The Orange Box is already well on top of my list for Game of the Year. Sure, it’s not a game, but what the heck, Portal alone is worth any award heaped upon it, even if you don’t count the excellent Episode Two or the insanely fun Team Fortress 2. With Episode Two wrapping up with a gut-wrenching cliffhanger, fanatics such as yours truly are already salivating over playing Episode Three and Portal 2. That is, provided they are released some time before we die, considering Valve’s infamous release date hijinks.

Talking to Rock, Paper, Shotgun’s John Walker for an interview, Episode Two’s project lead David Speyrer has justified the lack of an Episode Three trailer saying that they are trying something “pretty ambitious” for the project, and didn’t want to overcommit.

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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…

The episodic experiment began in mid-2006 with Half-Life 2: Episode One and SiN: Episodes - Emergence. Grand stories were told about how episodic gaming would mark a major shift in the way games are developed and delivered. All fine and dandy, but a year and a half since all the grand posing, where exactly do we stand?

WARNING (and Disclaimer): Personal opinions, long sentences and an abrupt ending to follow!

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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.

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.