The Nightmare Before Christmas' " This Is Halloween " sung by everyone's favorite turrets and murderous AI in "
This Is Aperture "
posted by The Whelk
on Jan 28, 2012 -
12 comments
This was a triumph. A very special, very custom Portal 2 mod serves as Gary Hudston's proposal to his girlfriend Stephanie. He commissioned Douglas “TopHATTwaffle” Hoogland and Rachel “Miss Stabby” van der Meer and a the talents of a special guest as the icing on the cake. Via
RPS.
posted by Verdant
on Aug 22, 2011 -
85 comments
Portal 2 has finally hit the streets, and despite a somewhat
rocky start with their controversial promotional ARG (
previously), it looks to be a huge success. Interestingly for such a critically-acclaimed blockbuster, the title's core ideas steam from a pair of concept projects from student design school
DigiPen: the original portal system from
Narbacular Drop (
video -
download -
previously) and the sequel's physics-altering gels from
Tag: The Power of Paint (
video -
download -
previously -
previouslier). Combine these innovative ideas with some
Lost-meets-
Life After People level design, excellent
voice acting, and top-notch writing, and it's easy to see why so many people
called in sick this past week. But playing the game is just the beginning -- look inside for a collection of easter eggs, story theories, videos, and other goodies from the post-mortem.
[more inside]
posted by Rhaomi
on Apr 21, 2011 -
425 comments
You say potato, Valve say... potato.
Just over a year after the
Portal 2 announcement ARG (previously) had people dialing up a mysterious BBS, on April 1st Valve pushed out updates to
thirteen indie games through Steam, under the tag #potatofoolsday. Some of the games
got a
little starchy straight away, but more interesting was the appearance of
cryptic glyphs, which seemed to link to other games in the set, and
nonsense phrases. Alongside a
cheeky coded shoutout to members of the
Facepunch forums, a hidden frame in the latest Aperture Science Investment Opportunity video
(1, 2, 3) appeared to confirm there are 16 glyph-and-letter sets, and 13 phrases to be found in and around the games.
But what to do with them even when the set's complete? And what of the uplifted
talking raccoon and the
blogger whose
boss's
brother has been kidnapped by
sentient potatoes?
[more inside]
posted by emmtee
on Apr 6, 2011 -
115 comments
Something has happened to the world. Everything has been flattened into 2D - except you. Now the world needs you to put things back to normal.
Antimatiere is a small puzzle game where you move 2D objects around on walls and floors to solve problems. It also has a slight resemblence to
Portal in that placing doors and windows punches holes through the mentioned walls, allowing you to pass between different rooms. Warning: Requires the
Unity Web Player plugin to run.
[more inside]
posted by ymgve
on Mar 9, 2011 -
35 comments
While controversy erupts
again over the corrupting influence of video games, some developers are working on projects it is very hard to get angry about.
Chime, an XBox game to be released for PC tomorrow, is one such project.
[more inside]
posted by DNye
on Sep 5, 2010 -
18 comments
It's well-known at this point that Valve Software hired the team of Digipen students who made
Narbacular Drop to turn their student project into
Portal. But even people who drooled over the new mechanics in the
Portal 2 E3 videos may not be aware that Valve has hired another team out of Digipen for that. If you're looking for a preview, you should probably
download and play
Tag, the game the new mechanics are based on, in which you explore a grey, cell-shaded world by spraying paint on it.
posted by Pope Guilty
on Jun 17, 2010 -
28 comments
Mr, KIng
So
Raymond Hamilton never killed anybody. If he can make a jury believe that I8m willing to come in and be tryed my self. Why dont you ask Ray about those two policemen that got killed near
Grapevine? And while you are at it better talk it over with his girl friend.
Bonnie and me were in missouri when that happened but where was Ray? coming back from the West bankjob wasn't he? Redhot too wasn8t he? I got it straight. And ask him about that escape at
Eastham farm where that gard was killed. Giess he claims he doesn't know fire any shots there don8t ge? Well if he wasnt too dum to know how tp put a clip in a automatic he'd hace fired a lot more shots and some of the rest of the gards would got killed too. He wrote his lawyer he was too good for me and didnt go my pace, well it makes a me sick to see a yellow punk like that playing baby ad making a jury cry over him either/ He stuck his
fingerprint on a letter so heres mine too just to let you know
thjis is on the leve;
X Clyde
posted by mrducts
on May 21, 2010 -
21 comments
bonus level is a new flash gaming portal.
Games include
Captain Dan V Zombie Plan, reminiscent of Berzerk,
Push, an unusual platformer that combines level manipulation with quick-reflex timing and jumping,
Jump Gear, an acrobatic timed racer and a ton more I haven't even tried yet.
What sets bonus level apart from other gaming portals is that it's headed by three great names in game development, Wouter Visser (Wouter), Tõnu Paldra (tonypa) and Jean-Philippe Sarda (JP). Part of their philosophy is allowing anyone who registers to make and share levels for their games, as well as giving budding designers
access to the flash APIs used to create all of bonus level's games.
posted by boo_radley
on Jul 8, 2009 -
7 comments
So you've spent the holidays playing games, but now you have to be back at work. How to get your gaming fix during commutes and lunch-hours, whilst keeping up with that resolution to Learn Something New this year? Well, you could make a
Sack-Boy. You can keep your portable games device warm with a
Zelda cosy. You can knit up a
Pacman scarf or a Space Invaders
bag or
socks if you're feeling retro. Or you can make a
pocket ninja, an
invincibility star to get you through the afternoon, a
maqgnetic Katamari ball to spring-clean that desk, or a friendly
companion cube. (and if you're too cack-handed to knit, you can sew a friendly cube with the pattern
here and tutorial
here!)
posted by mippy
on Jan 4, 2009 -
13 comments
Nostalgic for a time when robots tried to kill you while being condescending? Well,
Hunted Forever isn't Portal, but if you're jonesing for some Flash Friday, it might be right up your alley.
posted by 235w103
on Nov 28, 2008 -
15 comments
SciTalks - from the press release
[19 June]: "The site launches today with over 1,000 lectures
online, and more are being added daily. Segments range from a series of
hour-long lectures by the late Richard Feynman, to a short, hilarious Ali G
interview with Noam Chomsky, and a fascinating talk on designing a
semiconductor-based brain, by up-and-coming Stanford researcher Kwabena
Boahen."
[via]
posted by peacay
on Jun 25, 2007 -
7 comments
Start the new year with a new start page: a hundred or so internet start pages, most including nifty Ajax or flash features, and many with third-party modules.
Netvibes and its
ecosystem of developers is a favorite among many reviewers, but the new MS
Live and its
gadgets are also getting good press, at least among Windows users. Of course, there are are always
the standards. Alternately, you can select a
homepage for kids that will make your eyes bleed; a
site that lets you share your own portals; a homepage that
creates itself; or download the amazing
Orb 2.0 to create a personalized portal that lets you stream any media or files on your PC to any other device connected to the internet. What is your homepage?
[Warnings: Not all pages work on all browsers. Not having MeFi as your homepage may be viewed as a sign of disloyalty, but not having the RSS feed on your page certainly will.]
posted by blahblahblah
on Jan 1, 2007 -
20 comments
Student Projects from
DigiPen, a computer game college. A few I've tried and approve include
Narbacular Drop, which is very short, more of a tech demo, but contains the idea and some of the people behind Valve's upcoming Portal
^,
Orblitz, a get-the-ball-to-the-goal puzzle game with extremely calming graphics and music, and
Bontãgo, a weird combination of RTS, Tetris, and Jenga.
posted by TheOnlyCoolTim
on Jul 22, 2006 -
19 comments
PopExperiment "Anyway, the idea behind this site is similar to stumble: provide links and representations to (of) artists that I love. To that end I've already started populating the music, photography, visual arts and motion arts sections with some art I hope you really enjoy (and real links to the amazing artists responsible)."
[And check:
via via via]
posted by peacay
on Aug 6, 2005 -
2 comments
NASA to consolidate all their sites into the nasa.gov portal The argument for change is that users will be served better by a single website because the agency's various sites vary in quality and content.
But
scientists and fans at NASAWatch say consolidation into a single NASA portal - which is more suited as collection press releases rather than in-depth information - will greatly reduce the amount of public information available from NASA. Is consolidation a good idea or is it just a power grab/manipulation by NASA administrators?
posted by stevis
on Aug 9, 2004 -
11 comments
English-friendly Arab web portal: For those who want to better understand what Arab news agencies are printing/broadcasting or if you want to be able to read any web site published in Arabic, the Ajeeb portal has a
free translation service. It translated Arabic to English more clearly than how I've seen babblefish handle other languages. However, one should approach any translation with circumspection, especially in light of current events.
posted by Modem Ovary
on Mar 23, 2003 -
5 comments
CHAIN: Oklahoma's Comprehensive HIV/AIDS Information Network. A prototype web portal, designed to provide one-stop access to AIDS information for a state with a lower HIV infection rate. Funded by the National Library of Medicine. The concept is that people in small towns or rural areas can access information and contacts without leaving home. Web designers and MetaFiltrans - does the concept work? Seen anything similar in your community?
posted by sheauga
on Dec 1, 2002 -
0 comments
AltaVista goes back to its roots I regularly used AltaVista when I first came to the web but now haven't used it as a Search Engine for many months. Portals, and MSN in particular seem to be very popular but I'm unable to see the attraction (smacks of spoon-feeding idiots "content" who can't find it themselves) so I'm pleased to see AltaVista changing back to what they do best. Can't see me switching back from Google though..
posted by jontyjago
on Nov 25, 2002 -
12 comments
CNN portalizes? Not exactly, but the portal is clearly the model for their new design, which resembles nothing so much as a tall Yahoo. Headlines, except for the top story, are smaller and scattered about the page in more than one category -- something they've done for some time, but now with magnified effect (I counted
six links to Lockerbie stories). Have they forgotten that their mission is delivering
news?
posted by dhartung
on Jan 30, 2001 -
8 comments
Powderlog, the snowboarder's weblog looks like the first specialized weblog I'm really going to like. It seems more portal-esque than a weblog, but that's ok. I wish it were customizable though, I'd love to be able to have the links to my local resorts in the sidebar. Oh yeah, that reminds me, I'm going to code the ability to customize the floating link thing this week.
posted by mathowie
on Dec 8, 1999 -
0 comments
