So I downloaded the Left 4 Dead demo from Valve and gave it a shot… I’ve been wanting to play this for the past month and a half ever since I got gypped at Valve HQ. From the little I played I’d say it’s a pretty good game. I have a bad habit of shooting other survivors, so I’d piss off a lot of people if I tried any online multiplayer campaigns… but no one died, so that’s always a plus. I wold have liked to play more, but as it was loading the second half of the demo it crashed my system (so much for the “No more blue screen of death in Vista!” myth). It’s fun, and with people that know what they’re doing it would be a great co-op game, but I don’t think I’d spend the $45 on it seeing as I haven’t even finished either if the Half Life games I was given on Steam.
Also, after I rebooted and tried out the Audiosurf demo real quick (fun little game, but again not impressive enough to drop coin for) I finally installed Portal: Prelude. I’ve been cautiously optimistic about it after my initial wave of excitement, and my hesitations were justified. I installed the most up to date version available, and not a minute into it I was already confronted with an obvious glitch (the storage cube won’t go through the first portal in the relaxation vault – I know you’re not supposed to toss it through since you need it to hold the button, but there’s no physical reason why you shouldn’t be able to). Aside from that and some clipping issues, it ran smooth and looked like it should have.
Now, the lack of GLaDOS egging you on wasn’t as bad as I expected, because you’ve got two Aperture Science guys guiding you via intercom (although the voices and speech patterns gave the impression that they too were supposed to be computers, even though you could see them through the observation windows). But I only got about four chambers in before getting too frusterated to continue. I expected the maps to be more complicated than the original – but on top of the boosted dificulty the chambers aren’t nearly as intuitive as I felt they should be to really be enjoyable. Also, having the voiceover give innaplicable iinstructions was a poor attempt at mimicong GLaDOS’s manipulative comments. I will go back to it, but I’m not expecting to finish it considering the experience so far. But hey, it’s better than nothing, and it was free right? Can’t honestly complain too much.
Oh, and one last thing: my laptop really is trying to live up to it’s reputation as a complete bastard. As I was loading Portal to run through a familiar level to ease my frustrations a bit, the damn thing decided it was time for a Windows Automatic Update without warning and yanked me right out of test chamber 17 and held itself hostage for a few minutes.
