Portal, The Orange Box's puzzling suprise

I took advantage of Steam’s weekend deal and finally brought myself to buying The Orange Box, a collection of six amazing games published by Valve, three of which are new content, Half-Life 2: Episode 2, Team Fortress 2, and Portal. The first one I played and the one I was most looking forward to was Portal. Here are my thoughts.

Portal is a first person puzzle game. You play as a test subject in Aperture Science and the goal is to get from A to B by shooting portals that let you travel from one place to another. There are a total of 20 (00 – 19) stages, which may sound like very little, but each one is elaborate and unique. The game is actually pretty short, and I played it to completion in about 3 hours. As a stand alone game, this would be unacceptable, but as part of The Orange Box, this is actually very good value and an amazing component of the package.

The story is very good and the GlaDOS character very funny. You never really know when she’s being sarcastic or serious. The closing song, Still Alive, really wraps things up perfectly.

Graphics are good, though not amazing. I had a few framerate problems at time, but it was probably just my relatively crappy 8400M graphics card being stubborn. Loading times were awful, though, but that seems to be a problem with all Valve games, so I won’t specifically blame Portal for that.

The gameplay itself is the heart of it all. There are obviouly the portals, but there are also cubes and buttons. As with other Source games, the physics engine is outstanding and all sorts of manuevers can be done by falling through portals.

All in all, this is an amazing game and a great addition to The Orange Box. If you like puzzle games, shooters, and good stories, this is the game for you.

Portal is available on its own on Steam, or as part of The Orange Box on Steam, Xbox 360, and PS3.

Braid has finally been released for the PC!

Braid, the beautiful and award-winning Xbox Live Arcade title released last year, has finally been released for the PC. I bought it, I played it, and I loved it.

The game seems like you typical platformer on the surface. You run, you jump, and you kill enemies by stomping them. However, the interesting part comes up in its unique gameplay element: time manipulation.

You go around the level collection puzzle pieces that you later use to assemble a full puzzle. There are 5 different worlds and each one has its own different way of playing with time. Some levels in different worlds might look similar, but the mechanics of each world make every puzzle unique and challenging.

And the game sure is challenging. Some puzzles look very difficult. It takes a lot of patience to solve them all. I’m not a huge fan of puzzles, but I have to admit that Braid’s mixture of challenge, simplicity and cleverness makes it worth tearing my brain apart. :D

Probably what I like most about Braid is its art style. It’s very paintery and reminds me a lot of the kind of paintings you see in an impressionist gallery at an art museum. The animations are done wonderfully, so you really have to see the game in play to admire its full artistic prowess. I also like that the game pays homage to other famous platformers like Donkey Kong and Super Mario Bros.

A really nice touch about the game is that there is no loading screen, no title screen, and no game selection screen. When you start the game, you take off immediately outside the door of the level where you left off. This is great for impatient gamers like me. ;)

Braid's beautiful art style is unique and plays homage to classic games like Super Mario Bros. and Donkey Kong.

My veredict: Beautiful game, tough a bit short and very difficult at times. Highly recommended if you love puzzles and have a bit of patience. I don’t generally like puzzle games, but I loved this game, and if you’re like me, maybe you’ll love it too!

Braid is available on Steam, Greenhouse, Impulse and Gamersgate for $15. Demos are available, so no excuses for not trying it out!

Braid trailer from David Hellman on Vimeo.

You play through 15 different stages in Story mode to unlock different microgames. Every time you beat a set of microgames in Story mode, you get a souvenir, which can vary from an interactive toy to a song from the game’s soundtrack to a full-fledged minigame. You can also replay unlocked microgames in the Spindex mode.

The game's huge cartridge has a gyro sensor inside!

Each stage in Story mode features a different character, each with a unique set of games and style of play. Mona, for example, has games the require small spins. Kat and Anna’s games only use the A button. 9-Volt’s games are twisted remixes of classic NES games. Every microgame is different, and there are well over 200 of them to unlock. The motion sensor in the cartridge is not perfect, but it works really well.

There are also many different souvenirs to unlock. Souvenir games include air hockey, minigolf, a sewing game, and PYORO R,  where a cute little bird has to defend flowers from invading insects.

All in all, the game is very varied and unique, and a joy to play. It is one of the main reasons I still keep my GBA SP, even though I have a DS Lite: Rotation the GBA is way easier than rotating the DS. :D

If you have a GBA lying around, I highly recommend this game. It’s a fresh new take on portable gaming and it still feels innovative and extremely fun, even after four years of its original release.

Windows 7 build 7000 desktop

I got my hands on one of the Windows 7 beta build 7000 copies. I installed 7 and have been testing it for a few hours. Here are my thoughts:

Loved:

1. Windows Explorer feels much faster. Opening folders in removable drives, particularly, is considerably faster than is Vista.
2. Cross that, Windows OVERALL feels much, much faster.
3. Windows Media Player 12 is much faster and smaller
4. Installation was very fast and most of the hardware was installed automatically
5. Aero enhancements for resizing windows work great
6. The new preview API for the taskbar is awesome. In IE7, all tabs are previewed. In Media Player, playback buttons are added.
7. Minor graphic enhancements are very welcome and greatly improve functionality and aesthetics.
8. Very little bundled software apart from IE, Media Player, Media Center, Paint and Wordpad. Mail, Photo Gallery, Movie Maker, etc, will be free downloads. This makes the base installation faster and smaller.
9. Updated versions of Paint and Wordpad are good, but the updated Calc is one of the best calculator apps out there. HEXelon Max is obviously better and always my choice when my TI-84 isn’t at hand, but this Calc PWNS the calculator app bundled with Linux, something the XP and Vista Calcs could only dream of.
10. Picture slideshows as desktop pictures. I don’t know if this will be exclusive to Ultimate, as it currently is in Vista (the beta is only available in Ultimate edition), but since I’ve always used Vista Home Premium, this is a nice change.
11. Windows that have progress bars show them in their taskbar item. This is extremely useful, to say the least. This includes IE downloads (although IE’s download system remains considerably crappy, without even a pause option).

Didn’t like (but can be fixed easily, or will be fixed soon):

1. The new way the taskbar groups windows. Thankfully, this can be disabled and I could go back to the “classic” view where each window has its icon and label, with the cool addition that window labels of the same program are kept next to each other and the window previews are shown at the same time.
2. The big taskbar icons. Please give me back my real estate. (This can also be changed)
3. Non-Microsoft programs are not yet compatible with the preview API for the taskbar. So, no all tab previews for Firefox (tried with Shiretoko too). Hopefully, Mozilla and other developers will add this functionality soon.

Hated:

1. Selected programs in the taskbar are shown white. Since I enabled labels, the white text on white background combination is very difficult to read.
2. Some drivers had to be installed manually (graphics card and Bluetooth). Oh, well. I guess we can always expect Windows to always leave some driver-hunting to us. As a sidenote, ALL of my hardware is working perfectly after installing Vista-specific drivers.

My Windows 7 beta installation, after installing Office 2007 and Firefox, takes up 11.4 GB. I’m guessing that Office takes up a little less than a gigabyte, plus 2GB each for the hibarnation file and the page file, would give a core installation of less than 7GB, which is about the same as Vista. Not bad at all.

I seem to have a love-hate relationship with the new taskbar, but I think it’s just a matter of getting used to it. Changes in UI from Vista are considerable, but not nearly as many as from XP to Vista. The control panel, one of the most painful changes I had when I started using Vista, remains virtually unchanged except for some useful and natural minor UI enhancements.

My Veredict: Awesome, best Windows to date. When this finally comes out, hopefully sometime this year, it will be a much-welcomed update to the already very powerful and stable OS Vista is.