digitalemur: a yellow coreopsis or tickseed flower on green background (Default)
Mx. Coreo Jones ([personal profile] digitalemur) wrote2008-01-07 10:04 am

The cake is a lie.

Back in August when I heard that Jonathan Coulton had released a song for the credits of some Half-Life 2 mod, I listened to it, did not understand it, and liked it anyway. It was crankily nutty in a way that fit my mood WAY TOO WELL at the time.

Still kinda fits.

Yesterday [livejournal.com profile] sstrickl showed me Portal.

Holy crap.

HOLY CRAP.

I was in love after about 5 minutes.

And now I understand the song! (Okay, I had to look up the reference to Black Mesa, but otherwise.)

So if you know somebody who has Portal, and you have a little time to spend watching them play or playing it yourself, it's a short game and it's probably the best watching-someone-play experience I've had.

Don't be too disturbed when I pick lines from that song for my new journal titles. Because it's been 6 months now. And I'm Still Alive. And there is science to do. And the cake is a lie.

Hey look, GLaDOS has a MySpace page! (And there's a very nice little explanatory video there too.)

Update: 5 minutes later, James IMs me. He has a Weighted Companion Cube as his icon. He hasn't read this, he's just had that icon for a while now. Holy crap. He points out that the Portal people also wrote Psychonauts. This makes so much sense! So Psychonauts fans? You should play Portal. Portal fans? You should play Psychonauts. I will just watch and squee. They should mix the two! I know bacon cake sounds like a bad idea but how bad could it be?

[identity profile] amethyst73.livejournal.com 2008-01-07 04:39 pm (UTC)(link)
Every once in a blue moon, I become sad that I own a Mac instead of a PC.

Portal makes me sad that way.

(I suppose I could go out and acquire an XBox360 just to play Portal...)

[identity profile] grnarmadillo.livejournal.com 2008-01-07 05:41 pm (UTC)(link)
I got the Orange Box primarily cause I wanted to finally get to play Portal (though I've never actually played HL2, and it got good enough reviews that I should probably try it sometime). It was well worth it. GLaDOS is hands down the best original video game character in years. When I was a kid, money was more valuable than time, and I would have been ticked to pay for a game that can be beaten in a (lengthy) evening, but nowadays I'm happy to actually get to the payoff in a reasonable amount of time (unlike the most recent Final Fantasy, which I actually never finished).

As to the song, well, it's everywhere, and it's spectacular. :) VGCats made an animated video for Still Alive (http://www.vgcats.com/comics/extras/stillalive.php) (spoilers I suppose), though Jonathan Coulton's version (http://youtube.com/watch?v=bWUcVj31QaM) isn't bad. (Note: Watching the videos probably get the song stuck in your head.)

Anyways, look at me still talking when there's science to do.... :)

[identity profile] a-dodecahedron.livejournal.com 2008-01-07 06:29 pm (UTC)(link)
Now you're thinking with Portals!

Squee. My brother has had the Orange Box for a while, but hasn't played Portal yet. (!!!) I told him to play it immediately. Me, I'm going to buy it as soon as I have a spiffy enough computer.