Had to post this.

Blizz's costume contest was today. Rie dressed up as such:


But there were also some very good other entries:


Some one on one server I was playing on posed an interesting question: why is it the one black character in the game is also the one with a liquor bottle for a melee weapon?

Hope he sapped the turret first.

Portal.

So it goes something like this. You have a gun. It shoots portals. Two, to be precise. A blue one and an orange one. They stick on walls. They connect to each other such that anything that goes in one emerges from the other. The game consists of solving puzzles by using portals to move yourself and objects to locations you could not otherwise get to. And it's a lot of fun.

And the game actually does have a somewhat interesting plot. In typical Valve fashion, you discover as you go, with nothing being explicitly stated, but instead discovered. You gather that you are a test subject at Aperture Laboratories science labs. There are no other people in the game. Instead, your only company (aside from the "companion cube") is the voice of a computer, which guides you through the tests. As the game goes on you gradually realize the computer is psychotic. Hilariously so. The computer tells you there are 19 tests you need to complete, and after you finish them, "you will be baked and there will be cake." The computer leads you on through the tests with the promise of cake when, after completing the 19th test, you are standing on a moving platform, slowly lowering into a vast pit of flames. The computer assures you that the Aperture Laboratories portal gun is resilient in temperatures up to 4000 kelvin, and kindly asks you to remain on the platform so you can receive your cake.

Of course, you mount your escape using the portal gun and eventually end up in the bowels of Aperture Laboratories, which upsets the computer greatly. It keeps, politely, asking you to come back to get your cake. It tells you to hurry. "Someone cut the cake. I told them not to, but there might not be any left." Eventually, it gets upset and tells you that you don't get any cake because you won't go back. Finally you wend your way through the depths and emerge at the central control room where the computer resides. While it is talking to you, a large spherical section of the computer falls of. It insists that the part that fell off wasn't important and you wouldn't be interested in it. Naturally, you destroy it. Then the computer tells you that it was the morality module that "they" installed to keep it from trying to kill them with a neurotoxin after the last time it tried to kill them all with a neurotoxin. The computer then begins a countdown to the release of the gas, and begins launching rockets at you. You use the portals to steer the rockets back at the computer, knocking off more modules and destroying them. As the modules are destroyed, the computer begins to lose functionality, saying things like "2+2=10. In base 4, I am functioning perfectly."

Once you destroy the computer, you are freed from the complex and the game is over. While the credits role, the computer sings the song Dave linked above.

Like all Valve games, the story is told entirely through the first person. There are no cutscenes or other interruptions. But unlike other Valve games, you can actually see your character (if you position the portals right, you can see yourself through them). You play a woman with frizzled hair. It seems to be a rule of Valve games that all the women have to have frizzled hair.

The game has a hilarious sense of humor. The computer itself is the source of most of the entertainment, but there are other funny touches as well, such as the "companion cube" which is a box with a heart on each face. Or the gun turrets which talk to you in sweetly soothing voices while smearing your intestines across the wall behind you.

Unfortunately, the game is woefully short. You can complete the main "campaign" in just a few hours. There are some advanced challenge maps that extend the gameplay a little, but not much.

In short, you should go buy it. Right now. You can get it as part of the Orange Box, which, according to IGN, is "the package which could legitimately be called 'the deal of the century'" and since IGN says it, it must be true. I will use the Reviewinator™ to put up scores for the entire Orange Box once I've gotten some time in with Team Fortress 2. Until then, enjoy the character introduction videos for TF2. (Heavy Weapons Guy, Soldier, Engineer, Demo Man.) Also hilarious (I particularly like the Engineer).

...what Dave said. My gmail notification popped up letting me know he had made his post just when I was about to push my "Publish Post" button. I would delete mine, but I put a whole fifteen minutes into it. Great minds, and all that.