Comments on: I Like Cake Too

By: dfm

dfm — Sun, 25 Nov 2007 07:24:09 +0000

Regarding the Steam question:

I used to be a fairly committed PC gamer for a goodly number of years. I haven’t really done much PC gaming in the last year and a half, for a rich mix of reasons, including but not limited to the adoption of the Mac as my primary computing platform.

A friend of mine fired up Portal on his PC and sat me down in front of it around 11:00 one evening to let me get a feel for the game and maybe play a level or two. Around 2:00 a.m., he later informed me, he poked his head in the room and realized that I was lost to the world until I’d finished the damn thing.

After I was done, I felt a non-trivial desire to build myself a viable Windows gaming machine just so I’d have something to run Portal on whenever I wanted. Seriously. The game is that good. It’s the kind that renews your faith in gaming, that reminds you why you subject yourself to so many formulaic, mechanical, phoned-in titles: because every once in a while you’re rewarded with a perfect gem like this one, innovative, witty, inspired, and completely engrossing.

In short, if the only thing standing between you and playing Portal is a reluctance to use Steam, bite the bullet already. You’ll be glad you did.

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By: peterb

peterb — Fri, 23 Nov 2007 11:43:26 +0000

In today’s world, where buying a random game and putting the disc in your drive might install Starforce, or cause you to be told by some useless copy protection scheme (read: Securom) that the CD-ROM drive you put the disc in doesn’t exist, I claim that Steam is actually less painful than buying a physical disk.

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By: Thomas

Thomas — Fri, 23 Nov 2007 03:52:30 +0000

What pain? Steam is pretty painless nowadays.

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By: r.

r. — Thu, 22 Nov 2007 19:40:06 +0000

The tleaves reviews of Portal have been positive enough to pique my interest. However, not having an XBox and not being particularly interested in the other Orange Box games, I would like your recommendation on whether Portal is worth the pain of dealing with Steam. Suggestions?

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By: Ben

Ben — Thu, 22 Nov 2007 09:20:26 +0000

The TF2 community is pretty good in my experience. Sure, there are some idiots who do stupid things like exploit map glitches (underground sentry guns on Gravel Pit in particular) and plenty of people who just play for their own points score. I got called a ‘n00b’ a lot during the beta, but that went away after release.

I’ve played a lot of matches where completely random teams have slotted together perfectly.

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By: Doug

Doug — Thu, 22 Nov 2007 05:37:50 +0000

Now what I like a lot better than cake is wild berry pie from scratch. Worth the hours of work. Especially if you can get someone else to do it for you.

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By: psu

psu — Thu, 22 Nov 2007 03:29:21 +0000

I didn’t know how to work it in without spoiling the surprise. So I’m not saying anything more.

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By: peterb

peterb — Thu, 22 Nov 2007 03:28:11 +0000

One point about the game that neither of us mentioned directly: the awesome song at the end.

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