The cake is a lie!

Yeah I know I’m a little late to the party but last night I finished ‘Portal’.

Portal is this amazing game that’s part of the ‘Orange Box’ from Valve. It’s one of 5 games in the game pack, and in my humble opinion the only game in it worth playing.

It’s a 3D puzzle game that puts you as a test subject at the Aperture Science Institute. “We do what we must because we can.”

The portal concept is difficult for some to get. I’ll try to explain it.

There are two portals, one orange, one blue. If you walk in one you come out the other. In early stages you only get to control one, the blue portal.

Imagine that if you walked out your front door. But instead of walking out onto the porch you ended up coming in the back door of your house. Like wise you could turn around and walk out the back and instantly be in your front foyer, as if there was no ‘outside’. That’s what a portal would be like, only you get to shoot them and place them where you need them in most cases.

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There’s a 2D flash version on the net that might help explain this [here].

I won’t spoil the ending for those who haven’t played it.

I played this on the PS3. It’s available for X Box, PS3 and the PC platform. You can buy Portal by itself for $20 from Valve and I’d recommend that if you’re not into the half life series.

On the PS3 the game played fine, though it loaded like a slug.

Call Of Duty (4) aka COD4 is an addiction.

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Santa brought us a copy of Call Of Duty 4 Modern Warfare. We’ve played previous call of Duty games and they were all pretty good. Everything you’ve read about this game is pretty accurate.

WWII has been done to death, so Infinity Ward brought Tom Clancy style gaming to the multi-player arena.

Only it’s worse than that.

The graphics are astounding, and the game play is really, really good. I’ve not been a huge fan of platform FPS games mostly because I’ve been platform controller challenged. I’ve just always felt like the controllers were the weak link. I mean come on. Compared to a mouse and keyboard how could you compete? Thank heavens this game isn’t cross-platform multi-player or I’m sure the PC folks would simply crush the platformers.

That being said, this game is addictive enough and the multi-player good enough that it’s pushed me over the edge. I’ve embraced my controller limitations and overcome most of them.

So what’s so addicting? The action. For the most part the games are balanced although you will find yourself in a lopsided battle now and again. If you’re on the winning side it isn’t so bad.

You start out with decent weapons but earn better weapons and mods as you progress through skill challenges. You get a plain Jane MP5 to start, but after a number of kills can add a red-dot sight or silencer. All good things in the scheme of modern warfare.

It’s this apparent never ending quest to have better equipment than the next guy that keeps you going.

There are no vehicles, and I’m OK with that. Get 3 kills in a row without dying and you get to call in or active a UAV, or radar plane that shows your enemies on the map. This is a good thing. Make it to 5 kills and you get to call in an air strike. Done properly, this will kill a few more bad guys and get you to 7 kills and the ability to call in a helicopter for support. Using air strikes and helicopters will get the frags piling up like the pay off of a loose slot machine.

Believe me when I say it’s addictive and I don’t take that lightly. As someone who lost almost 2 years of their off-time playing organized team FPS games, this one could easily put you back in that sored time waste of online gaming.

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I admit I’ve probably gone a bit over board in the recent weeks but it’s all in good fun, and it’s a good thing the weather has been completely miserable or I’d really feel bad about the time spent.

It’s just a darn good thing not much else is happening around here.

So it is the [N]o [F]un [L]eague after all.

Wow, the n-ef-el clamped down on a church for planning a, oh wait we can’t say it, but a party to watch the two top teams in the league slug it out for the pointy trophy with a football on top of it.

First they objected the the fact that the church was going to charge for this “party”. Of course they need to cover their costs, costs for pop/food, and cleanup and stuff. But they couldn’t do that.

Oh they also couldn’t use the phrase that rhymes with stupid bowl in their advertisement for the party.

No worries they agreed not too.

Still yet after the church agreed, they still said no because they were going to project it.

Whoopty-friggin-do.

They complained about ratings and what not. But excuse me, if I’m on the Nielsen panel, and I go to a church to watch the game, I’m probably going to indicate that.

So if you have a TV larger than 55 inches, and you know who you are, if you watch this game on it you’re an ‘Out Law’

Check the story here.

Oh my this is dumb.

Bengals 4-2 after unimpressive victory over Panthers

But hey, a win is a win, and Chad got his plays in.

The Bengals skated by 17 – 14. They again came out strong, going 3 and out on their first 4 possessions and looked horrible in the first half. Amah Brooks is for real. He’s a monster, no doubt about it. As he settles in he’s certainly going to be a force.

The anemic offense did march down the field with some help from the Jaguars and the men in stripes, and they did make a few key plays when the needed to.

I really wish they didn’t leave us hanging the first half of every game.

Giving credit where credit is due, the defense played pretty well, as did dare I say it, Rudy.

Given the points the Atlanta put up today against the Stealers, next week should be a shoot out. I haven’t yet read what knocked Big Jen out of the game.

But I’m still concerned for our offense, more so than the defense.

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But Chad’s catch on 4th down, well, that’s the Bengals I’m looking for.