Game Review: Portal & Portal 2

Ok I am going to admit something here. As a huge fan of the Portal series since Portal originally hit the shelves back in October 2007 I might have fired up Portal 2 with an already enthusiastic and rose-tinted view. What I found only confirmed my expectations.

Portal 2 is a first person shooter (FPS) puzzle game which carries on from its predecessor Portal. Based on the concept of the manipulation or reality through portals which preserve linear momentum. If that sounds complicated, watch this:

That is the teaser trailer for Portal, as you can imagine the game play is innovative and refreshing from other FPS's which I am not so much a fan of.

The story of Portal 2 revolves around your character from the original game; Chell. After being subject to numerous rounds of testing in the Aperture Science Computerated Enrichment Enviroment, and almost being murdered several times by the psychotic testing mainframe AI known as GLaDOS, Chell eventually finds her way out of the laboratories and to the surface which is where Portal leaves us. Portal 2 Is the continuation of that story, where you find out after losing conciousness from the final fight with GLaDOS in the previous game, you are returned to the Aperture facilities to recuperate (This was later ret-conned in a patch, the ending was added with an ambiguous robotic voice approaching Chell from behind and dragging her back into the Aperture underground-complex before she lost conciousness.)

You are woken from suspended animation by a personality core called Wheatley and emerge from your chamber into the now-destroyed and decaying Aperture facility. Wheatley helps you stumble through the labs in order to escape, but in doing so you inadvertently reactivate GLaDOS, the passive-aggressive and completely insane facility control AI, who appears somewhat bitter about the fact that you killed her...

Without giving away any of the story, what follows is a slightly jilted round of further testing ala: Portal with a which quickly changes in a surprise twist! In Portal 2 the game goes deeper into the story of Aperture Science Laboratories, it's history and it's founder Cave Johnson.

The best feature for me is in the middle of the game where you learn about GLaDOS and where she comes from, and the secrets to why she is so bent on testing. GLaDOS received numerous awards from gaming magazines and websites such as 'Best Character' and 'Best New Character' from GameSpy and X-Play respectively, and Game Informer named her one of the 'Characters who defined a decade' in terms of storytelling. Most are citing her humour which is a form of passive-aggressive speak which actively changes in tone and intensity throughout the series (in both games.)

One of GLaDOS' unique qualities is her voice, which is synthesised from the voice acting of one Ellen McLain (who also has the Half Life series and Team Fortress 2 under her belt) through an auto-tune to give it that robotic and maniacle tone (here is a sample, from wikipedia). GLaDOS is by far the best reason to play Portal 2 besides the game play.

Another quality to Portal and Portal 2 is the complete mind-fuck of gameplay. We have seen this sport of manipulation of the game world in games such as Prey, but never has it been used in such a way as to encourage problem solving on the scale Portal has set. One comment made by GameSpy when awarding GLaDOS 'Best Character' was that the game could have got by without a story, which while in itself is pretty definitive of a lot puzzle games in the industry, Portal sets itself apart from the others such as Myst or the Professor Layton series as being almost exclusively character driven while not taking emphasis away from the mind-bending puzzles of physics and lateral thinking. Not to mention how much of an impact Portal made on internet culture creating such memes as "The cake is a lie" and the emergence of the Companion Cube.

Something which I am yet to experience but I highly anticipate as being another redeeming quality of the game is the incorporation of co-operative mulitplayer. You take one the duties of one of two co-operative testing initiative bots...

Atlas and P-Body are the two robots featured in the video above, which is something I cannot wait to try!

For anyone who is interested in puzzle games, FPS games or simple fancies a good bit of storytelling, seek out Portal 2 but I urge you not to do so until you have played Portal. A criticism which I am quick to offer of both games is that they are too short. I completed both Portal and Portal 2 in the evening of buying them, but their replay value is acceptable for fans of the game, but it may be worth waiting until there is an offer on to purchase both games, and certainly purchase them online through supplies such as gameplay.co.uk or play.com. On the PC, both games are available for purchase and repeated download through Steam which is a service available to PC which binds many PC games to a single account where you can purchase said games and download them over and over again which is handy if you are apt to losing your original disks.

It is my hope that the series continues in some form, though Chell's story recieved a definitive ending in Portal 2 I am certain Valve can come up with a way to continue the franchise which is so highly regarded in the gaming community.

Last Week

I had a full week last week, boy let me tell you! In fact I would go as far as to say that last week has been the busiest week of the year. Lets break it down, old school...

Monday I traveled from Wigan in the morning to catch my class which ran from 11:30am to 12am, then went and met a friend for lunch. From there my friend and I caught the train to Manchester, then onto Stockport where I had a gig. The gig was filmed as part of a TV project, and I have been assured that I will get a copy of the gig, so stay tuned for that.

After that I had to hop on the train back to Manchester and from there back to Wigan to attend B.yoU (the youth group I frequent.) We had to sort things out for the residential at the weekend, dot the i's and so on. After the meeting, quick taxi home to pick up some extra clothes and then the last train back to Salford for some much needed respite.

Tuesday Up bright and early for a spot of swimming, I felt guilty as I had a cold the week before and didn't get a chance to go swimming at all, so I fancied a nice relaxing swim. From there to Voice class at 12am where we are working on our RP and American accents, and after that I had Movement class which is normally mask work but our Tuesday tutor was ill so we had Clowning instead, which is so awesome! Quick lunch then I'm off doing my shopping at Tesco's which consists of apples and bread (all my other shopping I buy in bulk once a month and store, it saves my poor little arms.)

Tuesday evening I enjoyed a lovely gig with my good friend Red Redmond who was on the bill with the likes of Colin Manford and the fabulous Jonathan Mayor. Its a really nice gig (the one I did in my pervious post) and a good place to network with other new acts.

Wednesday Oh boy, Wednesday. I was up at 8am and caught the train to Manchester, I had to catch a train down to London. I was being presented with an award by Stonewall for all the volunteering work that I've over the past six months. I arrived at London Euston two hours after setting off and got the ride the tube to Charing Cross. From there it was a short walk to Planet Hollywood where the other young volunteers and I enjoyed a nice complementary meal. Then it was a short walk to the London Eye which was amazing, as the day was really clear and sunny and you could see over the whole of london...

...I took an ass load of pictures which will make their way to my facebook eventually, and I also plan on making a number of project out of them, but for now, back to the story. After the eye we all took a brisk walk over to the Stonewall offices across the road (I know, across the road from the London Eye!) and met the gang. Well, I knew quite a lot of them anyway from the residential last august. We also got the chance to watch the first half hour of FIT, a new educational film by Rikki Beadle Blair (who is just lovely and awesome.) After that another brisk walk across the bridge and we had the award ceramony in a posh hotel (the kind of hotel someone who looks like me would be sleeping in the doorway of.)

It was all very pleasant and I got my award, I also got the chance to go out onto the balcony and get an amazing view of the Themes...

...and that was it, quick ride on the tube to Euston, then a train home. all in all a good day.

Thursday
Thursday wasn't perticularly eventful, classes as normal (yey more Clowning!) and in the evening I decided not to go to cheer leading. We did however get our team photo taken which I'm sure I will post at some point.

Friday
No classes on friday! Instead I had to be at my student union for 1pm, as I had a date with a camera. I was asked to be interviewed for one of the Uni's video projects. Basically they just asked me questions such as "what is a lecture?" and things like that, and I answered them. If I understand it correctly the aim of the video is to help teach younger people about Uni life.

After that it was straight back to Wigan, I had to pack for our wonderful residential to Coldwell near Pendle Hill. However, I will be saving the weekend for another post, as I am running out of time. I have a gig tonight and I need to get ready!

It suits me being that run-in, I like being busy. Although I admit that come Monday I was so tired I missed class in the morning, I felt like death. I have a three week break coming up this friday, so I will probably spend all of that playing games, watching comedy, chilling out, hanging out and generally living like scum. Can't wait!

Warcraft: the update.

Just a quick post to let all four of you know that my account has been un-'permanently suspended' and they are looking into restoring all the items I lost while some hacker raped my characters.

Happy days.

This Warcraft business.

Ladies and gentlemen, my account got hacked.

Thats right, you always think that it will never happen to you, when in actually fact, its happened to me. The gits changed my password (according to an automated email from Blizzard) and a few hours later BAM, another email from Blizzard told me that my account had been permanently suspended.

This all happened last week, and after a very firm message to the security department regarding my account I still have had nothing from them besides the email telling me they had received my message and were "looking into it". I am getting increasingly tired of Blizzard at this point and have already started looking into other avenues of entertainment which I can use to supplement the boredom which WoW alleviated. Unfortunately it will be some time before FFXIV is released, and I am still uncertain as to whether I could play that or not on Nelly (my laptop.)

I will keep you posted with news as I get it (I am sure your all on pins)

2010, fingers crossed!

Using my good friend Antony's post as a muse, I am going to kill some time by jotting down some of the things I hope to achieve or at least advance in before the end of this year. I always leave these lists purposefully short because having a long list of achievements only leads to a long list of failures at the end of the year if things go astray, I also don't use words such as "try", because I've been trying to do these things in the past which is why they are on this list, which will be full of things I will do. I think I'm willing to be adventurous, so here goes;

Health

• Brush my hair more.
• Reach my 'normal' weight bracket (as discussed here.)
• Keep up my exercise

Uni/Career

• Be funnier
• Gig more
• See more live comedy
• Explore the performance industry
• Learn to drive
• Be more productive and industrious with Uni work
• Get more comics done

Well-being

• Keep in touch with friends and family
• Go out more
• More reading, less gaming
• Study more on the area's which interest me (space, history, biology etc.)
• Make the effort to improve/be more adventurous.

I think that's it for my list of goals. You might notice that a few of them are ambiguous, I assure you that this is by design. You see, there are a lot of things in my head, all bumping into each other and flying all around the place, and I kinda like it like that. But every so often there will be something which will sit still at the back of my mind, a concious desire to affect change in the way I think or behave, and it is that which I want to achieve with these goals.

I can think of an incident in Uni not too long ago, I was checking out the unions LGBT group, and there were three people who didn't really pay attention or seem interested in the meeting, two people running it (dominating it, or at least trying to) and two other people slightly wishy washy and embarrassed to be spoken to (if you know the type, they annoy me.) They started trashing Stonewall which I was not happy about (and made myself heard on the subject) and showed support of LFG (who once pulled funding from a local group in Wigan from the NHS, essentially stealing a service) which I also made known to the group. I did the goody goody act all the way though (which is difficult when your refuting a point made by an assertive dominator) when what I really wanted to do was tell them I was disappointed and leave half way through.

So my thinking with the goal 'Make the effort to improve/be more adventurous' is to take the opportunity when my instincts tell me that playing the nice guy isn't in my best interest in this situation, even if it may turn opinion against me; See? purposefully ambiguous.

World of Warcraft: Cataclysm!

Wow, just wow. Have you seen this guys? (those of you that care)

This is the third expansion for the ever-growing MMO that is the World of Warcraft (I'm a casual player.) I can't believe they are giving Worgen (werewolves) to the alliance and sticking Goblins to the horde, how annoying!

Well, of course theres no way in hell I#m not going to play as a Worgen, simply because:

a) They are werewolves b) They have Druid c) Gilneas their home, is uber gothic, and d) They're freaking werewolves!

The downside? it means I am now going to have to brace myself, swallow my pride and dignity, and play with the alliance as my faction. Oh the shame!

Bored?

Yeah, I think that's what it is.

I read before bed, I have a DVD on in the background (usually the Golden Girls) and sit at my computer. That is pretty much my day, and not content with settling back into the couch-potato routine, I try to inject a little variety into my days, Ill nip to my parents house to see the dogs, walk them, nip to the shop (most of the time for other people, or for a snack) or I could nip into town for lunch with a friend. But I will always end up back home, at my computer, with nothing to do.

This month my FFXI account is active, but I didn't realise exactly how off-the-game I have become, and it bores me to even log in now. It got to the point the other day were I was genuinely considering activating my Warcraft account, which would be a total waste of money, money which I do not have. Although I am reading a Warcraft novel at the moment called War of the Ancients, which was lent to me by a friend and so I'm probably just pining to get back to that game and play out that story.

I should take up knitting, I would carry on with my comics except I'd rather Wait to get to my scanner, and be able to do it properly rather than the doodles I try on my graphics tablet. I think ideally I want to do something that totally breaks away from this room and this desk, I can be as creative as I like but at the end of the day, being in the same place can have an adverse effect on inspiration, unless its blogging.

Instincts confirmed

So I'm decided to log onto FFXI today and Ive it another chance. I was thinking to myself "I don't really want to play, but I might find something fun to do, and I've paid for it so it would be wasting money if I didn't give it a shot. So I try logging in, I say try because there is a new security feature which I unfortunately bought into, where by as well as a password, you put in a randomly generated six-digit password you get from a Security Token, I got all the way through the PlayOnline viewer, got onto the game and just at the character select screen, I got disconnected.

Which would be fine, happened before right? except when I got DC'd this time I had to input my passwords again, which is a hastle to begin with. I tell you, Warcraft is certainly winning at this point.

So I get onto the game, and decide with nothing better to do, that I might as well join campaign battle. At this point without going into too much detail, for those who don't know anything about the game, there is alot of emphasis on team play, which is unfortunate because it means you can't advance your character without a party (you and five other people with roles that support each other in killing monsters,) which wouldn't be a bad idea if not for the fact that Europe lives in a hole, the Americans are either asleep or at work, the Japanese are either asleep or at work, and what your left with is not enough people to lift a fat chick at Glastonbury. Campaign battle is a small scale operation themed on a war effort, you join countless other soldiers (that are NPC's, 'Non-player characters controlled by the game, sort of like when you play chess against the computer, NPC's are the computer.) Unfortunately, these NPC's are not too bright, and my character died fighting a monster while five other NPC's stood around doing nothing

You can imagine my opinion of the game has his an all time low, and I really regret paying for it this month, but hey, that's my loss.

So yeah, I would say that World of Warcaft is winning out so far, maybe I'm just being too cynical of course, and maybe I just need to give it time to get back into the swing of things (I have been off for two months,) who knows, by august I might be wanting to stay~

Bye bye FFXI

So I think I've decided to leave Final Fantasy 11 behind now, its just so dull and boring for me. Its a cliché within the game now but there really isn't much to do besides grind your level, besides which with all the additional scenarios you can now download (for a price) they just seem like they are clutching at straws.

I think after this month on I'll say goodbye (or atleast, 'Until we meet again') and give my account some much needed rest, I have other things to occupy my time so Im not too worried. I'll just wait for Final Fantasy XIV to come out, it looks awesome!

See!