The jury’s been out on Portal for some good time now, and we’re all pretty much convinced that the cake was the truth all along. Not to mention it was spankin’ tasty to boot! But after living the experience and sharing them with your message board mates, there might be a slight chance that you’re asking for a little more. Primotech’s Alex Petraglia has just the prescription for you: implementing the Portal Gun in other Source-engined games! Follow the instructions step-by-step, and you’ll be raring to go.

It should be mentioned that this experimenting isn’t without its kinks. You can’t have NPCs or enemies go through the portals you make, but other weapons and their accompanying ammunition effects should be a-okay. Alex also adds that “it may take some time to figure out which surfaces work and which don’t, since obviously this is no longer clearly indicated by the textures.” Hopefully, prospective modders are working ways to have the gun better utilized in games that weren’t built around the weapon’s concept. Or even better, make their own Portal spin-offs! Like, whoa.

Huh! That was… brutal. Talking to avant-garde gaming mag EDGE, Valve’s Gabe Newell had quite a lot to say about the PS3, and no, he wasn’t being kind to them by making his “unflattering comments” in Vortigese.

I think the PS3 is a waste of everybody’s time. Investing in the Cell, investing in the SPE gives you no long-term benefits. There’s nothing there that you’re going to apply to anything else. You’re not going to gain anything except a hatred of the architecture they’ve created. I don’t think they’re going to make money off their box. I don’t think it’s a good solution.

Strange thing is, this PS3 bashing isn’t new for Gabe, who’s made his displeasure known very well in the past when he called the PS3, in no uncertain terms, “a total disaster.” Valve, which developed The Orange Box for the PC and the Xbox 360, currently No. 1 on the videogame charts, had earlier decided to offload their PS3 porting work to EA instead.

Speaking about the upcoming PS3 version, Gabe added:

I think the people who have The Orange Box on the PS3 are going to be happy with their game experience. We’ve done the PC and 360 versions here and EA has a team doing the PS3 version – and they’ll make the PS3 version a good product; EA got the job done in putting a lot of people with PS3 experience on the project. But I think it’s harder to get it to the same standard as the 360 and PC versions.

Great! So not only are they being “vocal” about the PS3 and Sony, but they’re also doubting whether EA has what it takes to do as good a job on the PS3 as Valve did with the PC and the Xbox 360? Hmm… I guess speaking your mind is one of the major perks of owning your own, hugely successful content publishing platform. Excuse me while I slip into an 18-month hibernation as I wait for Episode Three.

If you are one of those people who were hoping to pick up a retail copy of Valve’s upcoming Half-Life 2: Episode Two / Portal / Team Fortress 2 pack, then you’d better break down and start crying now. In a surprise move, Valve has announced that it is now cancelling Half-Life 2: Black Box for the PC, in favor of the more complete (and pricier by $10) Orange Box, which includes the upcoming three games as well as HL2 and Episode One.

Set to ship later this fall, the package will also be available via Steam for those who don’t care much for the shoddy cardboard boxes or simply can’t wait until the game hits the shelves. Although it has not been confirmed whether the Steam version will also sell for the same price point, we just hope Valve isn’t greedy enough to charge Steam buyers the full price for games they have already paid for. (Twice, in some cases in mine!)

Justifying the cancellation as a move that will avoid confusing customers, Valve’s Doug Lombardi has said,

Those who purchase the PC version of The Orange Box will get three separate Steam product codes: One for the three new games, one for HL2, and one for Episode One. This way a PC Orange Box owner can give away their Half-Life 2 or Episode One unused Steam product codes if they don’t need a copy of those games.

But as one subscriber put it quite rightly, “Anyone who doesn’t already own HL2 and Episode One is no friend of mine, and doesn’t deserve the keys anyway.” Why the hell would I be interested in paying extra money for a game that I am just going to be giving away for free to someone else, especially when they have to buy the new games anyway via Steam. (Or, of course, they could wait another decade until Episode Three launches and hope to get these for free as well, the lousy moochers!) The Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3 version of the Orange Box will also ship later this fall for $59.99, $10 more than the PC version of the Orange Box. Looks like Valve was more than just smitten with Blizzard’s World of Warcraft highway robbery system. Filthy, greedy pigs sure can learn a lesson from TellTale games and the Sam and Max episodes!

via [Kotaku]