Tag: Portal

Take two silent protagonists from two different Valve game series. Add cake. Mix in two very interesting weapons of choice. Voilà. You get one of the more amusing fan films, one where Gordon from Half-Life meets Chell from Portal. In this fan film from AndrewMFilms, we see what happens when Gordon gets his hand (and gravity gun) […]

LEGO Dimensions is a LEGO game on steroids. With portals. 

Do you know the difference between fusion and fission? Some of us, sadly, do not. Well, it’s funny what we can learn from evil.

Until recently Linux users were the most unloved members of the gaming world, but back on February 14, they received the best Valentine’s Day present ever: Steam. The download service for a veritable smorgasbord of videogames, Steam games could be played only on a PC running Windows and occasionally a Mac. But now one of the best games (IMHO) on any platform is about to become one of the best games for Linux. First spotted by UK Linux blog, OMGUbuntu, Valve has released a native Linux beta for its first-person puzzler, Portal.

Feminist blogger Anita Sarkeesian said, “Many contemporary online multiplayer games now include voice and text chat integration which is meant to provide a richer shared social gaming experience. Unfortunately, in some of these spaces when a player is identified as female (or LGBT) they are viciously attacked and verbally abused.”

There’s so much to learn about harassment in video game culture—not only in-game but also AFK—that it’s been very difficult to encapsulate in one article. So I’m breaking it into two parts. Part one, below, describes the problem of sexism in this not-so-niche geek culture and includes interviews from both female and male gamers. Part two discusses potential solutions.

I love a good soundtrack. My iPhone is filled to the brim with music from John Williams, James Horner, and Bear McCreary. I love the transformative power of soundtracks: One minute, I’m at the grocery store shopping for spaghetti sauce, and the next I’m on the Enterprise, under attack from the Reliant. When the cashier asks me, “Would you like paper or plastic?” I answer, “Khaaaaan! And, um, paper.”

Quantum Conundrum (QC), by Airtight Games, is the latest contender to the crown of physics-based puzzlers in which you progress through a sequence of challenge areas to reach the door on the other side. In this, it’s similar in both structure and spirit to a previous game you may have played. I am, of course, referring to 2010’s The Ball.

Valve Software, the creators of some of the world’s most beloved videogame series, Half-Life and Portal, has announced the beta release of their new animation tool, Source Filmmaker (SFM), designed to give filmmakers their own limited, yet extremely powerful, film studio.

This is a triumph: Kim Swift, one of the creators of the puzzle game magnum opus, Portal, has given us a new videogame, Quantum Conundrum (QC), which was released on Steam on June 21, 2012 (and will be hitting the PS3 on July 10, 2012 and the Xbox on July 11, 2012). But rather than her previous home at Valve, where Swift worked on award-winning titles Half-Life 2: Episodes One and Two, Left 4 Dead 1 and 2, and Portal 2, QC is released under the auspice of Airtight Games.