And Then There Will Be Cake
A new video game store called Play N Trade just opened right along my walk from work to home in San Mateo. And in addition to posting about Team Fortress 2 Russ also passes along a video clip or two from something in The Orange Box pretty much every day. So while I was walking home last night and saw that the store was still open I dropped in to get a copy.
The Orange Box is actually a collection of games, two of which I was particularly interested in:
Upon getting home however I discovered that Team Fortress 2 is online play only, there’s no campaign mode to help you get used to the controls or learn how to use the skills your character has. And the folks online are well, generally what they are in every other online game. Maladjusted, belligerent, and generally intolerant of anyone who doesn’t have way more time to devote to gaming than I do. So scratch that for now, I’ll have to find another group of newbies to play with.
Portal however sucked me right in. As Yahtzee commented in his review of The Orange Box:
Absolutely sublime from start to finish and I will jam forks into my eyes if I ever use those words to describe anything else ever again. (….) Portal is great and if you don’t think so you must be stupid.
That’s a pretty fair evaluation. The dark humor of the computer voice prodding and prompting and insulting and encouraging and occasionally making nonsense comments is fantastic. And the puzzles themselves were really interesting I thought. Check out the Wikipedia entry for some examples of variations of the kinds of stuff you need to solve. It reminds me of Myst in a lot of good ways, only without the boring bits and a whole lot funnier. Plus, it’s easy to die.
If you grab a copy of The Orange Box
