Gaming Portal: Hands-on Preview

Can't wait till I get to play this, it looks so fun. The last game that gave me a vague challange would have to be Prey, really looking forward to having to think about what im doing for a change.

 

What can I say Valve are the daddy, really looking forward to continuing the Half Life saga.

Hammering TF2 till my finger tips are worn into stumps

And puzzling my mind with portal

All for £25 oh my although im already hammering TF2 and thats what im going to do right now.....

 

I'm looking forward to EP2.

Portal and TF2 are intrigueing, but Its rare that I play online shooters and then I usually play a few hours and move in, likewise this isn't the first time I've read the suggestion that portal is probably going to be pretty short.

At the moment I'm .. irritated, somewhat, by the way they are forcing the orange box on us at the increased price point (plus steam has been adding V.A.T. but not telling you till you come to pay for it for a bit now) I've not decided as to wether I pre-order it for the 53$ it will about work out to or not, I can't see them knocking much off for ep2 alone or ep2+portal somehow.

I can't remember exactly how much EP1 was now either, though my gut is telling me $25 or so for the pre-order ?

 

I'm dieing to get my hands on this! EP1 was $20 ($23 with tax) retail price.

 

wow simply amazing....

 

You can get the orange box pre order from play for about what steam is charging, seems like a good deal if you prefer your stuff in a box with discs and everything.

 

OH gosh, I want it now! NOW! NEOWOWOWOW!
Definetly the reason I bought The Orange Box. I can hardly wait. no, make that I CAN'T wait. We gotta pull together a raid on Valve's development lab, I just can't take it any longer!

 

The funny thing is that there is already a SWEP programmed for the portal gun in Gmod10 and people are already designing maps for it a bit now they have a fully working portal gun. There was also a mod called ExcIte which copied Portal based on the trailer levels, but Valve don't like that very much.

There was another mod too called Missing Information which added in all the cut beta stuff from the E3 levels, including the Hydra, but Valve don't like that either and you won't really follow it unless you've read Raising The Bar: Making of Half-Life.

 

Just bought Teh box on Steam for 40euros incl tax, (OMG $8 ! vive la France !)
TF2 downloading just now.

 

Looking at the prices listed its - $29.95 for ep2, $19.95 for portal and $29.95 for TF2, so pre-ordering the orange box will save money compared to buying just ep2 and portal. The prices seem to have had a nasty hike overall though .. guess valve is just raising them to match the other companies who have games on steam. I do miss the days when steam actually got you a discount compared to the shops though. (with tax and the extra £1 my bank charges for overseas transactions steam and play.com work out pretty much the same)

Btw anyone else noticed that Take2 are charging an extra $5 for bioshock on steam if you live in the UK compared to the US ? ($49.95 visible on the main page, $54.95 visible on the page if you actually try to buy, both exlusive of tax..) its a little thing and not as bad as when Prey was $29.95 for north america and $49.95 for the UK but annoying to see them treating us like that all the same.

 

Steam is an excellent platform, but yeah the pricing is really starting to suck.

 

Bioshock costs $49.95 on steam
today - 49.95 USD = 24.4518 GBP (according to XE)

plus vat at 17.5% = £28.730865 - and you will probably get charged by your credit card company for using foreign currency as well (well i do)

Or you can get it boxed, with disc, from play.com for £25

So you pay another £3.73 from steam and you don't get a disc/box/manual

 

The price listed to me on the front page of steam for bioshock is $49.95 but if I then click on through the age verification (I really wish they would save that so I don't have to repeat it, instead of trying to reassure me they won't save it 0_0) the price actually changes to $54.95

 

Just played through Portal and its really fun, but am stuck on the last level. Can't get it done in time. I really want to unlock all of the more advanced levels.

 

Portal is absolutely amazing IMO I'm on 17 at the moment

 

Finished and it took me about 3-4 hours. Had a glance at the challenges etc too, which is cool. I love the way that Ep2, Portal and the raising the bar book croos reference each other