Valve will release free Portal 2 downloadable content titled "Perpetual Testing Initiative" for PC and Mac on May 8, the publisher said today.
Valve says you'll be able to "easily create, share, and play Portal 2 puzzles" with the new DLC, which lets you publish maps directly to Steam. Other players will be able to browse, vote, and download user-created maps to play in their own versions of the game.
Portal may be the name for a contemporary series from Valve, about mad robots and jumpsuits, but it's also the name of a video game first released nearly thirty years ago.
That game, Portal - Valve got the trademark after the original ceased using it - was a strange adventure title for personal computers, and was published by, of all companies, Activision.
Portal's story is a great one: you're an astronaut who, after spending 100 years in space on a mission, returns to Earth to find everyone gone and the planet an overgrown wasteland. Picture Life After People, only in a text-based adventure game.
Your goal, then, is to talk to a computer system called Homer, and by going back through its records try and piece together what happened. And that's it! No killing, no jumping, you were essentially digging your way backwards through a very depressing story. Think of it as Dear Esther 1986, if you will, complete with the very valid point that it was only half a game, the other half being some kind of interactive story.
Indeed, so heavy on story was it that in 1988 it was re-released as just that, a novel.
While that story is an interesting one, the game part left a little to be desired, your interaction with Homer being more than a little crude and obtuse.
Still, it had its fans, and that coupled with the name's popularity coupled with the current Kickstarter madness has its original creator, sci-fi author Rob Swigart, hoping to get the cash together for a "proper" remake, this time as " a full-fledged computer game with modern technology, music, sound effects, art, voice acting, and gameplay".
The song (a cover of Jonathan Coulton's now-infamous "Still Alive") is well done, too. Don't turn it off after the first few squeaky seconds. It gets better. I swear.
Bonus points if you spot the Duck Hunt dog. And the Skyrim giant.
Dr. Who and Portal get an unlikely crossover in this 3D image by Aussie artist David C. Simon, who actually works as a writer at BioWare's Austin studio.
Reader Alex went skydiving the other day, and aside from taking his good self, packed an inflatable Portal turret to go with him.
Both then proceeded to jump out of a perfectly good aircraft at 13,000 feet.
Alex says that, thanks to air pressure, the turret was actually really tough to keep hold of, and it was only when they got to around 7000 feet that it deflated enough for him to only have to worry about not dying, instead of not dying and losing a Portal turret at 13,000 feet.
Internet superstar Tom Scott (who we were only talking about a few weeks back) wanted to play some mini-golf for his birthday. So he had a course built. One incorporating elements of Minecraft, Portal and...Wheel of Fortune?
There's even one where you control a labyrinth with a Wii Remote's nunchuk.
The Portal hole is a particular highlight, given how ridiculously over-the-top the creators went to stick to the tropes of the series, but they're all pretty great.
Scott says most of the holes will be playable at the Derby Maker Faire on June 3, but is open to the idea of touring with them as well.
All things geek website Geekologie found an array of cute Portal rings from a 3D printing company, shapeways.
Although the company prints designs that you supply them with, and you'll therefore have to fill in the details with painting skills of your own, the results can be quite nice looking.
It's little more than cheap costume jewelry, but they're fun designs. Someone just needs to make a silver edition based off of these. Head over to Geekologie for more pictures, including some bonus Assassin's Creed rings.
Update: You actually can order silver versions for most of these. So someone do that and send it to me. Thanks!
Everything's in first-person. Your silent hero is equipped with a high-tech gadget that can manipulate chunks of the environment. You progress through a series of rooms, each stuffed to the brim with quirky crate-and-button-based puzzles that need solving. And an omniscient voice is talking to you the whole time.
Stop me if you've heard this before. You probably have. It's Portal. But it's also Quantum Conundrum.
Quantum Conundrum, a Square Enix-published title that will be out for Xbox Live, PC, and PlayStation Network this summer, feels like a natural successor to Valve's critically-acclaimed puzzle game. It feels like what the designer of Portal would make next.
This makes sense, because it iswhat the designer of Portal made next. Quantum Conundrum is the brainchild of Portal lead Kim Swift, who left Valve for development studio Airtight Games back in 2009. It's a first-person puzzler about a twelve-year-old boy (you) exploring a mansion laboratory belonging to his uncle, Professor Fitz Quadwrangle (the omniscient voice). You have to get through the mansion and rescue the professor from the dimension he's accidentally trapped himself in.
To solve the mansion's puzzles, you can flip between four dimensions: Fluffy, Heavy, Slow Motion, and a fourth mystery dimension I didn't get to see. Each dimension has properties that affect the objects around you. Fluffy makes everything lighter. Heavy makes everything heavier. Slow Motion... well, you can figure that one out.
Say there's a safe on the ground and a window in front of you. You can switch to the Fluffy dimension to make the safe light enough to pick up, hurl it at the window, and quickly flip to Heavy so it shatters the glass and you can get inside.
Say you need to get through the rapidly-spinning blades of an oversized fan. Just switch to Slow Motion and they morph into an inviting door.
Say you need to turn four towers of evenly-stacked crates into one downward staircase. Just turn on the laser beam that swings back and forth from crate to crate. Swap to Fluffy when you want to evaporate a crate, lowering each tower. Use Heavy when you want to protect crates from the laser and keep each tower level. Repeat. Voilà. Stairs.
It's a clever, delightful system that, much like Portal, seems to get tougher and tougher as you go through each level. And from what I've seen so far, each of those levels is rewarding as hell.
Some time after seeing Quantum Conundrum, I was wandering around the PAX East show floor and ran into Chris Kohler, Wired.com Game|Life editor and my former boss.
"Have you played Quantum Conundrum?" I asked him. "It's friggin' awesome."
"[It] demos very well," Kohler said. "Then again, I've played many games that didn't turn out as awesome as the demo. So it's important to always bear that in mind before you say 'it's a good game.' It's a good demo. Only the game can answer that question."
A wise point. So while Quantum Conundrum certainly put a smile on my face—and while I certainly think it's the right combination of quirky and clever to be one of this year's sleeper hits—I'll reserve all final judgement for the real thing.
Here are two people I chased at PAX East. Their costumes aren't perfect, but their cosplay concept is. They are the puppeteers of the two spindly robots from Portal 2.
Do they have a panel loose or an eye covered the wrong way?
Valve will release free Portal 2 downloadable content titled "Perpetual Testing Initiative" for PC and Mac on May 8, the publisher said today.
Portal may be the name for a contemporary series from Valve, about mad robots and jumpsuits, but it's also the name of a video game first released nearly thirty years ago.
Dr. Who and Portal get an unlikely crossover in this 3D image by Aussie artist David C. Simon, who actually works as a writer at BioWare's Austin studio.
All things geek website Geekologie found an array of cute Portal rings from a 3D printing company, 
