hehe, yea. Too bad their development cycles are so long. Or maybe it's not that, maybe it's too bad that they have so few games in the pipeline at a time.

If I were Valve with such successful IP and the continual income of Steam to prop me up, I'd have a lot more games in the pipe. Then again, I really have no clue what I'm talking about.

It's funny how the 2 biggest and most PC friendly developers in the world share many similarities: they're both stupendously rich (WoW and Steam), tend to deliver very polished games, stick with franchises for long periods, aren't afraid to take a LONG time and release relatively few titles. I'm talking about Blizzard and Valve in case that wasn't obvious already.

Maybe their business philosophy is the reason of their success? Do only a few things at a time, but do the things you do really well? They sure stick out like sore thumbs in today's gaming landscape after all.

Release date for Portal 2 announced: Feb 9 2011.

http://www.examiner.com/video-game-in-c ... ase-date-1

Which probably means later by several months.

http://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Valve_Time

lol. Months? more like years.

Where the fuck is episode 3 anyway?!

heh, yea, someone in the original Slashdot comments asked that same question.

Episodic Content = epic fail. The goal was to create shorter games in less time for less money.

The result is shorter games in the same time (or longer) for less money. Failage.

Valve released some pretty cool Aperture Science videos. Totally must-see

They've been releasing tons of awesome videos. Visit their page on gametrailers and watch the valentine video, it's hilarious.

The vids are awesome, but the commentator's voice somehow rubs me the wrong way. Not "this sucks" wrong, but "I'd laugh out loud but..." wrong.

It's clear that Portal 2 is gonna be pretty heavily focused on co-op, but I'm not sure I know anyone who's interested in the game who has the required amount of spatial thinking to co-op with. Some of my friends don't care about the game and others who do can't find their way out of a paper bag. I'd sit next to them when doing dungeon crawlers and find the way back for them, they didn't even know where they were even though they were actually playing the game.

That's a pretty accurate description of Shiny's typical spacial awareness, though she's improving. She never got very far on the original portal, though.

hehe. Well if there's two of you there's probably more chance of pulling through (or of maximum frustration ).

Portal 2 comic released, well first part anyway. Explains the backstory a but and covers more or less what happened between Portal and Portal 2. I love the art, but was a little underwhelmed with the beginning of the story (got better after a few pages tho).

http://www.thinkwithportals.com/comic/#1

interesting. I'm more interested in what's coming up, though.

Wel, I finished Portal 2 a few days ago. I didn't want to write something half-assed about it so I waited until I was in the right mood to write this. Basically, it has trumped Witcher 2 as my definite GOTY by a good few steps. It was simply brilliant, in every possible way.

How do I put this...it's games like Portal 2 that remind me why I play games. You'll recall me talking about how all these lame AAA games make me yawn and had me thinking I was getting bored with games, and they did, but then a game like Portal 2 comes along where everything is just tight, and right.

I almost feel bad for thinking for more than a second that a Valve game was gonna be anything less than a hugely polished masterpiece (hence my picking it up at 15 € a month or two later). The puzzling is great and a lot of new elements are introduced vis-a-vis the original, the writing and voice acting is at times absolutely hilarious (Stephen Merchant is an absolute God), and the game itself is an emotional rollercoaster that touches on extreme optimism, bitter defeat, power, family ties...

And the ending is just perfect. The only minor criticism I can think of is that it ws sometimes to obvious what was expected of me in the puzzles.

Games like this don't come along often. I did about 8 hours to finish it, so it's a good bit longer than the original. I'm gonna start the co-op campaign with a friend in a day or two, which is supposed to be a little more challenging gameplay-wise.

I started the co-op campaign with a friend, and it's loads of fun. Your robots can make little gestures, like dancing, high fives, waving, etc. They can even do some aerial show moves when flying through the air/portals. All the while Glad0s berating you. I swear, nothing like figuring out a tough puzzle and high-fiving on it.

Also, I don't know if that was clear but the co-op campaign is an entirely seperate part of the game, basically a second game. Coolios.