Portal 2, what wut!?

Ok, I finally got the monkey off my shoulder and finished Portal 2

Now the entire time that I was playing the game I thought "Well it's good, hell some parts are better than Portal, but there is just no way it could ever be better." And then I got to the end. And all I could say is ". . .", and then my brain decided that it would work again and it was "Ok I take it back it was amazing"

It is rather hard to describe how Portal 2 surpasses the original without spoilers. So to keep it short. The puzzle mechanics have increased tremendously it differs very much now, and eliminates most of those reflex orientated puzzles.

The area where Portal 2 truly shines is story. Portal never had much in terms of a story -although I enjoyed it greatly- Portal 2 explores areas that we never knew existed, and wondering how it factors into the Half-Life universe as a whole is puzzling. But that just leaves me wanting more from Valve.

Oh yes the ending of Portal 2 is far better than the original, except the theme song. I don't believe there can be a better song than Still Alive.


PS: In retrospect I realise that I could sum everything up by simply saying. Portal 2 is a most worthy sequel to Portal.

Magicka Review

Magicka is one of those satirical RPG games. Or something. Well in short it is awesome and I have never had so much fun and laughter from dying.

Magicka is as you could guess about the magical spell that one has at their disposal, these are earth, fire, water, ice, lightning, arcane, healing, and shield. These spells can be combined to give you other spells. So I could shoot a boulder at someone by using earth or I can shoot a molten piece of rock that explodes.

The controls are simply complex. And by that I mean they are simple but have a lot of depth to them. You cast a spell by clicking a corresponding key, fire is f, then you can use your right mouse button to cast it. But. You can hold shift and right click to do and aoe around you, you can shift and left click to charge it into your sword, or if your character has learnt a spell of awesome™ you can press spacebar to unleash it.


The audio provides a rather pleasant listening experience, and all the characters speak in a sort of simlish language leaving you to read speech bubbles.


Graphically the game looks great and the spells make you smile when they go of, and you feel the sheen of polish to the appearance to the game that just makes enjoyable.


The best part of the game, second to throwing "balls of magick™" is the story. And in case you didn't read the first line, it's satirical. The opening line of Magicka makes light of two of more of the most popular and influential RPGs to have existed, this continues with the meme reffence throughout the game and makes the inner nerd most happy


My only gripe is the saving, which would be the lack their of. When you reach a check point it doesn't save you there, so if you leave the game you start at the beginning of the chapter.


Oh and it's only $10 on Steam and a 700mb download. So have fun.

Dota, who does it belong to?

Well if you're a Dota fan, and have not been living under a rock. Then listen in, if you don't like Dota, then listen in about the IP, struggle, and blah blah blah.

So we start with the fact that around a year or so ago the man known simply as IceFrog - maker, and custodian of Dota- started working at valve. From this we guessed that valve was going to make some kind of Dota spin off. But they are making Dota.

Now business is a cut-throat world, you can get sued for patent infringement by making a slide icon on screen to unlock a touch phone. So Valve in their attempt to make Dota applied for a trademark.

Now we have the stink to the issue. Riot games counter filed for the trademark Defense of the ancients, and Blizzard are also trying to make their own Dota. So who is in the right and who is in the wrong.

Firstly my personal note. I grew up playing Diablo, and StarCraft. At one point I would consider myself the biggest Blizz fanboi there was. I almost cried when HellGate was announced - and was a lot closer to crying after playing. - I'm a really avid Dota player having spent entire weekends LANing and playing it with friends.

So back to who should get to call the game Dota. Dota was originally made by a pseudonym user called "Euls", this was in WC3 RoC, he was inspired by the SC map Aions of Strife. The map was then remade in WC3 FT by Steve "Guinsoo" Freak, who is one of the higher ups at Riot Games who make LoL. Now Valve hired IceFrog who has been the long standing Dota maker.

Now in short I believe Valve is in the right. Blizzard, and Riot Games both stand to lose due to Valve making Dota, LoL claims to be the successor to Dota, but it's rather hard to succeed a king while he is still lively and on his throne. Blizzard stands to lose since people would go and buy WC3 to play Dota.

Valve is doing what they have always done, saw a mod and went and made it into it's own game, look at Team Fortress Classic, TF2, Counter Strike. And the taking a game made in another engine isn't new since Team Fortress was originally a Quake mod. The team that made it hired by Valve. Sounds very familiar.

Now as far as design and so on goes. I'm very sure there will be tons of additional things to dota, I mead TF2 has received more content then some, or quite a few, subscription MMOs.

And I'm sure the Dota community will still be able to contribute to the game. And at heart it will always be their game, and if someone had to own the IP I'm glad it's Valve they have yet to give me a reason to doubt their actions. Blizzard has been Koticked :(

On a side note I saw that Blizz was making a map for SC2 called left to die. And I was totally making a text based zombie horror survival game called that . . .