Gaming Heads, the creators of fine Team Fortress 2 statuary, opens the valve on its new Portal 2 line with this gorgeous 16-inch turret replica, ready to fill speaking and non-speaking roles in your home security regime, depending on how much you're willing to invest.

Can you really put a price tag on quality replica home security? Well yes, you can, and that price tag is $300. That money can secure you one of 750 Portal 2 turrets upon their Q4 2012 release, packed lovingly in foam with a certificate that ensures that this is a high quality product and not something you made in shop class.

Just look at this thing. Are you not pleased to the tune of $300?

Perhaps you need to see a more detailed view. Did I mention the motion sensor activated light?

Still not convinced? What's wrong with you? You act as if you don't have $300 to toss about frivolously on video game paraphernalia.

I can understand that, so I won't even tell you about the Gaming Heads exclusive edition, which adds voices from the game to the statue for a mere $30 extra. It's limited to 350 pieces; you probably couldn't have secured one in time anyway.

Portal 2 Turret Preorder [Gaming Heads]

Portal 2 Turret Exclusive w/ Sound Preorder [Gaming Heads]

If you've played games like Team Fortress 2 or the Portal titles, you know that Valve loves making players learn. The company's already got a foothold in bringing their games into the educational space and that commitment's going to get bigger.

Today, at the Games for Change conference, Valve's Leslie Redd and Yasser Malaika announced that they'll be giving away their hit game Portal 2 for free, via the new Steam for Schools initiative. After signing up for a beta, educators will be able to get the popular sequel, the recently launched Perpetual Testing Initiative level maker and sample levels. Students making levels won't be able to share levels outside of a physical classroom, though. For more info, head over to learnwithportals.com

Oh, GLaDOS. Cruel, cruel GLaDOS. Here, the villain from the Portal games comes to life, in costume and utterly free of cake.

Mean, witty, and slightly crazy, GLaDOS is one of the most memorable gaming characters in recent memory—no wonder she's a fan fav. And no wonder all these folks decided to dress up as her!

Here's a look a handful of cosplayers tackling the same character. It's like when people show up to a party, dressed in the same outfit. Have a look in the above gallery and see who pulled off the best GLaDOS.

For more info on GLaDOS, check out the character's wikia. For more about Valve Software, the studio behind Portal, have a look at its official site.

[BlizzardTerrak]
[CielgoesRAWR]
[dontcallmehuman]
[EminenceRain]
[Emmalyn]
[for_the_wicked]
[Kyuuketsuki-inc]
[Lightthedynamite]
[marimbamonkey14]
[Meketaten]
[MiddySpectrum]
[SoyPants]
[strangexreality]
[Takada-Rem]
[Tenori-Tiger]
[theawesomesauce]
[trinityrenee]
[tsubasahime]
[xxxChelsea-Daggerxxx]

"This isn't flying. This is falling with style."

Gravity is a pernicious reminder of our physical limits. It's the thing that keeps us rooted to the ground, it pulls our bodies downwards, makes us slow, ages us. The dream of flight, then, is a rejection of that limitation—see me? I can fly, man. I'm free, I can do anything!

And yet, I've found that when playing games, it's not the flying that I find most exciting. It's the moment that comes after—when I re-engage with gravity and come tumbling back towards earth. Flying in video games is great, but I love to fall.

Gravity Rush, a splendid new adventure game for the PlayStation Vita, opens with a scene depicting an apple, tumbling to the ground. Sir Isaac Newton may be nowhere to be seen, but the scene's intent is clear: This is a game about falling, pure and simple. And man oh man, does this game do falling well.

The game's central, brilliant idea is to give the player the ability to change which way is "down," and so which way the protagonist Kat will fall. Another way to think about this is that the player is able to change the axis of the world on a whim. Video games have granted a lot of cool powers over the years, but this is among the coolest.

It's an extraordinary thing, this game's sense of freedom, of kinetic motion. With a double-tap of the right shoulder button, Kat launches into the air, wind blowing her hair behind her, skydiving upwards towards the wall of a skyscraper. She lands (three-point lands, obvs), and runs up the wall, only to "fall" off the edge of the building and go tumbling towards the horizon.

It's discombobulating at first—the "grav-boot" concept is nothing new to most people who play video games, but the idea of falling sideways off the lip of a skyscraper is. I was impressed with how quickly I got my head around the concept, and how much joy I found in simply getting around Gravity Rush's city of Heckesville. (It doesn't hurt that the game is gorgeously drawn, wonderfully animated, and features a lush and beautiful musical score. Despite a few flaws, mostly to do with repetitive combat, Gravity Rush is a game that I have yet to tire of playing. Evan agreed in our official review.)

It's crucial, however, that Kat isn't actually able to fly. Her gravity-shifting powers can only run for so long before she begins to tumble downwards, waiting for them to recharge so that she can fall back upwards again. If Kat were given the power of flight, the game wouldn't be half as interesting, exhilarating, or fun. It's the falling that makes it magic.

In the underrated Just Cause 2, players are set loose on a massive (and I do mean massive tropical island, tasked with causing as much mayhem as possible. They're given all manner of tools and weaponry, but only two tools that matter—a grappling hook that can latch on to any surface, and a parachute that can be opened and closed an unlimited number of times.

Immediately, what would have otherwise been a game about stealing jets, driving jeeps and shooting dudes becomes a game about flight. Or more specifically, a game about falling, with style. The number of techniques combining the pull of the grappling hook with the resistance of the parachute are nearly endless—there is no end to the joy of flinging protagonist Rico Rodriguez about like a little G.I. Joe character attached to a rubberband. And if and when you get bored of that, you can always hop on the back of an airliner, fly to the top of the skybox, and jump.

The gunplay in Just Cause 2 may be questionable, the A.I. idiotic, and the missions may be repetitive. But the sensation of falling—seen in this video at around the 2:00 mark—never gets old.

Valve's Portal games are among slickest falling games ever created. They're admirable not just for their tight design and sense of humor, but because they have some of the most focused falling in video gaming. When you fall in Portal, you fall with a Purpose.

Similar to Gravity Rush, Portal requires players to re-think their trajectories in order to progress beyond otherwise unpassable obstacles. But where Gravity Rush is mostly about action and high-flying acrobatics, Portal is about measured movement and problem-solving.

Back when I reviewed Portal 2, I talked about the game largely in terms of dominoes. A puzzle in the game is a lined-up row of dominoes, with you as the first domino in the bunch. Portal regularly executed a slick combined thrill of first realizing the solution to a puzzle, then throwing yourself through it.

One of the coolest additions in Portal 2 was protagonist Chell's "long fall boots," which let her fall from any height and land unscathed. Chell could fall any distance and, with a simple couple of blasts from her portal gun, wind up back where she started. I quickly learned to take it on faith that Valve wouldn't lead me into a situation from which I couldn't recover. I was free to fall as I pleased.

So many other great games explore our constant dance with gravity—Trials HD can at times feel like juggling, the aptly-named Gravity Hook requires constant slingshotting to move upwards, ever farther from the ground, and death. Max Payne 3 is at its best when its protagonist defies gravity, leaping down a stairwell while blasting away at his foes below, and the best platformers, from Mario to Journey, aren't as much about the jump itself as they are about the trajectory that follows.

"This is falling with style."

That now-famous quote at the start, of course, is from Toy Story. At the beginning of the film, Woody had dismissed his new rival Buzz's first flight as not flight at all. "That wasn't flying' Woody sputters. "That was… falling, with style." And yet later in the film, when Buzz saves Woody, this same line is delivered with a wink—for one moment, Woody and Buzz actually are flying. And while the rules of reality won't stay changed (Buzz can't fly in Toy Story 2, for example), for this one moment they transcend gravity and soar to safety.

We've all dreamt of flying; that moment in the dream when we think, "This is impossible, and yet here I am." But it will always be the fall that wakes us up, crashing back to consciousness with adrenaline in our gut and a gasp on our lips. It's the falling that brings us back to earth.

There's already at least one Portal cartoon in production. That one, however, looks like something Dreamworks would come up with. If you'd rather a Portal cartoon look more like something Ren & Stimpy creator John Kricfalusi would dream up, though, you might want to take a look at these.

These pieces are the work of artist Sandra Rivas, whose style is heavily influenced by John K.. What's cool is that she's turned all the cores and computers into people, and in doing so, has absolutely nailed them. Especially Wheatley.

happydoodle [DeviantArt, via Super Punch]

Portal 2 on the PS3 is getting Move support and some "new" levels. It's also playable at Sony's E3 booth, so we popped on over to take a look, see how the Move actually worked with the game.

Developers Sixense have announced that a bunch of new Portal content is coming to the PlayStation 3. It's called Portal 2 In Motion, and is DLC for the existing game that takes full advantage of Sony's PlayStation Move peripheral.

Crafted as DLC for the core game, P2IM was developed by Sixense, and brings 20 new levels to the game, along with new challenges and gear. Sixense will also be bringing Move support to the core Portal 2 game on PS3.

UPDATE - Looks like much, if not all of this content is the same PC users got hold of as part of Razer's exclusive Hydra DLC.

Tesla Turret Opera (Cara Mia Addio) [YouTube via Aperture Science]

Portal 2's brain-twisting puzzles prepared players perfectly for creating their own convoluted level creations. The recently-released level editor has been getting a strenuous workout by some incredibly brilliant minds.

Ben Perry took a couple of hours to put this all together, limited only by his imagination and the number of objects the editor allows players to work with.

And to think this is only the early days of the tool. It's almost scary to imagine what's still to come. I'm all tingly.

Portal 2 - Rube Goldberg Machine v1.0 [YouTube via Reddit]

Rube Goldberg Machine v1.0 [Steam Workshop]

Portal 2's latest DLC doesn't just include the chance to create your own maps, it includes the chance to run around them hearing the delightful JK Simmons - aka Cave Johnson - command, dictate and berate you senselessly with almost half an hour's worth of new content recorded just for the level creator.

If you think sitting and just listening to this for 25 minutes is boring, boy, you're about to miss out.

WARNING: There's technically some spoilers in here.

[Portal 2] All New Cave Johnson Lines (Perpetual Testing Initiative - DLC2) [YouTube, via TDW]