Portal was a singleplayer game. Portal 2 adds co-op, but did you know it was at one stage also going to add competitive multiplayer?

"Along with co-op, [we had] the idea of sort of a competitive Portal multiplayer," Valve's Erik "Old Man Murray" Wolpaw told 1UP.

"We went down that path, actually, for a little while and had something up and running — the best way to describe it is sort of Speedball meets Portal. You know, a sports analogy. And it quickly became apparent that while it's fun for about two seconds to drop portals under people and things like that, it quickly just devolves into pure chaos. It lost a lot of the stuff that was really entertaining about Portal, which was puzzle-solving. Cooperative puzzle-solving was just a much more rewarding path."

Wolpaw says this game mode, which had you shifting a ball around, was a "hot mess".

Speedball meets Portal was a bad thing? Just goes to show, dreams don't always come true.

Valve Cut Portal 2 Competitive Multiplayer [1UP]

Two new all-gameplay videos from Valve show a couple of tools you'll be using in Portal 2, both of which launch you through the air. Some creative use, in conjunction with the portal gun, is required. Isn't it always?

Repulsion gel (above) looks like it works like silly putty in reverse. Instead of it bouncing everywhere, it bounces you (and associated objects).

The Aerial faith plate (at bottom) is a kind of angled trampoline that can get you where you want to go, and get others where they don't want to be.

Portal 2 is coming out next year on PC, PS3, Xbox 360 and Mac, but the videos done tole you that. Twice.

To celebrate the launch of Worms Reloaded, Valve will be handing out the game's (well, Monty Python's) trademark Holy Hand Grenades to anyone buying the game on Steam. Sadly, they're just for show.

Freshmen at Wabash College in Crawfordsville, Indiana this year will be required to read Gilgamesh, Aristotle's Politics, the poetry of John Donne, Shakespeare's Hamlet, and Valve's Portal.

Michael Abbott, the proprietor of video game blog The Brainy Gamer and a teacher at the small liberal arts college found himself part of a committee last year tasked with creating a new all-college course devoted to "engaging students with fundamental questions of humanity from multiple perspectives and fostering a sense of community." The course would gather together classic and contemporary works across multiple disciplines in order to have students "confront what it means to be human and how we understand ourselves, our relationships, and our world."

Being The Brainy Gamer, Abbott's mind immediately went to gaming, specifically Portal, and even more specifically to a recent essay by Daniel Johnson on Portal and its connections to Erving Goffman's Presentation of Self in Everyday Life.

Abbott merged the ideas together and decided to propose that students read Goffman's work and then play through Portal. Now he only had to get the idea through committee.

I pitched the idea to my colleagues on the committee (decidedly not a collection of gamers), and they agreed to try Portal and read selections from Goffman's book. After plowing through some installation issues ("What does this Steam do? Will it expose me to viruses?"), we enjoyed the first meaningful discussion about a video game I've ever had with a group of colleagues across disciplines. They got it. They made the connections, and they enjoyed the game. Most importantly, they saw how Portal could provoke thoughtful reflection and vigorous conversation on questions germane to the course.

So now Portal will be required "reading" at Wabash College, rolled out slowly as the teachers figure out how to deal with licensing, installation, making sure educators who had never touched a video game knew what they were doing.

Is it too late for me to go back to college?

Portal on the booklist [The Brainy Gamer]

You get The Jacknife Chronicles, a piece of machinima that uses Source Engine editor Garry's Mod and makes a gripping little short film out of it.

Set (loosely) in the Half-Life universe and running for an impressive 12 minutes, The Jacknife Chronicles blends assets from Half-Life and Mirror's Edge into something entirely different. And very impressive.

[via PC Gamer]

Oh man. If you were wondering how co-op would work in Valve's upcoming Portal 2, wonder no more. It works a little something like this.

Portal 2 is playable at GamesCom, and while some people are playing it, others are filming it being played, so everyone else can enjoy it!

In case you're wondering, no, that is not the voice of an over-eager booth assistant. It's Wheatley, your AI companion in the game, who is voiced by British radio man, actor and co-creator of The Office and Extras, Stephen Merchant.

He may sound annoying at first, but I'll take annoying if it means there's somebody to talk to in the game that's not a psychopathic AI bent on my destruction. Unless he turns out to also be a psychopathic AI bent on my destruction, in which case, screw you, Wheatley.

[via HLportal]

We now know how to make a Justin Bieber song sound good: slow it down 800%. But what happens when Portal's Still Alive, that great video game song from Jonathan Coulton, gets the same treatment? Listen.

'Still Alive' from Portal, slowed down 800%. [Soundcloud.com]

Gate Online, a South Korean online game Kotaku previously introduced, appears to take its cues from two Valve titles: Portal and Team Fortress 2.

Team Fortress 2 is a well-spring of sorts. Last summer, the game inspired another South Korean developed PC title, H.A.V.E. Online.

The influences for Gate Online are not as blatant as for H.A.V.E. Online, and the game's developers do seem like they are trying to incorporate those influences and push them forward in a somewhat engaging way.

Thanks Joshua for the tip!

Using sparse backgrounds, 3DS Max and the power of C&C Music Factory, Lionhead animator James Benson has for the last month been taking some of Valve's best characters and breathing a little extra life into them.

In the clip above, Left 4 Dead's Zoey breaks free from the confines of a first-person perspective and figures out a way to bring down a Tank without wasting bullets, while in the clip below, Team Fortress 2's Engineer figures out a way to go left to right (groove) and work you all night, before finally letting the music take control.

Those two are just to get you started; to see the rest (the dance clips are part of a bigger project), head to Benson's YouTube page.