Portal 2 Message Board older than one year ago

Valve keeps plenty of secrets from the world, locked away and tied down with live, stripped wires above a shallow pool of stale water, surrounded by a moat of baby hippopotamuses -- but this secret got out. Turret Lullaby is a six-page Portal 2 comic that explains the birth of the singing turrets. We don't want to give it away, but it involves a baby, a burglar and a lot of bullets.

#portal Hot on the heels of the game's "Peer Review" DLC, Valve has made available the third and final volume of "Songs to Test By," free of charge (as usual) through the game's official publicity site. There are 24 tracks, including the closing credits theme "Want You Gone," plus another six snippets for ringtones. The Volume 3 .zip file is 141 megabytes. More »

If you haven't played Portal 2's co-op yet (like me!), now's probably a good time to fix that.

Testing begins anew next week, guys.

Valve just sent word that Portal 2's first set of downloadable content, dubbed Peer Review, will be released on every platform on October 4.

And if you've forgotten, this content won't cost you a dime.

Peer Review contains both single and co-op content, though the additional "story" bits appear to be relegated to the co-op expansion, which continues to follow P-Body, Atlas, and GLaDOS.

If you're playing solo, Valve's included a Challenge Mode with leaderboard functionality. Said Challenge Mode is also available for co-op play, though. Co-op! Co-cop! Co-op!

#portal Initially slated for summer, Valve's first, free expansion to Portal 2 will be out for PC, Mac, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 next week. It's called "Peer Review" and is made for co-op. More »

On October 4 Valve will release new content for Portal 2 for all versions of the game. The content pack, titled Peer Review, will include more cooperative challenges and again feature GLaDOS, which means you can expect to solve puzzle while getting pelted with insults...

Valve send word that their free DLC for Portal 2 will arrive on October 4th. Man, I totally already said all that in the headline! Here’s what I didn’t say, which was what Valve said: “In “Peer Review”, you and a friend will continue the story of loyal bots P-Body and Atlas as you puzzle your way through a mysterious new co-op test track and once again match wits with GLaDOS. The DLC also features a single player and co-op Challenge Mode, and leaderboards to compare Challenge Mode scores with friends and the Portal community.”

#art Chris Myles has designed a range of jewellery based on video game franchises. Don't think "shiny rings with 'VIDEO GAMES' written on the side". Think "entirely based on the game they're representing". More »

Have you seen these things? You may have, once, but most likely your brain's cuteness centers automatically short-circuited and you blacked out, banged your head against the hard wood of your desk, accidentally unplugged your computer's power cord and eventually woke up, dazed, drooling and slightly dumber, with no recollection of these adorable Portal 2 Long Fall booties from J!NX.

Prepare yourself this time, and to guarantee you don't forget them, go ahead and buy a pair. At $10, go ahead and buy five pairs, and wear them all at once, for padding when you look down, realize how cute your lower body is, and you short-circuit, black out and fall. Depending on your height and where you're standing at the time -- 6'4", on top of Mount Rushmore -- that could be a long fall.

Updates to Portal 2 have been released. The updates will be applied automatically when your Steam client is restarted. The major changes include:

Portal 2

• Fixed purchased items showing up as not tradable after their trade delay expired
  

#portal This Philips webcam, from a 2001 Swedish catalogue, should look familiar to fans of Valve's Portal series. What do you think? Awesome coincidence or awesome (given the nature of the "characters") inspiration? More »

A few weeks ago, Valve started beta testing its Steam Trading feature and people have swapped over a million items since then. Were the majority of them hats? I don’t have those figures, but the entrails in this animal say “yes”. The trading feature is now officially live and you can trade all sorts of gubbins with one another. Clarification: “all sorts of gubbins” means Team Fortress 2, Portal 2 and Spiral Knights items so not a great deal has actually changed. Perhaps more interesting than item swapping is the ability to trade unredeemed games, although do note the qualifier ‘unredeemed’. Steam is not letting you swap grubby used goods. There’s a FAQ here. The fact that every public profile now comes with an inventory means that Steam is officially an RPG in which buying cheap games is the grind. The plan is to bring more developers on board in the coming months, so one day you may be able to trade the Incas for a pair of cowboy boots. Truly, we live in exciting times.

Things we knew about Dan Trachtenberg's astounding live-action short film, Portal: No Escape:

• It's fantastic.
• Trachtenberg did a fabulous job directing it.
• It's really fantastic.

And that was about it, until now. Trachtenberg opened up about casting, filming, the special effects and amount of time it took to make No Escape in a recent interview with the Los Angeles Times, and it seems like a modern-day short-film fairy tale. Things we know about Trachtenberg's Portal: No Escape now:

• Trachtenberg used Twitter to track down his production team, hiring people from New York to the Netherlands to work on the special effects.
• Danielle Rayne, the film's protagonist (we'll call her Chell), plays Sarah Connor in the live-action T2 experience at Universal Studios.
• Trachtenberg fell in love with Joss Whedon. Er, Whedon's motto: "You take people, you put them in peril, you find out what they're made of."
• He plans on making feature films and more Portal films, but not necessarily in that order or entirely separately.

Online videogame apparel store J!NX have launched a new officially licensed product for Portal 2: knee socks. Based on the Aperture Science Long Fall Boots from the game, fans of Portal (or girlfriends of fans of the game), may dig these. And hey, they're only 10 bucks. Here's the link to ...

#portal Is this the best summer for video game-themed socks... ever? It's looking that way, now that J!NX has released officially licensed Portal 2 knee socks, footwear based on the Aperture Science Long Fall Boots from Valve's first-person puzzler. More »

So says Gabe Newell, as part of a long and fascinating interview at Gamasutra about Valve’s current state of play. Of their recent games’ commercial success he claims that “We can never predict; I mean we just try to build good games and then we tend to be surprised. Portal 2 did better on the PC than it did on the consoles; Left 4 Dead did better on the consoles than it did on the PC.”(more…)

Updates to Portal 2 have been released. The updates will be applied automatically when your Steam client is restarted. The major changes include:

Portal 2

• Preparations for launch of Portal 2 updates this September
  

You know how we've all seen Mario with a Portal gun before? Well, somebody is actually trying to make that into a game we can not only watch, but play! It's called Mari0 and is currently in development for OSX, Windows and Linux at two-man team Stab Yourself.

Mari0 will sport not only the original Super Mario Bros. levels, but also all of the Lost levels -- plus in-game downloadable map packs, a level editor and simultaneous multiplayer for co-operative portal slinging. Seriously, read that sentence again and then click this link.

Like many (if not all!) of you are, we're behind this project entirely. Let's just hope we can all snag it before Nintendo's lawyers shut it down.

#portal In nearly every case when a game is released on console and PC, the console versions sell a ton more copies. Like, it's not even close. Unless we're talking about a Valve game. More »

#supermariobros Saving the Princess looks almost too easy armed with an Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device. But that doesn't mean we're not overly excited to play Mari0, a side-scrolling that jams Valve's brand of teleportation into Nintendo's NES classic. More »

#qube When I finish playing one first-person shooter, there's always another one for me to choose from. The same is true when I finish racing games or when the alternate-universe version of me finishes playing games that include the words Shin, Megami and Tensei in the title. More »

We must say, if you're currently working on a live-action film based on Portal, just stop right now. Stop what you're doing and watch Portal: No Escape, because this is how it's done.

We've played the games, but have you ever considered the desperation and hopelessness you would feel if you were subjected to GladDOS' tests? To living in a facility and being a prisoner? Check out this new short film to experience those emotions in an all new way...

#portal If Chris Nolan directed the opening of a Portal film (and Hans Zimmer scored it), I suspect it would look a little something like "Portal: No Escape", a gorgeous and intense fan film set in the world of Aperture Science. (It wasn't Nolan, though. It was Dan Trachtenberg!) [via Superpunch] More »

#bastion Bastion's deep voiced narrator Rucks is a serious guy, full of insight and detailed information to help the Kid rebuild his world. Turns out he's not the only technological maverick in this universe. More »

Rucks, a.k.a. the narrator from Bastion, is a learned man, capable of technological wizardry and spinning a good tale. He's not the only one of his kind, though, as proven by this video in which Rucks takes none other than Aperture Science founder Cave Johnson to task.

#portal Gary Hudston commissioned three spectacular custom-built Portal 2 levels complete with fresh dialog from the voice of GLaDOS, Ellen Mclain, just to ask his girlfriend to marry him. After watching the glorious spectacle unfold, I'm ready to marry the guy. More »

It's hard to imagine there are still people out there cramming engagement rings into dinner rolls in the hopes that future Mrs. Boring can open it at dinner and agree to a life full of carefully planned monotony. There are people out there doing that right this very moment.

But see, then there are people out there setting the bar in the most fantastic ways. One such individual is Gary Hudston, who proposed to his now-fiance Stephanie by commissioning a series of custom Portal 2 levels. On top of that, he even got Ellen Mclain, the voice of GLaDOS herself, to pitch in some custom audio. Truly, he worked hard to unlock that "Got Engaged" achievement.

We just wish we could've seen Stephanie react to the whole thing, if only to see what deserves so much effort and love -- not that it's that big a deal to us. We're a pretty cool blog with lots of prospects. In fact, just the other day somebody proposed to us via a custom Doom 3 level? Yeah, you're totally jealous, aren't you?

Of course you are.

Oh now this is special. Properly special. Extraordinarily talented map creator Douglas “TopHATTwaffle” Hoogland was commissioned by one Gary Hudston to create a very particular series of Portal 2 levels. Working with Rachel “Miss Stabby” van der Meer, he set about creating some truly spectacular Portal 2 puzzles that lead up to, well, something of a proposal.

(more…)

You'll get access to more single and multiplayer content in some form next month.

We've been waiting oh-so-patiently for Valve to deliver its first slate of downloadable content for Portal 2, but the weeks have gone by without much to say. Valve's been awfully talky at Gamescom this week, however, and Kotaku confirmed with the company it's coming mid-September.

There were rumblings about the downloadable content recently, with Ellen McLain, the voice acctress for GLaDOS, being called in to record more voice work for "a" Valve game.

Last we heard, the downloadable content, titled Portal 2 DLC #1, will be free across all platforms--Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, PC, Mac. In the past, Valve has pushed free downloadable content on some platforms (PC), while having to charge for it on others with policies against free content (Xbox 360).

Valve's been quiet on specifics, but has said the downloadable content will include "new test chambers for players, leaderboards, challenge mode for single and multiplayer modes, and more."

More? I wonder what the more is.

Maybe now's the time to dust off Portal 2 and finally play that co-op mode.

Good news: the Portal 2 DLC hasn't been delayed. Instead of moving it out of its "summer" release window, Valve is releasing the DLC as late in that window as possible. Speaking to Kotaku at Gamescom, Valve marketing director Doug Lombardi said that the DLC, which includes new maps, leaderboards, and challenge modes, will be released in mid-September. That's "still technically summer," he noted.

If you're upset about this DLC arriving later than you expected it to, but still within its stated release window, let us remind you: this is more Portal 2, that Valve is giving you for free. "Thank you" is pretty much the only appropriate response to that.