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. (more…)

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.

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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.>

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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

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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. (more…)

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. (more…)

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.

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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?

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“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.

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