Tonight I finally summoned enough patience to finish all of the advanced test chambers in the original Portal. I only solved two of them back when the game was new, and eventually got distracted by a sea of other games and worlds. Fast forward to today and I finally got both the Fruitcake and Vanilla Crazy Cake Achievements! Huzzah! I did end up having to complete the last test chamber on my Steam Deck. Apparently when Portaling up and down it’s difficult to turn yourself when playing at a higher refresh rate. I suppose I could have forced a lower framerate, but figured I could just whip out my Steam Deck and finish the job.
All that’s left is to beat the challenge maps. I wonder how many decades that’ll take me? 😛
I haven’t had much to write about; still knee deep in animation tweaks. Things have been pretty uneventful at work for the most part, which is nice. I’m actually starting to enjoy waking up again!
Since I’ve mostly been doing technical experiments with hardware lately I decided to take a break and do some gaming of the Portal Variety. I even went back to the original game and got a couple of achievements. All I could think about while beating a couple of the advanced chambers was how Valve really needs to get back into gaming software. I miss being stoked for their games. Thankfully Portal Stories and Time Machine are nice alternatives. Tag? I still haven’t figured out what I think about it yet.
Some games are like that. Not sure if I’ll love them or hate them, and sometimes they take revisiting. Take Dead Island for example, I used to be annoyed with it when I first played with it a bit a couple years ago. But this time around I cracked it open again and actually had a good time. Maybe it was from the knowledge I learned playing Skyrim, but I seemed to have a better time going on quests and leveling up than my previous attempt. Might have to go back and play through it some more soon. I think one of the turn offs the last time I played it was the odd placements for some buttons, the kind that tell you this was made for a console, even the Borderlands games have this feeling for me. But I have a better understanding for it now so hopefully it’ll continue to be fun. 😀
Lets face it. Most of us who have played the original portal know all of the memes attached to the game and the series in general. “The Cake is a lie” being one of the oldest jokes in the book at this point. Not these S.P.O.O.K’s in Oklahoma though! Local news station KJRH has a special report that will probably make you laugh a bit if you’ve played the game.
Of course, at this point the video has gone viral (if you can’t tell by looking at the comments) and the criticism of the entire internet has reached their eyes. They responded on their facebook page with this:
In a response to our story on KJRH, we’ve been labeled ” clueless ghost hunters” by Jason Joe Wayne Blevins …personally, I take no offense, as he is focused only on one thing, the chalk board. At NO TIME did I or any member of my team make any claims as to a paranormal cause, only that the time and placement of this phrase on the chalk board were unusual. It’s sad, that these few individuals that throw their negative comments about my team around do not do the countless hours of evidence review, research, and time spent on sites. If this individual can do it better, or anyone else can do it better, get out there and DO IT.
It gets better! They also claim that the chalk board message was written two years before the release of Portal. Clearly it’s the ghost of GabeN that is at fault for all of these lulz.
“Yes, we’re familiar with both the game and the phrase… our question’s about the chalkboard are : why was it written there? What did they mean by it? And the fact that it was written 2 years before the game ” Portal” was released is interesting as well,”
Oh well… It’s a good way to publicize your service at least! I imagine GLaDOS is having a good laugh about this.
