Perpetual Testing Initiative, as narrated by Aperture founder Cave Johnson.
]]>As hinted at March at GDC, Valve have now announced the imminent release of a puzzle creator for Portal 2. It's going to be called the Portal 2 Perpetual Testing Initiative, it's going to be out on the 8th May, and most of all, it's going to be free.
]]>I've been waiting for a John Walker simulator to arrive, and this is the closest I'll probably ever get. It's the Secret World's GDC presentation, showing off Ragnar-Tørnquist's increasingly-interesting (to me) MMO. You can pretend you're in the room being John Walker, who can be seen here following Ragnar. Toss some water at the screen to simulate the tears that usually flow when John experiences a game by Ragnar. Or you can just watch the most complete look at the upcoming MMO yet. It includes a scene that suggests oral sex is being performed, so I'd not risk it at work or at a funeral. They really go down... look down... LOOK DOWN on that sort of thing.
]]>The British Academy Video Game Awards took place on Friday night and Portal 2 was awarded highest honours, taking home little gold faces not only for Best Game, but also for Story and Design. Congratulations to Valve, who by this point must be making plans to put up some new shelves of award-bearing load strength. The popular vote went to Battlefield 3, which also won awards for Online Multiplayer and Audio Achievement.
The full list is celebrating after the jump.
]]>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.
]]>My admirable, handsome, humble, delightful paymaster Mr. Walker already mentioned the remarkable looking Mari0 in October, but it wasn't out then. Truth be told, it's not quite out yet - but at about 10 tomorrow evening, this amazing mash-up of Super Mario and Portal 2 will downloadable. I point out it's Portal 2 to make a clear distinction: it has the gel and it will eventually have online co-op (currently it has local) in addition to the Portal gun. It also has Super Mario Bros, but let's not hold that against it. Even more moving imagery of it exists through this portal. Come... 0
]]>Alongside the Skyrim Creation Kit and the HD Texture Pack that was officially released last night, Valve added their own little addition to Skyrim: Fall of The Space Corp, Vol. 1 adds Portal 2's jittery little Space Core to the Nord world, voiced by the man that holds the patent on all gaming voiceovers, Nolan North. It's both proof that clicking things in Skyrim's Steam Workshop works just like they said it would, and that Valve's punmasters are missed a trick by not calling him Nolan Nord. When you add the mod to the game, you need to find him. Here's a video I made that shows you how.
]]>Level With Me was a series of conversations with level designers like Dan Pinchbeck, Jack Monahan, Magnar Jenssen, Brendon Chung, Davey Wreden, Ed Key, and Richard Perrin. At the end, we all collaborated on a Portal 2 mod. You can download that mod here. Liner notes, installation notes, and screenshots are after the jump.
]]>Earlier this month, Valve made a video of Wheatley talking about his nomination in the 'Best Character' category of the VGAs. The Joker actually took the award, which seemed disappointing at first, since he's a decades old character who even in this incarnation is appearing in a sequel, while Wheatley is quite the original. Then I noticed that the other two entrants were Nathan Drake and Marcus Fenix, appearing in the third games of their respective trilogies. The awards mean diddly squat, but I was a little disappointed about Wheatley missing out because it meant we all missed out an an acceptance speech. No more! Here's what he would have said.
]]>Who fancies a mystery? Valve prepared what must have been an incredibly expensive video for the VGAs' best character category, starring Wheatley, complete with Stephen Merchant's voice, floating in space and begging for help getting home. So, that's nice and fun, if lacking in the big laughs. (He didn't win.) But of course Valve being Valve, they've filled it with more details. Not many, but there's Russian text, star constellations in the background and weird numbers, which of course means those with a mind for such things are tearing it to pieces. Of course, it might have just been filler to make the image more interesting. But Valve MUST know by now that anything they add is going to be analysed to pieces, and they're clearly the sorts to troll their community in every imaginable way. What do you make of it?
]]>"Feed the world. Let them know it's Christmas time." But I've only got six dining room chairs, Bob. "I don't care. I'm too busy thanking God it's them instead of my friend." I hate you, Bob.
Ah, the Christmas classics. Not talking of which, what's the tenth game in our NOT IN ANY ORDER list of the best games of spaceyear 2011?
]]>“Level with Me” is a series of conversations about level design between modder Robert Yang and a level designer of a first person game. At the end of each interview, they collaborate on a Portal 2 level shared across all the sessions – and at the very end of the series, you’ll get to download and play this “roundtable level.” This is Part 3 of 7.
Of everyone I spoke to, Magnar Jenssen is the only one still actively working in the game industry as a level designer at Avalanche Studios. Before, he also worked on Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter 2 (GRAW2) and Bionic Commando at GRIN, up until the studio's demise. When he isn't raking in all that sweet map-stamp money from arena_offblast for Team Fortress 2, he tinkers with some less profitable but absurdly polished single player Half-Life 2 mods.
]]>See that screen there? The screencap of one of Valve's cute little cartoon instructional videos for Portal 2? Yeah, that's not a frame from one of those adverts, that's actually what the new Portal 2 level designer will look like. At least, according to the latest blog post on the Portal 2 website, which also brings news of simplified sharing and community tools, all designed to let users create, share and play new test chambers with relative ease.
]]>Again! Again! It's our theoretically regular comparison of Steam's top ten best-selling games over the last week with the same at UK retail. Will Rage have stormed its way to the top despite the outrage and buck-passing surrounding its technically-troubled PC launch? Or will foot-to-ball have conclusively proven that an Englishman's national sport is more important to him than pretending to be a time-lost survivor of a planet-wide apocalypse? And will retail be a mess of Sims games while Steam is a confusing muddle of pre-orders, deeply discounted returning titles and new entries? Take my hand. Where we're going, there be tables.
]]>Aha! In rather happier news from the land of big-name gaming, the Peer Review DLC pack for Portal 2 landed on Steam earlier today. Its cost? £0. $0. €0.
]]>Valve send word that their free DLC for Portal 2 will arrive on October 4th. Man, I totally already said all that in the headline! Here's what I didn't say, which was what Valve said: "In "Peer Review", you and a friend will continue the story of loyal bots P-Body and Atlas as you puzzle your way through a mysterious new co-op test track and once again match wits with GLaDOS. The DLC also features a single player and co-op Challenge Mode, and leaderboards to compare Challenge Mode scores with friends and the Portal community."
In other Portal news there's more Songs TO Test by over here, and I've posted quite a special Portal fan video below. Thanks, Jeep!
]]>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.
]]>A few weeks ago, Valve started beta testing its Steam Trading feature and people have swapped over a million items since then. Were the majority of them hats? I don’t have those figures, but the entrails in this animal say "yes". The trading feature is now officially live and you can trade all sorts of gubbins with one another. Clarification: “all sorts of gubbins” means Team Fortress 2, Portal 2 and Spiral Knights items so not a great deal has actually changed. Perhaps more interesting than item swapping is the ability to trade unredeemed games, although do note the qualifier ‘unredeemed’. Steam is not letting you swap grubby used goods. There’s a FAQ here. The fact that every public profile now comes with an inventory means that Steam is officially an RPG in which buying cheap games is the grind. The plan is to bring more developers on board in the coming months, so one day you may be able to trade the Incas for a pair of cowboy boots. Truly, we live in exciting times.
]]>So says Gabe Newell, as part of a long and fascinating interview at Gamasutra about Valve's current state of play. Of their recent games' commercial success he claims that "We can never predict; I mean we just try to build good games and then we tend to be surprised. Portal 2 did better on the PC than it did on the consoles; Left 4 Dead did better on the consoles than it did on the PC."
]]>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.
]]>Oh now this is special. Properly special. Extraordinarily talented map creator Douglas "TopHATTwaffle" Hoogland was commissioned by one Gary Hudston to create a very particular series of Portal 2 levels. Working with Rachel "Miss Stabby" van der Meer, he set about creating some truly spectacular Portal 2 puzzles that lead up to, well, something of a proposal.
]]>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.
]]>Valve's in-game TF2 item store is about to become an out-of-game item store. They're trialling something called Steam Trading, which primarily involves swapping your TF2 unlocks (i.e. those damnable hats, mostly) for other games.
It's an old-fashioned barter system in new-fangled clothes. What happens is you invite someone on your Steam friends list or who you're in a group chat with to trade, and can offer up your various TF2 items to the other guy. In return, he or she can offer you other TF2 items - or to gift a game to you. You can't do this with any old game in your Steam library - only games you’ve purchased from the store as a gift, or received as an Extra Copy.
]]>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.
]]>First there was one free official soundtrack collection for Portal 2, and now there are two. That's eighteen more tracks of exciting bleeping, on top of the 22 we've already had. There's a third one yet to come - but will it include The National's ode to abject misery and Jonathon Coulton's latest Portal creation? We will probably find out at some point in the near future: that is my official statement on the matter. Yes, you may quote me on it.
Meantime, get over here to grab Music To Test By Volume 2, or just have a peer at the reliably entertaining list of track titles below. SPOILER ALERT: one of the titles is on the spoiley side if you've not played the game.
]]>A couple of days ago we reported on the Portal 2 Summer Mapping Initiative, a competition held in honour of the frankly frightening creativity of the Valve fan base. If you enjoyed Portal 2, and who didn't, you might want to give them a go. The official winners and runners up created a big chunk of content, dumping easily a typical single-player game's campaign worth of playtime into your lap, for no pennies. I've been playing the top-rated co-op maps, because the stark terror of being trapped in a testing facility that mostly wants to kill you is best experienced with company. Let me tell you about it!
]]>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.
]]>Ah, summer. The lazy days, the warm breezes, the gigantic storm clouds, rain showers and lightning storms ravaging the local area. You know, I think I'd be better off staying inside. But that's alright, because the Portal 2 Summer Mapping Initiative winners have been announced! Or rather, one winner and two plucky runner ups have been chosen from the 280 entries into the grand map-making competition for the well-received physics-bending puzzler. Who's it going to be? Drumroll, please...
]]>(Well, not unless you spend $140 on a new controller). This is all a bit odd, and slightly infuriating too. Remember Razer's Hydra motion controller for PC, and how it was going to have a special version of Portal 2 created for it? Well, that's happened. The wavy-wandy gamepaddy, PS Move-y er...thing is now being sold via Steam in the US, for the utterly absurd price of $140. $140! You could buy multiple Moves for that. However, it also includes access to 10-level Portal 2 DLC designed specifically for its six-way air-gesturing.
This first expansion pack sounds pretty ambitious, involving as it does Portal rotation and, most excitingly, object rescaling: "Resize custom weighted cubes to harness their size and mass properties to crush turrets, bridge gaps, and solve puzzles in a new and exciting way."
Whaaat?
]]>With Bellevue's finest opting not to make an appearance at E3 earlier this month, we've all been left in the dark THE TERRIBLE FRIGHTENING DARKNESS about what's next on the plate for Valve, and when we might see it. DoTA 2? Portal 2 expansions? Something, at long, long bloody last, to do with Half-Life?
Well, in August we might find out.
]]>I love grumpytrousers mumblers The National, so was particularly excited when I found out the band would be contributing a specially written song to Portal 2. And somewhat disappointed when Exile Vilify appeared in the form of the broadcast of a tinny radio in a hidden corner. Then I found this and listened to it eight hundred times in a row. Soon there will be excuses to listen to it many times over again, as Valve have set the challenge of making a video to go with the song. The winner will receive a prize pack, including a guitar signed by the band, and some Portal 2 merch. Videos need to be up on YouTube (tagged "PORTAL2NATIONALEXILE") by July 15th. Let's see an RPS reader win this one.
]]>Quite a lot of mod news this week, apparently, even though there's very little for you to actually play. There's a long-awaited update from Jurrassic Life, as well as plenty of other gubbins related to Half-Life 2, Crysis, Stalker: Clear Sky, Portal 2 and Dirt 3. That's a lot of games! Read on to find out what's what.
]]>Attention, test subjects. There is a soundtrack to Portal 2, and it is now available for you to download. It is free (FREE!), and comprises 22 MP3s with a bitrate of 320kbps - which is a number than means it doesn't sound like a man yodelling into a fish tank. Appears to be purely the instrumental soundtrack, not the Coulton or The National songs, but that means it's full of bleepy, technoid wonder. You can get it from here.
]]>It's been an unusually quiet week in the world of mod news. Perhaps all our humble developers have been scurrying away in front of their PCs actually getting some work done, and that's why we've seen very few items of news but another collection of new releases and updates, ready for you to play right now. This week: the first Portal 2 mod, a new version of Action Half-Life 2 after several years, fan creations for Oblivion, Fuel, Battlefield 2 and - goodness me - a bunch more below the jump.
]]>A bunch of folk seem to have become convinced that Valve would be revealing something at E3 next month. Each and every rumour about Valve does of course involve Half-Life 3/Episode 3, and this one was no different. The long-awaited next slice of Gordonery would finally be shown at E3, whispers claimed. People became excited, but they shouldn't have done. Valve will not be revealing a Half-Like game at E3. They won't be showing off their other known project, DOTA 2, either. They won't be revealing any kind of anything, in fact, as a mass mail-out by Valve has just confirmed that "we are not showing any titles at this year's show". That doesn't, of course, mean they won't be showing something later in the year, but if there is anything to show it certainly won't be then. So that's that. Got it? Good.
]]>Portal 2: The Final Hours is a digital book about... wait, don't tell me... no, it's gone. The book is either called "The Final Hours of Portal 2" if you believe Valve's emails, or if you place your trust in Steam it's called, "Portal 2: The Final Hours". Will those two ever learn to get along?
It's a big old thing, absolutely packed with information, interviews, pictures (one so close to his beard you can see what Chet ate for breakfast), videos, audio, interactive photographs, and thoughts on the process. And it's all slidey and interactive, in a way that books are in films about the future. For £1.50, this seems a decent chunk of information. And you can find out what car Erik Wolpaw drives.
]]>I think it must have crossed the mind of every person who's played Portal what they'd do if they had a Portal gun. Me, I'd put one portal in Chicago, another in Bath, and then smash the gun so they'd never get removed. Oh, how I yearn for teleportation to the States. But it does seem reasonably obvious that after about, maybe five minutes, we'd all start using them for practical jokes. Take a look at the video below from YouTube SFXers Final Cut King and the VFX Bro.
]]>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.
]]>A really fantastic in-depth interview with Valve's Erik Wolpaw has been posted by the NYU Game Center as part of their lecture series. During it Wolpaw plays Portal 2, talking about the process behind creating the game, the motivations behind many of the decisions, and a great deal of thought about how story and games interact. You can watch it below.
]]>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.
]]>That's me done for the day, but I saw this over at gaming.reddit and basically needed it to be on the RPS frontpage over the weekend.
Seattle-based artist (edit- and Valve employee) Tristan Reidford has made a 1970s-style movie poster for Portal 2. It's an absolutely stunning piece of work, and awaits you in full after the jump.
]]>Update: More videos added below.
This one appeared during our second weekend of yacht-hammocking, and is well worth a watch. It's one of the first truly impressive Portal 2 trickshot videos I've seen, themed around the throwing of cubes. I love that there are people out there who see games completely differently to me. They see paths my mind would never think of. Take a look.
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