If you happen to be one of those few people who call themselves a gamer but is yet to play the award winning Portal by Valve, we have some good news for you. Steam News tell us that Portal is now available for $9.99 i.e. INR 437.50 on the PC, which means Valve is giving the game away at a hefty 50% off.

Before the procastination bug bites you again, we would like to add that the offer is valid only for this weekend i.e. till September 1st. Take out your credit cards and get this game before the offer expires. Seems like Christmas has come early for PC gamers!

Back in 2007, Penny Arcade released their “We’re Right” Awards, stating the best writing, soundtrack and new game mechanic awards. Predictably, the winner for all of them was Portal – something that we and many other gamers agreed on back then.

However despite this, it is in my opinion that at the very least, I have made a grave error. Portal’s story, despite being an amazing adventure with a compelling story and some of the best characters around (not to mention being responsible for spawning quite a few internet memes) was NOT the best story of 2007. It was NOT the best writing of the year, surprisingly.

So you may ask, what pray tell was the best story of 2007? What game could be better than GLaDOS or those incredibly cute turrets that let out the innocent “Whyyyyy?” whenever you toppled them over? Was it Bioshock? Andrew Ryan and Rapture were awesome after all. Was it maybe C&C 3? If those were your guesses, then I’m afraid your dead wrong. Hit the jump to find out just which game managed to trump GLaDOS and was an even bigger lie than the cake.

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Yes, yes, we all knew this was coming, but now we have pictures, straight from the Steam Update News. Delivering on their promise of giving us all our own lil’ fluffy Weighted Companion Cube for Christmas, Valve has announced that it will soon be taking orders for the plush toy, along with fluffy Companion Cube dice for your car’s rear-view mirror. There’s no mention on the pricing yet, but it should sell for about $30 - around the same price all their plush toys seem to retail for. As for me, I shall call mine Fuzzy and he shall be mine… at least, until they start preorders for the Portal turret toy…

We all love Portal and think its the best thing since people discovered that the Internet could be used for stuff other than boring research papers. So quickly, before you question about how perverse we are, let us tell you that we did not make this. There isn’t much to say about this lil’ slash-fiction doodle, so I won’t say it.

But the real deal is, Portal is for lesbians! Or that’s what Heroine Sheik says. Obviously being as sarcastic as GLaDOS herself (we hope), the article looks at a number of in-game imagery that apparently point to such a conclusion – including the presence of an all-female cast and the “reshaping” of guns to fire orifices (or vaginas, for you purists) instead of bullets. Hmm, I always thought guns were just guns, but I guess I should start looking at everything in terms of sex. Not that I already don’t, but just saying…

After stumbling on the fact that the Weighted Companion Cube is indeed a male (hello, the achievement is called “fratricide”. Also, picture! ^^^ ) which kinda puts a lil’ ding in her argument, she pulls a Freud on the usefulness of men – “They’re cute, but they’re a burden.” Strange, that’s exactly how we men feel about women at times.

I suppose I could just as well look at Portal and start dragging religion and politics into the whole mess. Or I could just look at a set of blueprints and see a drinking bird. But I think I’ll go do what I do best. Run up behind a turret and grab it, chuckling as it panics and starts saying stuff that are eerily reminescent of what my girlfriend says if I do the same thing to her.

The world seems to be a really weird place. And no, we don’t mean otakus and tentacle pr0n, but really bad reviews for Half-Life 2: Episode Two. Sure, we may not (and probably never will) have given it bad scores, but some people apparently think it doesn’t deserve all those lofty numbers attached to it.

In a review in the Mumbai Mirror newspaper earlier this week, infuriatingly titled “A Half-Lived Experience”, the game was granted a measly 2/5 stars, giving fans like ourselves a reason to direct a lot of hatemail their way. Sure, the guy’s got a point – the story does seem to be hopelessly LOST (get it?) and a lot of gameplay elements have been generously borrowed from its predecessors, but that’s like saying Twilight Princess sucks because not a lot has changed from Ocarina of Time. With confusing references to Combines and outright bewildering sentences like

This combo package of five games, being offered for Rs 999, is a steal. The distributors, Electronic Arts, aren’t planning on making the PC version available in India, and I simply can’t understand why.

when the 999 buck package IS the PC version don’t really help lend a lot of credibility to the review. Especially when the footnote specifically mentions the PC version’s pricing. We’ll also just assume that the chap has a great reason (which we’d love to hear) for recommending a Steam purchase, considering it costs twice as much as the retail version here.

Wonder what happens when this guy gets his grubby mittens on the hundred other AAA titles launching soon. In the meantime, stay tuned for our own, better (?) reviews of Team Fortress 2 and Portal, assuming I can manage to pull myself away from GLaDOS’ experiments for 20 minutes to write the damned thing.

Right, so y’all already know how I’m completely head over heels in love with Portal, GLaDOS, Jonathan Coulton and Ellen McLain after that great “Still Alive” ditty. And, obviously, I’m not the only one. Jonathan Coulton, the genius behind the best damn end credits song ever made, reveals the inside scoop on how the song came about and how Valve might be planning to make it officially available through Steam – maybe even with a version of him singing it. Hey, don’t look at me. I’m just as eagerly waiting for the Weighted Companion Cube paperweight and the Portal turret toy to end up on the Valve Store. Or I could just lose patience and make one of my own from all these cardboard boxes that I, strangely, seem to have lying around…

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.

So we’re all having truckloads of fun with the Orange Box, but with all the charm and the heartbreak of Episode Two, it looks like Portal is missing out on all the attention. And believe me, this is one game that literally takes the cake, pun very much intended. (In case you don’t get that awesome joke, then you need to get a life and find a way to play Portal.. NOW!)

We’ll have a multi-staff review on the Orange Box games soon enough (we’re still enjoying the games in Commentary mode), but in the meantime, I just had to drop in here to talk about how Valve has managed to create the most lovable, cuter-than-cute AI entity in the form of GLaDOS, the Portal AI that’s a cross between Cortana, 343 Guilty Spark, HAL-9000 and Aileen Wuornos on crack. Tempting you throughout the game with promises of a rich, moist, delicious cake before trying to finally bake you into one, GLaDOS, voiced by singer/actress Ellen McLain, finally gets torn to pieces by the player as she tries to escape the Aperture Science facility. The rub here is that GLaDOS, apparently, isn’t dead, considering her final report, which is delivered in the form of the best damned ending credits song I’ve ever heard in all my years of gaming.

I’d seriously recommend that you do not listen to this song if you haven’t finished Portal yet, simply because you’d ruin its intended effect. For the rest of us, and for the ones who are dead, enjoy your download of this awesome little ditty and sing along with the lyrics, which you can download, print, frame and gaze at for eternity after the jump.

And oh, don’t believe the heretic. Remember: There is a cake!

Download Portal – Ellen McLain – Still Alive (MP3/5.39 MB)

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Armor Games’ Portal: The Flash Game is a free rendition of the recently released Portal (bundled with The Orange Box for PC and Xbox 360 or can be purchased separately through Steam). Much like its inspiration, the objective is to use your portal-gun and shoot at specific walls over conveniently-placed obstacles in order to proceed to the next stage – with the major difference being: you’re playing from a 2D perspective (very reminiscent of Lode Runner).

Portal: The Flash Version includes over 40 challenging, portals thinking levels, which features almost every feature the real game does, in 2d – energy balls, cubes, turrets and even the famous crusher from the trailer. The game also includes a console to mess around with after finishing the game, or just being frustrated by thinking with portals (we will post some commands later on – so unless you’re a good guesser, hang on there!)

Levels gradually get harder as you progress, so it’ll definitely take time before you can finish all 40 of them without your head exploding. Have fun~!

(Source: NeoGAF)