Portal 2

Yes I've mumped on about Portal 2 for god knows how long, well it's out now, I've played it and last night I finished it, well the single player mode anyway.

To be fair, it's as good as I expected, maybe better! The game is superbly paced throughout, the difficulty curve spot on, with only a few baffling moments, all of which can be worked through with a bit of thought. The voice acting cast features excellent performances from everyone with a decent cast of Stephen Merchant, J. K. Simmons, and Ellen McLain, who of course gives us a song at the end. Stephen Merchant in particular has an almost perfect script for his voice and personality, a source of constant hilarity. Simmons gives an excellent, borderline eerie performance as Cave Johnson though some of the most interesting levels of the game.

Some slight disappointments though, the single player campaign isn't the longest, still longer than the first game though obviously. I also I did find the final boss a bit easier than I'd expected, especially after the pain in the arse to beat GLaDOS was in the first game.

Plot wise, the story was varied and pretty good, I wont go into spoilers and the works or the 6 people who will read this may get upset with me, but needless to say, the mid game twist wasn't all that expected and I laughed a couple of times at the ending.  Especially one line in particular which thinking about it is pretty innocuous but just struck a chord with me.

And then the ending closes with... 'Want You Gone" by Jonathan Coulton. Following the tradition set by the first game JoCo writes the song and GLaDOS sings us out! This song, while not maybe quite as good as 'Still Alive' was still a funny and good tune. I will be getting myself a copy as soon as iTunes has one to sell me!! It's made me a little happier I'm off to see him in 6 weeks in Bristol, as long as he plays it that is.

Overall, the game is superb, so many strong aspects come together to form easily the best of the year so far. Please God make a Portal 3, I'll preorder it now if you want.... Please Valve?

JoCo comes to the UK!

Some very exciting news (I think anyway) broke last night! Jonathan Coulton will be, briefly, in the UK in June! For those who have no idea who he is he's a singer! A singer of a highly geeky nature and to be fair has done some cracking songs in his time. He's best known (among geeks and gamers) for writing the song 'Still Alive' from the quite simply awesome game Portal. He also performs a good version of the song himself (in game it's sung by one of the characters) which is on the official orange box soundtrack. Go find, it's worth it.

Yesterday evening he announced via a blog via twitter (Jesus who would plug a blog via twitter, loser) that he'll be playing 3 dates in the UK! Now, there's no Cardiff date, I'm fairly sure he doesn't know Cardiff even exists and funnily enough he's not down to play Merthyr either. I have thoughts on bands who skip an entire country as I've posted previously. But I have travelled to see the likes on Ben Folds, Green Day, Barenaked Ladies so I clearly will do it. Coulton is playing Bristol so I'm thinking, as it's a small tour, I've never seen him before, I can let this one slide and take a trip over the bridge to see his acoustic delights!

This isn't of course a random trip, he has a new album due out any time now called Artificial Heart, which to be fair I'm also looking forward too. I can only urge everyone to check out his best of, it's surprisingly good, but as he doesn't own it, neither version of Still Alive is included. Valve have the rights as the game publishers.

He's also done a song for Portal 2, I'd imagine to take the same role as Still Alive, and my enthusiasm for this game is very high, as I may have mentioned. Only a 8 days to go! Plus I have to finish Fallout 3 before then!

So JoCo, when are the tickets out??