Valve Announces Portals; PS3 & 360 Release of HL2:Ep2
If the resurrection of Team Fortress 2 wasn't enough to tighten your foreskin — maybe you're a cynic, maybe you're just circumcised, maybe you hate fun! — some other exciting news came out of Valve's EA Summer Press Conference.
First, Half-Life 2: Episode Two will be released simultaneously on the PC, 360 and PS3. The 360 and PS3 versions will feature all of the HL2 back content. This hasn't really been explained, but we assume it means at least Half-Life 2 and Episode One, in addition to TF2.
Not only that, but it will also include a new single-player puzzle game called Portals. It looks like we're not the only ones who noticed how fun portals were in Prey, pictured to the right. We'll let someone who actually saw it in action describe it, after the jump.
In addition to that bombshell, Newell revealed that all versions of Episode Two will ship with a separate single-player game called Portals. This is something of an insanely inspired puzzle game that takes advantage of the Source engine, judging from the hilarious trailer that Newell showed. The trailer took the form of a training video for a new employee of an advanced corporation in the Half-Life 2 universe.The video shows a diagram and explains that as an employee of this company, you may have to find the emergency exit to a certain room. However, there are often obstacles in your way, like a gaping chasm. No problem, because all you need to use is your Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device to create dimensional doorways that let you mess with reality. For example, if there's gaping chasm between you and your objective, just shoot a portal on the far side of the room, then shoot a portal open on your side, then enter the portal. You'll instantly transport from one side of the room to the next by walking through the portal (you'll even see yourself going through the portal).
That's the simplest example of how to use the portal gun. In other situations, you may be under fire by a gun droid. So all you need to do is shoot a portal open over the gun, then shoot a portal open beneath a crate, then watch the crate fall through the hole and crush the gun. It gets even crazier, and the diagrams shown in the trailer showed some incredibly crazy things that you can attempt, like creating a series of portals so that you're constantly chasing yourself. Some of the puzzles sound like they'll be "impossible," so the challenge will be to figure out how to use the portal gun.
This promises to be an incredibly puzzle-style first-person experience, which Newell says is part of the goal. "We wanted to take physics out of this domain as a tool that lets you bounce grenades around to how can we really change the game experience for our customers," he said.
I don't really want to risk enraging Mark Rein into looping my scrotum around the bumper of the Epic Games E3 party bus, then taking it for a drive in a granite quarry. But I'll risk it: I love Valve.
Half-Life 2: Episode Two - The Return of Team Fortress 2 and Other Surprises [Gamespot]
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Related: Team Fortress 2 Congeals Out Of Vaporware
Related: Mark Rein Hates Episodic Content
Related: Valve Patches HL2:EP1 Based on Player Incompetence
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