On Portal is Free - Why are you still reading this?

Oh, and by the way. Portal's been free on Steam for a week now and it is available for the Mac or the PC. What are you doing reading this blog? GO GET IT IF YOU HAVEN'T ALREADY!

If you have, good on you! Now go play it again and get all those radio station-related achievements!

*Eagerly awaits Portal 2*

On My Successful Return from Examination Argh-ation!

Hey everyone,

Well, it's over! The Spring 2010 semester has been successfully concluded and it is now summer time! I'm still waiting to hear back from a few internships that I am applying for, but I am now considerably more free now! Man, it's been like, what is it now, 2 weeks? Geez Louise I've been out of the loop for a while.

So, let's start with the biggest of news. Steam now has a new format (was part of the Beta so it is not a big surprise) and Steam now also supports Mac users. Tripwire Entertainment; the guys who made the awesome FPS shooter Killing Floor, has jumped the gun and is offering the game at 33% off; or $13.39 (two cents higher than being truly leet). Having played Killing Floor yesterday, I noticed quite a few more full servers than usual. It's quite nice to see the game come back from the dead (both literally and... well... realistically meta-physically). In fact, I would say it is a valuable lesson for any publisher who works with Steam to consider the advantages of adapting your games to work on as many systems as possible. More money is always a good thing, right?

Well, I'm going to go celebrate with a bottle of Bass beer (omigosh, he posted something related to alcohol on a website with Google AdSense Ads... EEEKK!!!) and a round or two of Killing Floor. I'll keep the blog posts coming and... hopefully, will finally get around to posting that Distant Worlds AAR.

On Shortness: Max Payne for $2.50

Ahh shortness. You've probably noticed I use long sentences. People say it's because it makes me look smart. Others think it's because I just got so much to say in so little time. I think I do so because long sentences make the alpha male. Being alpha male all the time is tiring. I let someone else be alpha male for while so I can do whatever it is beta males do.

For this blog post, I will use short sentences for this one. See how it goes. Mebbe is easier to read. Remember, this blog is as much an attempt to convey awesomness of video games to you as it is a scratchpad for my own writing technique! Anyway...

Yesterday I bought Max Payne for $2.50. It was part of the Rockstar Week on Steam. I heard many great things about this game before, but never tried it till now (Whoops, a comma... double Whoops, a sentence in parentheses!). Game is fun. Bullet time is fun. Narrative is interesting thanks to interesting use of in-game scenes as well as comics. Levels feel way too linear and short though. If structure of levels were released today, might be comparable to how some Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 co-op levels feel like.

Rockstar is going with a 3 hour sales frenzy on Steam, where they dictate a game in their list, chop the price by 75% or so and give the user but 3 hours to scramble to purchase the game. I was reading through the GTA series forums and found a post of someone complaining that they weren't able to buy GTA IV because they were still at school. Given the rating of the game, I think Rockstar did a good job there. Business is business though.

Anyway, I got to get to class. Will have next Distant Worlds part up soon!