The Game Dame™

You’ve probably heard, but just in case you missed it, Portal won Game of the Year, Best Game Design, and the Innovation Award at the Game Developers Conference. If you haven’t played this game yet, you need to. Not only is it an awesome collection of challenging puzzles and plenty of unlockable achievements, the bot character GLaDOS who accompanies you throughout the game (until you kick her ass) has some of the best dialogue EVAAAAAAA. Srsly. The writing is so good. To me, for a puzzle game to go from good to great status, character development and good dialogue is key.

There are a ton of great quotes in Portal. But I forget that not everyone has played it. At work the other day, we had a catered lunch and were told we were getting cake for dessert. I banged my fist on the table and shouted “The cake is a lie!!!!” before laughing hysterically. The thing was, no one laughed with me. I died a little that day. So… if you haven’t played this game yet, quit making me feel dumb and go play it right now. It only took me about 5 hours to get through the game, and that was Goldilocks perfect. Not too long. Not too short. Just right.

Of course, I can’t talk about how much I love Portal without talking about “Still Alive,” the end credit song. Turns out that you’re going to be able to play it on Rock Band. w00t! Jonathan Coulton – the geektastic dude who wrote “Still Alive” (and who’s blog I’m now officially in love with) played it with guest rockers Leo Laporte, Veronica Belmont, and Merlin Mann at the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco, Feb 22, 2008 and they ALMOST got through it. (99% FTW!) Valve/Rock Band have not announced a release date for the downloadable song, but I’m tooootally looking forward to it.