A Green Mushroom

The Lab is the only game Valve has released for their own VR platform so far.  It's a sampling of VR ideas tied together with a lab that looks like it's from the portal facility. The Lab has a bunch of mini experiences, some are just being in a space, some are more.  There's a game where you grab a ship and move it around with your hand while it fires and dodges.  One experience has you walking around a room scale model of the solar system.  There's a robot repair room with ties to portal.  There's all sorts of little things. If you get an HTC Vive then The Lab is the perfect place to start.  It's easy to get comfortable in VR here and it doesn't ask too much of the player. The one standout for me is the Longbow game.  It's an archery game where you're given a bow, infinite arrows, and put on top of a tower near a gate you need to defend.  Stick figure men charge at it and you have to take them out. I started playing it like a game but...

I am!  I can't wait for the release of Portal 2 next Tuesday.  Portal is one of the best games I've played and I can't even imagine the mind bending that will happen in the sequel. I like the idea of thinking with portals, but here's the sad news.  If I had a portal gun in real life I would probably just use it to get rid of my commute to work.  Lame, I know, but if I tried to do much more with it I would definitely have a portal related accident. Anyway, if you loved portal there's no reason to skip Portal 2.  A whole new single player campaign.  New twists in the gameplay.  And best of all, Co-op!  Seriously, who doesn't want to be part of a portal slinging robot duo?  My brother and I are going to dominate that mode. I also stumbled across this awesome Portal comic from valve.  It's worth checking out for the art style alone, but the story helps bridge the gap between Portal and Portal 2 too. If you don't already have Por...

Yesterday, I tried to play Singularity.  I gave it my best attempt but I just couldn't do it.  The game is supposedly about getting a glove that can manipulate time but I wouldn't know, because I never made it that far.  I was looking forward to making new things old and old things new, turning enemies into babies, restoring structures to their former glory, and making people crumble to ash before my eyes.  Unfortunately, the first 20 minutes of the game were so bad that I waved the white flag and gave up.  The game played like the world's most generic shooter and a lot of the design decisions (like not being able to open doors on my own) pissed me off.  I dropped Singularity in the mailbox and it's headed back to Gamefly as we speak. I've talked before about jumping into the action of a game but it's also important for the game to throw the player into the fun right from the start.  If your game happens to be about an awesome time manipulation de...

Most of the games that hit the market today are not new.  They may look new or sell themselves as new, but the majority of the time they use old gameplay mechanics.  Developers constantly take each other's ideas and recreate the same type of game. Think of all the shovelware out there.  So many games aren't even worth five minutes of your time.  It is really sad. Playing Bayonetta is like playing Devil May Cry 3, which is like playing Devil May Cry 2, which is like playing Devil May Cry.  That's really the spark that got me thinking about rehashing gameplay mechanics.  Bayonetta has a crazy story and different visuals, but it is essentially an old game with a new layer of paint. When developers have really high production values they can get away with remaking the same game.  The Halo series comes to mind.  Between Halo, Halo 2, Halo 3, and Halo: ODST not a lot has changed.  All the games basically play the same.  If you didn't like...

Oh my god.  This is epic.  A children's choir sung Still Alive from Portal.  This is definitely a must see.

I have mentioned before that I like achievements.  They add replayability and diversity to game play.  It's nice to see one pop up while playing the game normally, but there is a huge sense of accomplishment when I complete an achievement that I've been striving for. I replayed Portal last night because of achievements . Portal is a great game in its own right but I haven't thought about replaying it for quite some time. That changed last week when Valve released an update for Portal which added hidden radios throughout the game.  The player needs to retrieve the radios and then take them to an unspecified location in the level, then the radio tunes and gives a secret message.  There is an achievement for doing this with all 26 radios.  These messages have led to an entire mystery surrounding Portal 2. Now the community has a mystery to solve, players have new goals to achieve, and Portal 2 is building some hype.  As usual with achievements, everybo...