Portal 2 Message Board

Alongside the Skyrim Creation Kit and the HD Texture Pack that was officially released last night, Valve added their own little addition to Skyrim: Fall of The Space Corp, Vol. 1 adds Portal 2′s jittery little Space Core to the Nord world, voiced by the man that holds the patent on all gaming voiceovers, Nolan North. It’s both proof that clicking things in Skyrim’s Steam Workshop works just like they said it would, and that Valve’s punmasters are missed a trick by not calling him Nolan Nord. When you add the mod to the game, you need to find him. Here’s a video I made that shows you how.(more…)

#portal Portal 2's Cave Johnson rants about citrus fruit in this trailer for an "Electronic Combustible Lemon," which, when ignited, plays an ominous ticking countdown followed by what I presume is the sound of lemons exploding. Sadly, the lemon itself does not explode. More »

#gameclub Hello everyone, welcome to the Kotaku Game Club. Today will be our last meeting discussing Portal 2. After covering many aspects of the single-player experience in our last few meetings, today we'll be talking about the co-op missions, which offer a whole new set of surprises and challenges. More »

Remember to come join our last discussion of Portal 2 at Kotaku Game Club tomorrow at 4pm Eastern! More »

#portal The work of custom toy creator Christian Hooton is no stranger to Kotaku. Whether it's StarCraft or Portal, Hooton's craftsmanship dazzles. Check out his latest creation: a 7-inch Portal 2 Wheatley light-up toy. More »

#gameclub Welcome everyone to week 3 of the Kotaku Game Club's look back at Portal 2. In our third meeting we'll be talking about the game's story and characters. More »

Remember that round three of Kotaku Game Club's Portal 2 discussion series starts tomorrow at 4pm Eastern! More »

#portal Nanotechnology engineering student TheObviousTrap created a 300 nanometer thick Aperture logo in an undergrad class. Bravo! More »

#gameclub Howdy folks, welcome to week two of the Kotaku Game Club's discussion series looking back at Portal 2. This week we're going focus on the game's mechanics: The building blocks that come together to make the game's puzzles. More »

Remember Game Clubbers, we'll be continuing our series on Portal 2 tomorrow at 4pm Eastern. Be there! More »

#fanart What Mass Effect, Portal 2, Deus Ex, and BioShock have in common are memorable worlds and visual flairs. Not sacrificing either, artist Pieceoftoast traded the games' high-def graphics for pixels. The result is stunning. More »

#gameclub Welcome back everyone! Today is our first Kotaku Game Club meeting of 2012, and the opening discussion of our series on Kotaku Game of the Year Portal 2. More »

Make sure to be on Kotaku at 4pm Eastern tomorrow to help us kick off the Game Club's Portal 2 retrospective! More »

She's certainly not the first celebrity to do some voice work for the GPS industry, but she's by far the coolest. Joining the likes of Snoop Dogg, Homer Simpson and Yoda is GLaDOS, available in a new fan-made custom voice pack over on Reddit.

It's a zip file with a bunch of wav files in it, compatible with Garmin Nuvi units -- the files should also work with Garmin Mobile XT units -- and is available as a free download to everyone who wants to be berated by an artificial intelligence while hunting down the closest Burger King. Don't say we didn't warn you!

#otherpeoplesgoty Over at Kill Screen, they've done their yearly "High Scores" poll in which each of their contributors send in a ballot of games, assigning points to any game from 2011. The results of the vote are in, and Portal 2 is the clear winner. More »

The success of the Portal games comes from a combination of two completely different aspects: gameplay and narrative. Portal 2 is, on one hand, a great puzzle game in the classic tradition, sending you through a series of enclosed, self-contained puzzles. These require the arrangement of provided tools to create a single, predetermined "solution" and allow you to advance.

On the other hand, it's the story of the rise and fall of a gigantic research company, and of '60s-style "for its own sake" science -- it even has Flubber! -- told years after the fact, diegetically, by two rogue AIs and a series of tape recordings. And it's genuinely funny!

#2011yearinvideogames After several weeks of debate, discussion, and deliberation, Kotaku's 2011 Game of the Year Award came down to a simple vote, and the majority voted for science. More »

#portal Once again, Volpin Props knocks it out of the park. Though in this case, they've knocked themselves out of the park. And fallen a great height, only to land safely, thanks to these Portal Long Fall Boots. More »

#2011yearinvideogames What Valve did this year seemed impossible: they improved on the perfection that was the first Portal. That feat was accomplished, surprisingly, by making everything about players' return to Aperture Science less perfect. We got a scuffed-up, messier experience that resonated more deeply than any other game this year. Can Portal 2 open a rift to the top of this year's GOTY contenders? Let's see. More »

Is there a Martha Stewart Living for Nerds monthly periodical we never knew about? We're all about games and interior decorations, but we don't know how one learns to combine those two with such grace and ease as this, the greatest Christmas tree ever, and perhaps the greatest tree ever. Behold: The Portal Christmas tree, the full glory of which can be seen after the jump.

We're typically ones to pull down (and mulch) our arboreal holiday decor on December the 26th, but we don't know that we'd ever be able to part with a tree this magical. We'd leave it up, explaining to visitors that, oh, this is our Valentine's Day tree, and also our Easter tree, and Flag Day tree, and so on.

#portal Here's further proof that basically everything goes better with Portal. Redditor Tyamykal has posted a photo of his Portal-fied Christmas tree, which certainly beats the hell out of the 20 years' worth of musty tinsel I festooned all over my folks' Tannenbaum this very evening. For more Aperture-inspired sculpture, see New York City's giant Companion Cube. More »

#otherpeoplesgoty The industry- and design-focused publication Gamasutra has released their list of the top ten games of the year, with Valve's Portal 2 coming in at the top. " More »

Level With Me was a series of conversations with level designers like Dan Pinchbeck, Jack Monahan, Magnar Jenssen, Brendon Chung, Davey Wreden, Ed Key, and Richard Perrin. At the end, we all collaborated on a Portal 2 mod. You can download that mod here. Liner notes, installation notes, and screenshots are after the jump.(more…)

#portal Portal 2's Wheatley did not win an award at the Spike VGAs. Mildly disappointing, but then, given the Spike's themselves are mildly disappointing, I'm not losing much sleep over it. More »

Earlier this month, Valve made a video of Wheatley talking about his nomination in the ‘Best Character’ category of the VGAs. The Joker actually took the award, which seemed disappointing at first, since he’s a decades old character who even in this incarnation is appearing in a sequel, while Wheatley is quite the original. Then I noticed that the other two entrants were Nathan Drake and Marcus Fenix, appearing in the third games of their respective trilogies. The awards mean diddly squat, but I was a little disappointed about Wheatley missing out because it meant we all missed out an an acceptance speech. No more! Here’s what he would have said.

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#otherpeoplesgoty Their readers thought the best video game of 2011 was Skyrim, but the editors of Games Radar have picked Portal 2. It's their top game of the year. More »

#gamemusic2011 Kotaku's "Best Game Music of 2011" is a multi-part series in which we'll be discussing the best video game soundtracks of the year. Today, we'll be looking at and listening to the interactive robo-crunch beats of Portal 2. More »

#halflife This one's a bit of a stretch… but then, what am I talking about? It's never a stretch when it comes to Valve. More »

Who fancies a mystery? Valve prepared what must have been an incredibly expensive video for the VGAs’ best character category, starring Wheatley, complete with Stephen Merchant’s voice, floating in space and begging for help getting home. So, that’s nice and fun, if lacking in the big laughs. (He didn’t win.) But of course Valve being Valve, they’ve filled it with more details. Not many, but there’s Russian text, star constellations in the background and weird numbers, which of course means those with a mind for such things are tearing it to pieces. Of course, it might have just been filler to make the image more interesting. But Valve MUST know by now that anything they add is going to be analysed to pieces, and they’re clearly the sorts to troll their community in every imaginable way. What do you make of it?

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Ellen McClain, the voice of none other than Portal 2's GlaDOS, was probably the most charming celebrity to stroll down the red carpet at the Spike Video Game Awards. Sure, the reality show stars and athletes may have attracted more attention, but McClain was all smiles as she used her operatic voice to talk about how great the limo ride to the show was. "This is so funny," she laughed, "the last time I was in a limo was in LA in 1981 with Rex Harrison! So only thirty years later, I have my second limo ride!"

McClain said she too has been charmed, by the fan response to her popular character. "I love the way the fans are wondering who is Chell, is Chell the offspring of GlaDOS and Cave Johnson, all this stuff. And I also think that the Portal games have drawn a lot of young women into gaming." She said that she and husband John Patrick Lowrie, who also does voices for Valve's games, have "gone to some fancons, and the women are so excited, they come in and they're either dressed up like Chell or they're dressed up like GlaDOS."

And we haven't heard the last of McClain yet. "Eric Wolpaw told me in the limo," she said, "that it has been announced, John and I have both done voices for Dota 2. So we're going to be in there."

"There are a lot of characters in Dota 2," confirmed Lowrie. "There are like 100 characters, so we've done quite a few of them."