Emptyeye

As I mentioned in my last post, during MAGFest X, I played through 15 different Mega Man games in the span of 21 and a half hours to help raise money for the SDA Marathon and the Prevent Cancer Foundation. It’s been about a month, and I feel like I should really write a proper post-mortem about it, including my thoughts about what went well, what didn’t, and so on.

I guess I should start with what went well. During the marathon itself, Silver and I raised about $150 from people who were not me. This is actually not an insignificant figure, although I was hoping to raise quite a bit more. Luckily, Andy Goth (Who had donated to various SDA marathons in the past) stepped in after my final plea at Closing Ceremonies and donated a very generous $100, which combined with the spare change Silver and I had saved throughout the year, plus a few dollars raised from telling people about what I had done when striking up random conversation (“Hey, are the lines for panels always this bad?” “I don’t know, I haven’t been to a panel yet.” “Well why not?!” “Well, I spent 21 and a half hours Friday-into-Saturday playing Mega Man games for charity…”), brought the final total in our lockbox to $300.28. Like I said, I was actually hoping for more, but was reassured by Mike after the SDA marathon that I had actually done really well (As he put it, “We raised a grand total of $7 onsite at MAGFest 8!”).

Speaking of doing really well, the mere fact that I got through all of the games I had planned with 2 and a half hours to spare was amazing and gratifying to me. That included letting most of the endings play, and even taking a bathroom break in the middle of X5. I would’ve like to fill out the rest of the time by either playing some of the games a second time, or play the Mega Man fighting games (Yes, really) included on Mega Man Anniversary Collection, but Silver (Who gamely stayed by my side for pretty much the entire marathon, getting the much-less-fun task of manning the lock box, timing me, and generally keeping me sane when stuff wasn’t going so well) and I were completely wiped out. As I texted MercuryZelda later (Ignore what her site says as of this writing, she’s not currently taking commissions. But check out her awesome plushies anyway, so that when she does open up for commissions again, you will be ready to order!), “I’m making like Samuel L. Jackson and going the (*^$ to sleep.” Which I did.

I managed to set new personal bests in 5 of the 15 games I played. Mega Man 1, 2, and 3 weren’t a huge surprise, since those came right at the beginning of the marathon when I was fresh and enthusiastic. X3 and X5 were a bit more shocking when I got new personal bests on those, especially with the context of losing several minutes to my bladder in X5. I guess the fact that, relative to the SDA times, my times on those two games were the worst by far meant I didn’t have much choice other than to improve, but those games came at the end of the marathon (X4 was after most of the “classic” Mega Man games, and the second playthrough of X4 took place immediately after the first after people donated for it) when I was completely exhausted. I guess I also did pretty well in at least the rest of the NES games, as I had people watching me say that I was “crazy good” at the games. Which I’m really not, although luckily I was the main SDA presence at MAGFest this year, so I managed to fake it well enough.

It was also surprising to see just which games people liked and didn’t like. Being on SDA and “the internet”, you get an idea of the general public opinion on certain games, but even the games generally regarded as “bad” have their followers. The best example is Savannah staying with me for the entirety of Mega Man 8, generally regarded as one of the worst in the series (I enjoy it, but it does feel to me more like a vaguely Mega Man-like product than a proper Mega Man game per se). And my fellow Shizzies came by throughout the night, which was a big help, even if the way the game order fell meant I didn’t have to go through the nighttime “lull” while simultaneously playing games I didn’t like that much.

There was, of course, stuff that didn’t go so well, too. The main one occurred before the marathon even started, when I realized I would have to cut Mega Man X6 from the list of games due to it being a terrible, awful, no good, very bad game. There was a part of me that regarded the whole thing as a failure just due to that fact, as I really had wanted to do all the X games on the X Collection–the idea being people might donate to watch me play some of the less illustrious games in the series earlier rather than later. Instead, though, I did X4 with both characters, which was probably more entertaining to watch (Mike Uyama told me later that X6 was one of the worst-received games at AGDQ2012), as well as a lot more fun for me (I’m about the only person on the planet who actually likes playing X4 as X, if SDA’s opinions are reflective of the general public). There was also the fact that Adam, who ran console gaming this year, had a bunch of additional duties to attend to at MAGFest as well–and apparently didn’t relay what I had planned to any of the rest of console staff. The result of this was a scramble for the projector, then a scramble to locate a power cord for the projector, which ended in me starting a half hour later than I had planned.

If I’m being totally honest, there was a point around 3 or 4 hours in, when I had raised a total of $9 that wasn’t our own money, and the thought running through my mind was “The fact I have already paid significant money to go the end of the marathon/bonus streaming is the only thing stopping me from driving directly home in shame after MAGFest.” This was a thought that was only amplified as I would periodically check on the SDA marathon and see that they were raising mind-blowing amounts of money–the rate through the marathon was roughly $1000 an hour. Even my most optimistic goals would have been a drop in the bucket, but the fact that I had raised almost no money to that point…in the end, it worked out okay, and seeing how happy Silver was even with the money we ended up raising stopped me from complaining too much.

From a gameplay perspective, I generally showed I knew what I was doing throughout the series, but there were two games I wish could have gone different, and both were directly my fault. First, I forgot to buy E-Tanks before starting Wily’s castle in Mega Man 9. This resulted in me having to do basically the entire castle over again once I realized my mistake. The second, ironically, came in what I consider to be my best game, Mega Man X. After getting the early-E-Tank on Flame Mammoth for the first time in an actual run, I couldn’t switch back to the X-Buster for the Hadouken on Vile, and hit Start in my sleep-deprived state.

Anyone who is a top-tier player of Mega Man X just facepalmed on “hit Start”.

If you don’t know, I take advantage of a bug to get through text in a cutscene a lot quicker than you’re meant to. The one thing you absolutely do not want to do when you use this method is hit Start during the cutscene, because this can freeze the game. Sure enough, I crashed the game for the first time. Thinking quickly, I managed to load a previous save which meant all I had to re-do was getting the Hadouken, but that was enough to completely derail my momentum. I actually told Silver that I felt like crying through most of the rest of the run, because I did.

In all, though, it’s an experience that I’m glad I did, once. I don’t really know if I would do it again, because as you can probably tell, I went through a whole roller coaster of emotions during the whole thing, culminating in my being extremely happy and relieved when I finished with two and a half hours to spare. If I were to do it again, I would definitely advertise it this time. Because I was trying to keep the fact that I was going to AGDQ a secret, by default, it meant I couldn’t tell people what I was doing at MAGFest either–including most of MAGFest. Now that I’ve pulled off the secret attendance thing once, I won’t try it again, which will hopefully get more people aware of what I’m doing and thus, more donations. If I do do something like this again, I’ll also make sure to practice more than two months in advance (Which was when I found out I was approved to do this at MAGFest) too.

-EE

This past week and a half was spent in Maryland and Virginia, at MAGFest X and the Speed Demos Archive Charity Marathon, Awesome Games Done Quick 2012. This is going to be a long, long post, so I’ll break it up into days, in order so that you’re not totally overwhelmed.

Wednesday, the 4th
Thursday, the 5th
Friday, the 6th
Saturday, the 7th
Sunday, the 8th
Monday, the 9th
Tuesday, the 10th
Wednesday, the 11th
Thursday, the 12th
Friday, the 13th
Saturday, the 14th
Sunday, the 15th

(Continue reading…)

Last weekend was the second-annual Gobble-Con, a small convention that this year took place at the Stamford Plaza Hotel, eventually to be renamed the Stamford Crown Plaza. I arrived at noon and got my badge. Unfortunately, my hotel room wasn’t ready yet, so I left to go get some food. Something I didn’t realize: Summer Street, that the hotel is located on, is one-way. And I had pretty much no navigational aids with me whatsoever (Other than, I realize as I type this a week after the fact, possibly an atlas in the back of my car. Doh!).

After stopping at the “Wedge Inn” (A wedge, in Stamford, sounds like what I know as a “grinder”) for some chicken tenders and curly fries, I attempted to navigate my way back to the hotel. Essentially, I knew I had to take a left off of Summer Street, then another left until I was going back the way I came. Luckily for me, I found a street name that looked familiar–the other option when leaving the hotel’s parking lot. I pull in said lot right as the epic part of Yes’s “Close to the Edge” kicked in, which struck me as fitting.

Returning to the hotel, I decided to use my laptop for a bit before I went off to the Opening Ceremonies. This lasted all of about 10 minutes before the battery gave out. No joke. And my room still wasn’t ready yet (It was between 1:30 and 2:00 PM on Friday at this point). Back in the car the computer went, and off to opening Ceremonies I went. Generally speaking, I’m not big on Opening Ceremonies at conventions, ever since MAGFest 4, where I felt vaguely talked down to by the fact that the ceremonies consisted mostly of “MAGFest staff read most of the program to you, apparently under the impression that you’re too stupid to do this yourself”. But it’s not like I was doing anything else–I went on my own, a lot of my friends wouldn’t be arriving until Saturday, and my room wasn’t ready.

Fortunately, this opening ceremonies wasn’t as patronizing, due in part to the fact that, being a second-year convention on a shoestring budget (More on this a bit later), there was no program to speak of to read from. I learned about the convention’s special guests, Robert Axelrod (Best known, James Earl Jones-as-Darth Vader-style, as the voice of Lord Zedd in various early Power Rangers incarnations) and Tiffany Grant (Best known as the voice of Asuka in Neon Genesis Evangelion).

After finally checking into my room a little after 3PM (I couldn’t be too mad, as that’s when the official check-in time was), the rest of my Friday consisted mainly of going to halves of a couple panels, including the second half of the Cosplaying on a Budget panel, as well as the Gobble Tonight Show panel, a convention-related spoof of the late show (Think Letterman, etc) paradigm. This featured the alter-egos of two of the main characters of Gobble-Con, Cobra Commander and A Count Named Slickbrass. Or more accurately, Toga Commander and A Count Named Silkbrass. This was funny stuff, and the person who ran the panel wants to do it more “properly” at other conventions, which is something I’d like to see.

Other things I did on Friday included going to the dealers’ room/artist alley, where I bought a Mega Man X perler, and a How to Draw Manga book. I’m an interesting case in the convention fandom in that, while I really like the art style of manga/anime, I don’t actually watch or read a lot of it. My knowledge of Sailor Moon, for instance, is based pretty much entirely on the binging of The Abridged Series I did for the last month or so (Although it was weird to watch The Abridged Series and somehow recall random fragments of the “proper” episodes, since I hadn’t seen them in about 15 years, and even then only bits and pieces.).

Saturday came around, and I went down to purchase a couple more pieces of art from the dealer’s room. One was a piece of art showing a dark angel in the moonlight, and the other depicts Link shouting “HEY LISTEN!” at Navi…whom he’s taped to a lit bomb, which is something pretty much everyone who has played Ocarina of Time has wanted to do at some time.

Also Saturday, I went down to registration to find out that my panel’s time had been moved again, from 4:30 to 6:30PM. In theory, this was good, as a later start time would mean a bigger audience. In theory. In practice, I looked at the schedule…and saw I was now competing directly with the second half of the Cosplay Masquerade.

If you’ve never been to a pop-culture convention before, the Cosplay Masquerade is almost invariably one of the biggest events. In other words, pretty much everyone would be there.

I felt like shouting DOOOOOOOOOON!! William Shatner-style at this point.

The good news was that the panel had now been expanded by a half hour, to an hour and a half. With the hour I had been given, I was more or less going to put what I did in the panel up to popular vote (Option 1: lecture Power-Point style like I did at Gobble-Con 2010. Option 2: Attempt to talk about speedrunning in general while running live through Mega Man X); with the extra half-hour, I was fairly sure I could fit both parts in under the wire (Turning the MMX section into talking speedrunning strategies on the game specifically) if I did the lecture part quickly enough, knowing how long it look me to run through MMX (Generally 43-45 minutes). The first part was going to be the question mark, since I’ll admit I wasn’t nearly as prepared this year as I was last year.

Last year was my first time doing a panel for a convention, and this year would bring another first–my first time cosplaying. As I wrote on a Facebook update,
“I’m pretty sure there are very few places on Earth where a quest to procure batteries for a Rock Band 2 drum kit can end in agreeing to be Tuxedo Mask as part of a Sailor Moon cosplay group….ladies and gentlemen, my October 2011 Connecticon Member Appreciation Day.”
That’s the short story of how I got roped into it. Basically, I got asked, figured “I have most of the parts already, how hard can it really be?” and said “Okay, sure.”

As it turns out, the answer to “How hard can it be?” is “Actually, pretty hard”. There’s a lot of detail that goes into making a costume that you don’t tend to think about. The gold buttons on Tuxedo Mask’s suit were something that I had to add myself. Additionally, while I owned a cape, I didn’t own one with red lining, so I had to head to Joann Fabric, buy two sheets of fabric (One black, one red), and make the cape myself using fabric glue, allowing me to cheat the process of stitching them together. Further, I had to attach the cape to the suit by poking a couple holes in it and pushing the shoulder buttons through the holes. While this actually worked, I was convinced that it looked terrible–compared to how he looks in the anime, the cape was way too wide at the shoulders, or so I thought. It was probably also a bit short, but honestly, this was a relief after a year-plus of going to events wearing a cape that hit the ground with four inches to spare.

My friend Katie, who was one of the ringleaders of the whole thing (And, I’m pretty sure, the person who originally asked “Are you going to Gobble-Con?” and kicked the train into motion), and everyone else in the group was supposed to get there at about 12:30PM Saturday, which was actually the original, original time for my panel. As 12:30 became 1:00, which became 1:30, which became 2:00, I was becoming vaguely concerned that the whole thing was some elaborate practical joke played on me to get me to dress up as Tuxedo Mask for no particular reason…in which case, I would’ve had to applaud everyone for the sheer scope of it (This, if it had been a practical joke, would’ve involved multiple pictures posted to Facebook of the cohorts sewing stuff, plus my friend Cels actually bringing the bows for the Sailor Scout costumes to one of the Connecticon Member Appreciation Days.). But finally, at around 2:45, I looked down at the lobby from the third floor hallway and saw a huge group of Sailor Scouts. I headed down, minus the suit/cape (Because I was still convinced it looked awful.). After taking a few pictures, I went back to my room, basically waiting for Cels to come up and make the alterations to the cape that I thought were necessary. While I knew on a theoretical level what I thought was wrong, I was afraid to actually make the alterations myself, knowing that I didn’t have another chance or a plan B if I screwed up and cut off more than I meant to. Cels, on the other hand, basically does costume stuff for a living, so I expected her to look at it and cut off the excess perfectly in about three seconds.

At 4:30, I more or less got impatient and said “forget it” and went down with the cape and suit. And…Cels thought it looked fine, as did everyone else. Had I known that was going to be the outcome, I wouldn’t have hid in my room for an hour-plus before coming down with it. Either way, though, after about a half hour of picture-taking, I headed back to my room to get ready for my 6:30 panel. Packing up stuff and heading down to the panel room, my worst fear attendance-wise was realized: I was, at that point, the only person besides one volunteer in the room. One person eventually showed up. To spin this into a positive, it was a very intimate, low-pressure environment in which to do the panel. And I got through both parts of it with about five minutes to spare. The people who did watch it seemed to like it, and the volunteer did his best to try and get the few people not at the masquerade into the panel room, largely without success. The Mega Man X run went fine, as I finished in 44:01. There was a time when I would have killed for that time, but now I can pull off a sub-45 run pretty consistently, which is nice.

At some point early afternoon Saturday, I also went to most of the Best of Robert Axelrod panel, where he showed some of his favorite clips from various voice-acting he’s done, discussed behind-the-scenes stuff (The reason for three of the original Power Rangers leaving the show boiled down to “They wanted more money”.), talked about some techniques he used in achieving voices (Lord Zedd is a lot of diaphragm), and so on. Pretty good stuff, worth my time despite my honestly not being interested in the guests specifically beforehand.

Late on Saturday, after not-insignificant quantities of rum, I went down to the 18+ Cosplay Court Case, where (amongst other things) Sailor Saturn was accused of being a prostitute, and a Vocaloid was accused of ear rape. Also, I was a bailiff, which basically meant I stood around and looked cool up front. This was fun, and a little chaotic (For the Vocaloid case, the prosecution and defense had to switch, because neither one played their appointed role very well), probably helped by the fact that I was far from the only inebriated person there.

On Sunday morning, I got up, checked out of my room, and went down to the registration desk, where to my surprise, there was a “Pre-Reg for Gobble-Con 2012″ sign out. The reason this was a surprise is that, long story short, attendance for Gobble-Con 2011 was not what was expected, and large quantities were owed to the hotel to the point that the convention was actually extended with some impromptu panels, from 1PM to 6PM. Sunday highlights included a panel run by Robert Axelrod concerning doing voice-overs for commercials. I actually tried my hand at a Chili’s commercial circa 2000, and I guess I did okay. This, too, is fun stuff, and something I could see myself doing part-time, if I could figure out how to get into it. There are apparently some sites out there dedicated to this, but I’d be spending a lot more than I think I’d stand to make were I to join one of those sites.

Another Sunday highlight was seeing how much the convention meant to the attendees. Despite the pre-registration sign, there was no guarantee of a third Gobble-Con actually happening, the financial situation was so dire. Luckily, just before I left, there was confirmation that it’s taking place next year, and indeed, preliminary work on guests has already started. Also, I really could have used one of the extended panels on Saturday, as one of the things I learned about cosplay was essentially “Don’t halfass it, but it’s okay if you’re not 100% accurate to the character, and in fact, your own spin on it can actually improve the costume.” Still, it’s good to know for the future. I just consider the cape and mask my own personal spin on it now.

In short, it was a lot of fun, and the lack of size of the convention makes it easy to meet and talk with people. It’s a lot of fun, and you should check it out next time if you’re in the Connecticut area.

-EE

Links!

• My photos. Note that I commented in proper chronological order. For a “proper” narrative, start here and keep clicking “Previous” until you get back to the “first” picture. Otherwise, it’s going to be like watching Memento.
• Pre-register for 2012 here. Just click on the “order now” button (Make sure any script blockers are off). I already pre-registered, and you should too!
• Steam-Funk’s website. The aforementioned A Count Named Slickbrass, who basically got his start (So to speak) at Gobble 2010, runs the group.
• Royal Nerd’s site. They’re the people in the picture here.
• Eric LaCore Photography, who took a bunch of other pictures at the convention.

Yeah, that works.

I’m currently sitting in the living room of my friend Emily, watching another one of my friends playing Final Fantasy VII. Considering what it took to get here (It took about three times as long as it should have), I’m quite glad to be here.

My writing career has begun the same way that of a lot of writers does, with a string of rejections. Right now I’m trying to decide whether to revise a story, do some further revisions on another story, or start writing yet something new. I also have three stories currently submitted–one to the Machine of Death anthology, one to The Spirit of Poe, and a third out to Comets and Criminals. With any luck, one of them will accept my submissions, and I’ll try and get more stories out there as well.

-EE

Later on today, Speed Demos Archive will be starting their summer marathon, creatively titled Summer Games Done Quick. It’ll start at 2PM EST today, and tentatively go until about midnight on Saturday. Check out the full slate of games to be played here. I’m not participating in this one (Utah is a little far from Connecticut for my taste), although I did begin a game facts cheat sheet to help out potential commentators with some of the games they may not know very well, which the runners of the games then filled in with even more cool stuff.

This time around, they’re playing for the Organization for Autism Research. So make sure to check it out and donate if you can.

-EE

Here you go.

This run finishes the game in a shade under 13 minutes and 45 seconds. If you happened to watch Japan Relief Done Quick, for reference, it took at least that long to realize I was streaming to the wrong place, at which point I was less than halfway through the game (Which is an excellent indication of just how terribly I played to that point. This contributed to my mood when I finally got streaming to the correct place.). Despite that, there’s still a tiny improvement to be made with a route change, or rather, when I grab food. There’s also some execution improvements to be made, most notably my needlessly going to the menu at the end of the Dungeon because I didn’t know casting Twin took almost no mana at all.

I suppose I should explain why I’ve uploaded this video to Screw Attack (Which is not a porn site; its name comes from a powerup in the Metroid series) and not Youtube. Put simply, Youtube wanted me to link a Google account to use it anymore, and I flipped out and refused to do it for awhile. I’ve since capitulated, but I’m still not putting up any videos on it. Screw Attack is a more gaming-centered site anyway. Yeah, someone who shall remain nameless is correct when they say Screw Attack “is where tens of people will see your video!” But on the other hand, the way I see it, if you’re not willing to do some leg work and promote your video yourself, you don’t deserve to leech off the popularity (Or lack thereof) of the video hosting service you put it on.

Hence, Screw Attack it is. You’ll notice a link to my account on “Emptyeye Elsewhere On the Web” over to the right. Right now, it’s just Magician videos, but I want to eventually put my remaining Youtube videos on there as well.

-EE

I figured I should try and not let a month pass between updates this time out.

My current main activity is preparing for the Connecticon Rock Band tournament. This being my first year running it, I’m trying to do a really good job of getting prizes and things for it, to the slight irritation of my “boss”, so to speak (In short: He loves the initiative I’m showing, but for the sake of reimbursing me, wishes I hadn’t gone and bought stuff right away. Truthfully, this was stuff I was buying even if I had to eat part or of all the cost of it. I’d rather spend a bit more money and have this be memorable.). But it’ll be worth it in the end, or at least I think it will be.

The other thing I’ve been up to lately is writing short stories. I’m in the process of revising several of them, and I’ll share the ideas behind them once I revise a couple more of them. Eventually, what I want to do is self-publish a collection of short stories, and possibly some novels as well. knowing my proclivity for not finishing projects, it’s admittedly unlikely this will get anywhere, but we’ll see.

My Magician speedrun continues to move along. I think I’m one more improvement away from submitting to SDA, which is now under new management. Frankly, I’m amazed Mike lasted as long as he did; as he mentions in the first post, he outlasted two people, one (Both?) of whom assumed site duties after he did. Still, he was the one who got the site where it is today, and he’s left it in good hands. Also, he’ll still be planning the marathons for the site, which is definitely a good thing.

Next time: More Substance?

While I was setting up to try my pretty-sure-it-was-not-at-all-what-the-developers-intended solution to my conundrum from last entry, I decided to head back into the actual chamber that was giving me an issue and see if maybe there was something I had been missing.

Naturally, there was, and the solution presented itself when I took a second look. Then I was disheartened to find another execution-based puzzle awaiting me right after it. I got through it, though, and actually managed to skip one of the platforms along the way. My solution involved getting up to the platform, then portaling back to the beginning of the chamber using that one portal, and basically doing this, one platform at a time, until my momentum allowed me to see and shoot at the “ramp” type platform to get me through.

Now at this point, please consider that I knew the storyline of the game going in, and I knew I would get to wreck GlaDOS at some point. Having this knowledge in advance, combined with just wanting to get the job done already, probably influenced my opinion on the end of the game.

Because the last test chamber (And here I’m referring to everything up to and including the destruction of GlaDOS) was, to me, not as fun as the rest of the game, but more on that in a bit. I kept playing it, and I ran into “LOADING….” three times. Nothing in it really stumped me for more than a minute or two…nothing in it came close to stumping me like chamber 18 did (The problem with the structure of the game is, again, that shock where you think the end isn’t really the end. While the last chamber was certainly creepy as you crawled around behind-the-scenes, the fact remains that chamber 18 was really the “final exam” chamber, and while the behind-the-scenes stuff introduced some action elements, there wasn’t anything new puzzle-wise. Once the creepiness wore off, I very much felt like “Okay do I get to wreck GlaDOS yet? How about now? How about now?”), which kept me from getting frustrated and all, but Portal is, to me, a puzzle game at its core. Having seen everything it could throw at me from that perspective, I kept waiting for the point where I got to wreck GlaDOS, and it kept not coming until I finally gave up and went to bed, three hours after I had started playing for the day (Part of this was spent in Chamber 18, yes).

Naturally, I picked the game up the next night to discover that I would have, in fact, found GlaDOS had I continued down the hallway I was in when I stopped. The endgame was here! I’ll admit that the final “battle” took me a couple tries, although I figured out what I had to do pretty quickly (One time I stupidly got missiled; another time, I stupidly stepped forward a bit too far and incinerated myself). I’ll also admit that I was nervous as I dropped the Anger Sphere into the incinerator, because I knew I didn’t have enough time to drop another piece in there. Luckily, that was the end of the game.

So what do I think? My opinion is honestly the exact opposite of pretty much everyone else who played the game. The game started out absolutely brilliant, and stayed that way until the post-test chambers, where it started to wear out its welcome with me (Who knows if I’d feel like this had I not stopped right before GlaDOS). Now, part of this was probably being semi-spoiled about what happens at the end, combined with everyone from the Skype chat I mentioned earlier to Ben “Yahtzee” Crenshaw Croshaw saying “The game is perfect, its only flaw is that it’s too short!”. But the other part is that the game set certain expectations for how long each level was going to be throughout it. They gradually ramp up the length, then in the “post” chamber section yank the knob off. I encountered three “LOADING…” screens just in the post-chamber part, after encountering them only in the elevator sections before that. So yes, that’s my sacrilegious opinion: Portal is not too short; if anything, its endgame is too long. And yes, the memes are irritating and the weakest part of the game. I went over the Companion Cube in a previous entry, but “The cake is a lie” had no impact on me whatsoever as well. For one, it may have been creepier had it been written in blood like the “HELP” in Chamber 16. For another, the cake was obviously a lie from the time GlaDOS flat out stated, “You will be baked, and then there will be cake.” You escape the baking, hence, no cake for you. You don’t need the message after that telling you such. I could go into various logical things here too, but I get the feeling the rebuttal is “GlaDOS really wanted you to get that far and destroy her”, which the lyrics of “Still Alive” seem to support.

Still, it’s a fun game, worth playing if you haven’t had the gameplay spoiled for you already. The gameplay is really really good, even brilliant. I can also appreciate the technical achievement of the gameplay, both in the “place portals that teleport you from one to the other” concept, as well as being able to see what’s on the other side of the portals. That goes double for when you can see both Portals and you get this infinity effect from looking at yourself through the portals.

Is it a great game? Yes. Do I understand why it’s as popular as it is? Honestly, not really. Yeah, its great, and quirky and different, but those things are usually the kiss of sales death for a game–the game I’m working on speedrunning right now, Magician, was the last game Taxan ever published, presumably due to poor sales (Although Eurocom, its developer, is still around). And yeah, it had a big company behind it, but even that isn’t enough sometimes–Nightshade had no less than Ultra Games, a subsidiary of Konami behind it, and had you ever heard of it before now?

In talking to some of the other people on Skype, the answer we arrived at was “It piggybacked off of the popularity of two established franchises.” See, Portal debuted in The Orange Box, which also heralded the debut of two highly-anticipated sequels: Half-Life 2 Episode 2, and Team Fortress 2. Portal is a fun game and all, but without that initial “Oh yeah here’s this other game in this big collection you may like it” push it got from that, it’s almost a guarantee that I’m not sitting here writing about it, my resistance to it, or my being flat-out wrong about how it is in relation to its reputation.

For something with such famous status, it’s very interesting that Portal’s Weighted Companion Cube doesn’t even show up until pretty late in the game in terms of test chamber numbers (17 of 19), and only stays around for that one test chamber. To hear all the hype around people attaching themselves to this inanimate object and feeling guilty over having to incinerate it (Was it the hearts? I don’t know, more on that later), I figured it would play a much bigger role in the game. This was, honestly, probably the first time I felt that something in the game didn’t live up to its hype/word of mouth.

Of course, maybe I was trying too hard. Generally, I’ve done my best to not let my prejudices for the game’s memes influence what I thought about the experience of actually playing the game, but I’m not sure I could’ve helped it in this case. After solving the three main puzzles in the test chamber, I had an experience that Valve Software probably didn’t expect: Probably succumbing to Hype Backlash, I actually tried to incinerate the Companion Cube too quickly, ignoring the button on the floor (Which opened the door that would, in turn, open the incinerator) and choosing to place the cube directly on the incinerator, then wondering why it didn’t open. GlaDOS’s subsequently informing me that I had incinerated the cube quickly than anyone on record was supposed to make me feel like a heartless bastard, I guess. Instead, I felt mocked, because ironically, I probably would have done it quicker than anyone who ever played through the game for the first time if I were a little less eager to accomplish the task.

The next test chamber is the first point where I was well and truly stumped. I tried to do what I thought the game wanted me to do for a good half an hour or so, and then thought back to the conversation I had when I first played the game:

“You should have tried putting all the objects in the room on the switch.”

And I realized that there were a bunch of tiny objects at the start of the level. If this actually worked, then I would give up and admit that the game was every bit as brilliant as the meme-reciters claimed it was.

After writing the last entry, I played the game for another hour-plus and made some more progress. As of the end of this entry, I just passed the chamber that’s a testing ground for androids that uses live ammunition (In other words, the first part where the game actually tries to kill you). At some point during this play (My notes are not the most detailed), the atmosphere of the game hit me again, going through a hallway that could best be described as “thermal”, with a reddish tint to it. Also, at some point, GlaDOS informed me that I would be missed. How nice of her.
I have to admit that this was the section of the game where my love affair with it slipped a bit. It wasn’t because I’m a moron and couldn’t figure out one of the puzzles (Although in hindsight, I think I was making it harder than it had to be), though, that would’ve been fine. Rather, I knew what the game wanted–heck, it gave me a little illustration to show the concept–and just couldn’t execute it. I eventually got it, via turning up vertical sensitivity on the controls, but it was frustrating to know that it wasn’t my inability to figure out the puzzle but my inability to execute its solution that was preventing me from moving on. Similarly, faced with basically the same puzzle just a little later on, I herp-a-derped for a bit before I realized I could make things a lot easier by simply aiming one of the portals higher up on the wall.
The android course. I presume that, if you haven’t had the story already spoiled for you, this is where you’re really meant to realize that not everything is to be taken at face value, between the “HELP” written in blood on the floor and the glimpse “behind the scenes” at Aperture Science. In terms of the gameplay, though, it was a source of a couple more “I’m a moron” moments, mainly “Oh, duh, I can just portal my way past that laser”. Still, it was actually pretty gratifying to realize the solutions to the area, especially since I used marginally less obvious objects than the provided cubes to take out the turrets (Namely, other turrets, which gave me an achievement no less). Trying to arrive at that solution was kind of amusing, though–first, I tried to block the lasers by using objects to give me cover. When that didn’t work, I grabbed one of the turrets, hoping it would “detect” the others and shoot them before they shot me (The layout of the room should have told me that this wouldn’t have worked. If that didn’t, the fact that the turrets don’t detect other turrets definitely did). Finally, kind of by accident, I arrived at the fact that the turrets could be knocked down, and took note of the bloody “X”s above some of them to realize that I had to drop stuff on them to disable them.

So I’m still moving along, and it’s still really fun. We’ll see if that lasts.