"Two plus two is f… f… f… f… ten. IN BASE FOUR! I'M FINE!"

Today's review was written by a guest reviewer, Megan. This one's 10x better than any I've done, so without further ado, here's her review of Portal.



I'm going to review a 2007 game called Portal, a single-player puzzle-platformer.

It was released for PC, Xbox 360, and PS3. The developer was Valve, who also did Half-Life, Counter-Strike, Left 4 Dead, and a bunch of other awesome first-person shooter type games. The game was actually based off of some students' senior project called Narbacular Drop.

I'm going to try not give away any big things about the story. When I played the game, a few things here and there were spoiled for me and it's really fun to find out things as they happen. The following trailer was released by Valve, so I don't consider it to have spoilers.

Story: 9/10

You play Chell, a woman we know nothing about. It doesn't matter; we never learn anything about her. The only other real character is an AI computer named GLaDOS who you hear talking to you from the minute the game starts. When the game begins, you awake in a stasis chamber, a tiny room with glass walls. GLaDOS welcomes you to the Aperture Science Enrichment Center. From here, you are taken to the first test chamber and introduced to the Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device (portal gun) and taught how to use it.

As you progress through the test chambers, GLaDOS talks to you, making you aware of the dangers present in the chambers, new things to do with the portal gun, and how there's yummy cake waiting for you. The atmosphere is creepy and surreal from the start and it just gets weirder from there. You're trapped in this empty testing facility with nothing but the portal gun and the AI's voice to help you (along with some tools they give you in order to advance, such as weighted cubes). The rooms get more and more challenging as you go, with new elements being introduced each room or so.

I thought the overall story was unique and amusing. The humor is great. It's cute, nerdy, and random, with tons of quotable lines. Even if you don't enjoy the humor, the gameplay will make up for it. You'll want to know if the cake really is a lie. This game is worth finishing.

Graphics: 9/10
The graphics are fairly simplistic, which is completely appropriate for the game. If you've ever played Half-Life, you know what the graphics look like. Plain gray walls and floors don't distract from the important part of the game - the puzzles. I thought they did a good job making the equipment and technology in the game look futuristic, but not really ridiculous. You can tell what everything is or what it might do, and you need to in order to figure out what to do next. The portals themselves stick out well from the rest of the environment.

One graphical thing that stuck out to me was when you shake the cursor around in game, your surroundings sort of trail along with you. It looks really nice and makes things more realistic. I haven't noticed this in other games, but then again, I haven't played many of the newest first-person shooters. The game has no visible health bar; the interface is very clean, letting you focus on the task at hand. The only things you see constantly are your gun and the 'crosshair' to aid you in creating portals.

Chell has metal heel springs to prevent injury from falls.

Gameplay: 10/10
The portal gun is your main tool to getting through this 'nightmare'. If you're playing it for PC, the right and left mouse buttons control your two portals - one blue and one orange. It doesn't matter which color you create first; you can enter either one and you will exit from the other. You can jump through them, walk through them, throw stuff through them, fall through them. If you go through one in a wall and exit through one on the floor, you'll come out and land back on your feet. It's dizzying at times. Sometimes you will need to create new portals in mid-air, forcing you to pay close attention and move quickly. If you create a portal on the ground and jump into it from several feet down, you will gain momentum, helping you get to higher places. This technique of creating portals as you're in the air and gaining momentum will be necessary for much of the game. It's also really fun to experiment with.

As you'd expect from a first-person game like this, you will encounter enemies. You don't exactly kill them... More like break them. As I said, you have no visible health bar. You can get hurt from certain things, like turrets, and if you move out of the way quickly enough you will not die. Your health apparently regenerates itself after you are hurt, because if you are damaged again (after your health has gone up) for a short period of time, you won't die. There are indeed plenty of opportunities to die in this game, mostly from falling off of platforms as far as I remember, but there are other things that will instantly kill you. You'll just start over at the beginning of the current test chamber if you die. The game will auto-save when you reach each test chamber or a 'checkpoint'.

The way the game introduces the new obstacles while teaching you how to play flows perfectly. The levels are brilliantly designed. By the end of the game, using the portal gun feels almost natural. The difficulty is just enough for me to want to keep playing. Don't get me wrong, this game can be frustrating... I did end up getting a couple of hints, but if I had thought about it some more, I probably would have been able to figure it out myself. It feels damn satisfying when you finally solve some of the harder puzzles.

(Also, after playing the game for too long and you stop, you might get the same feeling you do after you play Katamari Damacy... You'll get the urge to teleport across the room with portals. After Katamari, you size up the objects around you to see if you can roll them up. Am I the only one?)

Sound: 9/10

It won't threaten to stab you.

The sound is appropriate. The portal gun will make noises when you create portals, and also make a noise when you can't create a portal somewhere (like the darker-colored metallic walls). Sometimes all you'll hear is the sound of your footsteps. The best sound, though, is GLaDOS's crazy-ass mechanical voice.

"...all the cake is gone. You don't even care, do you?"

The lack of music for most of the game adds to its empty, surreal atmosphere. And then of course, there's the song, "Still Alive". You can look that up yourself. It's in the ending credits of the game.

Replay Value: 7/10
The game is pretty short. I think it took me about three sittings to beat the storyline, but it could be beaten in one, for sure. Plus, there are bonus levels and little missions to accomplish, like destroying all of the security cameras. I would definitely sit down and play through this game again. It won't be as fun as the first time; learning to play and finding out the story were awesome. If you haven't played this game, you're really missing out.

Portal 2 is set to come out on February 9, 2011.

"When the testing is over, you will be... missed."

Dark Side of the 8-bit Moon

Today's post will also be a short one. I felt like I had to share this with you, Faithful Readers.

Being a huge nerd, I'm a big fan of listening to video game music. However, I'm also an audiophile in general. One of my favorite bands is Pink Floyd. About a year ago, a buddy of mine showed me something that combined my love of video game music and my love of Floyd perfectly.



That was the first part of an effort by one guy to arrange Dark Side of the Moon in its entirety for NES. It was created using Famitracker, sound rendered with NSFplug. It's INCREDIBLY well done. Some of it's comical; I guarantee you'll hear at least one sound effect you recognize from an old NES game. The coin noise in Money, for example, is one that everyone should know.

Check it out; give at least one track a listen. Great Gig in the Sky is one of my favorites. If you have time, the whole album is worth listening to.














Anyways, to make it clear, I had no part in the making of this. Just passing it along.

The whole set is available for download for free from the creator's website, too. http://rainwarrior.thenoos.net/music/moon8.html

The Mega Man Live-Action Film!

Today's post will be short one. In keeping with the Mega Man theme, I thought I'd share this. It's a full-length live-action fan made Mega Man film. It was done for no profit, all costs out of pocket, and it was surprisingly well done. I started watching it thinking that I'd quit watching within 10 minutes or so, but I got sucked in and watched the whole damned thing. It's pretty good. The CGI is a little shaky, but even that was good, considering the budget.

The absolute best part is the actor for Dr. Wily. That guy was PERFECT for the role. Seriously, go check it out. You think it's hokey, but who knows? You may watch the whole movie and really enjoy it, just like I did.

Be sure to full-screen it! This window is tiny on purpose.


"MegaMan"-Fan Film from Eddie Lebron on Vimeo.

Watch it! Fullscreen it!

Just to make it clear, I had no part in the making of this film. I'm just one guy who loves Mega Man waaaay too much. Enjoy :-)

"The Return of Sigma"

This is the last in a trilogy of reviews on the Mega Man X games for SNES. Today's review will be on Mega Man X3.

Things just look so much...shinier...

Mega Man X3 was developed by Capcom and released in America in early 1995. It was the last of the Mega Man X titles to appear on the SNES, and in my humble opinion, the least strong of the three. It's still a great game, but I feel like it just wasn't quite as good as the other two. Let's break this game down and see just whafuck.

Story: 8/10

The story in X3 is, like all the Mega Man games, pretty interesting. In 21xx, a scientist named Dr. Doppler finds an 'anti-virus' that neutralizes the Maverick threat. All seems to be well, and the reformed Reploids move with Dr. Doppler to a newly created utopian town called Doppler Town (really, I couldn't make up that town name if I wanted to).

However, the peace doesn't last for long. The Reploids soon revert to their Maverick ways and the blame falls on Dr. Doppler. It's up to X and Zero to investigate and take out the next wave of Mavericks and stop Dr. Doppler from causing any more damage.

Dr. Doppler certainly LOOKS like a friendly guy, right?

I won't worry about spoilers since 95% of you either have played this game already or haven't played it but don't care about story. This story suffers from the same problem Mega Man 4 did. In Mega Man 4, after defeating Wily in 3 previous games, the main antagonist was instead a man named Dr. Cossack. However, as everyone could guess, Dr. Cossack was merely a puppet to--guess who--Dr. Wily. Mega Man X3 has an incredibly similar story. It's not exactly the same, but damned close, with Sigma being the puppetmaster of sorts.

Sigma's completely brutal...could you say no to this guy?

Graphics: 9/10

X3 uses the same graphics chip as X2, the CX4. It's the only game made besides X2 that uses the CX4, too. As such, you can expect to see some super cool wireframe action towards the end of the game. It's done in a much more interesting way than it was in X2, as well.

The wireframe stuff just looks so COOL in game.

It really is a pretty slick-looking game. X3 cuts down on a lot of the lag that was present in both X and X2, making gameplay a lot quicker. On the downside, though, some things have been simplified, like the boss animations. A lot of the Mavericks only have 3-4 total animations for their characters. While it's not a huge issue, it does detract a little bit from the overall experience.

Gameplay: 7/10

The gameplay is where X3 kind of steps away from the other two X games for SNES. The basic scheme is the same: run and gun through a level, fight a boss, use his weapon on the next boss, etc.

The controls are the exact same and just as responsive as ever. There's still E-tanks and hearts hidden throughout the levels. The capsule system returns, albeit changed a bit. There's still 4 capsules that give you additional abilities. Instead of a hidden Street Fighter-esque move, though, there's additional pink capsules. After collecting the main 4 capsule abilities, you have a choice between 4 pink capsules that each further upgrade one of your 4 abilities. If you choose to skip them all, though, you have a choice to later get a 'golden chip' that will give you all 4 super-upgrades.

One huge change in this game is the fact that Zero is now a playable character throughout the whole game. If I recall correctly, it's as simple as going into the pause menu and hitting L or R. Zero uses his beam saber rather than an X-buster. He also has a very large amount of life. He saber is a melee weapon, but it's incredibly powerful. Playing as Zero seems like a good thing, but there are two downsides, one small and one huge. The minor downside is that Zero can't walk through any doors, even mini-boss doors, so you have to momentarily switch back to X. This can get annoying. The major downside is that Zero's life is finite; if he dies, he's dead for the whole game. This will even affect your ending if Zero's dead by the time you beat the game.

Another big (but mostly useless) addition is ride armors. These are large mech suits that you can use on certain pads scattered throughout the stages. One allows you to travel better underwater, another lets you fly, etc. The problem is that they're hardly utilized. You'll find that only two or three are ever needed, and only then to get a quick heart or E-tank, and then you won't end up using it for the rest of the game. I think it would've been a great system, had it been implemented a little better.

The four ride armors.

Sound: 7/10

In my humble opinion, this is the weakest point in X3. The soundtrack just didn't have the same vibe as it did in the other two X games. It certainly wasn't a "bad" soundtrack by any means. It was totally respectable. It just didn't quite capture the mood of any given level as well as the music did in X or X2. As per usual, here's a sampling of some completely random tracks from the game. First, the intro level's music, one of the best songs on the soundtrack.



And here's a track from Neon Tiger's stage, Urban Jungle, one of the weaker tracks (again, just my opinion).



Replay Value: 8/10

This game kind of goes against the other two X games for SNES in that it has a couple more big reasons to replay through it. The addition of Zero as a playable character is a huge boost since you can try to play through the game only using Zero and not let him die. There's also different bosses you fight towards the end depending on how you've killed Bit and Byte. Otherwise, the only reason to come back to this game is to attempt a playthrough with no power-ups, and then a playthrough using only your X-buster.



Thanks for sticking with me through this trilogy. It's a great bunch of games, and I really hope you all end up trying them out at some point.

And thanks for reading!

Below are links to both the original Mega Man X3 for SNES as well as the Mega Man X Collection. Recently, I bought this collection, and it's phenomenally awesome. It has Mega Man X through Mega Man X6 in all their glory, as well as a racing game based on the original Mega Man series that was only released in Japan. It's well worth buying the collection. Even the racing game is a blast; it's like Mario Kart, only a hundred times more involved.