Rock, Paper, Shotgun

As mentioned on the podcast (what you don’t know about that podcast is Kieron and I fought to the death afterwards. He killed me. These are in fact the words of Kieron wearing Alec’s skin as a hat), we’re not entirely sure why we haven’t mentioned the surprisingly elaborate ASCII re/demake of Portal on the site as yet. Let’s correct that. Did you know there’s an ASCII re/demake of Portal in the works? And that it’s surprisingly elaborate?
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Been online for a while, it seems, but Shawn Elliot’s Tweet-o-thing expose us to the above lovely fanart by Peganthyrus of the ’shipping of ur-AI-hottie Shodan and fairly-ur-AI hottie GladOS. Above is her humourous take on it. And beneath the cut, the more slashy approach. Click through to go to the full images on her deviant-art page at much better image quality.

NSFW? I think it’s fine, but I’m a big old pervert.
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Oh, your face just then. It was all like WTF ZOMG NO WAY!!!!!! Like, rilly.

Sorry, but this isn’t a reveal of the rumoured official prequel to the gamette that stole our hearts and minds around about this time last year. Instead it’s a mod, but considering pretty much every other Portal mod has been little more than a level pack, this is a particularly ambitious one.

Specifically, it has a storyline. It even has NPCs that aren’t cubes or turrets.
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Via the big K, Mirror’s Edge, as recreated in Portal.

The horrible rumour: a follow-up to Portal, available only on console. Well, that’s no rumour – Portal: Still Alive is definitely due to crop up on Xbox 360 later in the year. What we didn’t know was exactly what this apparent sequel would comprise. There’s been some outrage from the good people of PCinia, concerned that they may been shirked by Valve. Imagine – new levels, new GlaDOS, new Cube, new theme music, all denied to Portal’s true devotees.

The happy truth: nah. In fact, you can play Still Alive’s extra bits right now.
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[Stares down-page in faint terror.] What a lot of arguments we’re going to have today. So, for those of you currently visiting us in search of gaming rather than debating, hopefully this will do the trick.

The chaps behind the splendid Flash version of Portal have generously converted their 2D maps into 3D versions for Portal-actual. All 40 of them. At three and a half hours of happy puzzle-solving, this mega-pack is pretty much equivalent to Portal itself in terms of length. In terms of quality? You tell me.

More Portal fan-gaming, this time documenting the tale of one of GlaDOS’ former guinea pigs. It’s a so-so room escape game of sorts, hinging solely on simple clue-deciphering to unlock a sequence of doors, but hell, it’s got Aperture Science stylings, so you’ll probably dig it. Edit – or maybe not, given the venomous reaction to it in comments.

Lego Portal, now there’s a franchise collision we could all get behind. Anyway, it’s not a game but rather an animation by designer Nick Larsen. You can view the full thing here. It’s moderately amusing. In other Portal fan news: this.

After the cosplay, on the way back to the station, I passed the London Scientology Office, scene of the recent Anonymous demonstrations against Scientology being rubbish and evil and stuff. Now, I’d heard about protesters chanting The Cake Is A Lie, but hadn’t seen how they’d repurposed nearby traffic crossings…

Oh – and the site it links to.

IGN delivered an interesting quote in yesterday’s Scott Miller interview, regarding the direction 3D Realms are taking with the new projects they’re working on:

While Prey pioneered the portal concept, Valve’s Portal took it to an all-new level. It really shows what you can do when you focus on a single core cool gameplay concept. So, while Portal impressed the heck out of us, it has also inspired us to return the favor to Valve and hopefully leapfrog them as they did us. We believe we have new ideas for portals that will keep the portal race interesting.

That’s an interesting statement: “The Portal Race” could be an awesome period of FPS development history.