So, I backed out of HalfLife2 to see what else was on the disc, and went ahead and gave Portal a try.

It's still a FirstPersonShooter, which I still hate. But it's also a fairly simple puzzlegame with some amusing oneliners; so it's kinda fun too. And of course that meaningless the cake is a lie thing I'd forgotten all about after it stopped being memetic makes sense now:

I wasn't near my DigiCam while playing the game: hence the PhoneCam mess.

So I've gone through the game a few times now, also going back and getting the Advanced versions of the six intermediate levels. Ordinarily, I ignore manipulations trying to coax me into getting XBox achievements, especially if they're not good for anything [in DeadRising, they at least lead to things like the MegaBlaster]; but I've actually been trying to kill every killable camera in this thing, and, every damned time, I get all but one of them. I'm not sure which one I keep missing, or even if it's always the same one. Maybe I'll give up and look for a walkthrough if I don't get it next time. I did get the Terminal Velocity thing for freefalling thirty thousand feet, if only by setting up the portals and leaving for dinner before coming back four hours later; I'm still working on the longjump thing though: the chick always makes it through about a dozen portals before grabbing an edge. Also of course I'm missing the Bronze, Silver, and Gold achievements, since I'm in no hurry to play through each level for best time, least portals, and whatever else; it's just not my thing.

So, I played the game, beat it, and...I could probably move on now; but it is actually pretty fun. Hunter kinda likes hearing it, so long as she doesn't have to look at the screen ['Did the sentrygun really just sing "I don't hate you"?'], but she gets dizzy just watching me play it, which is sort of a pity.

I haven't looked at TeamDumbass2 yet, apart from a trailer I'd downloaded before the game was released. Maybe I'll look at it today, since I accidentally own that game along with Portal and the various episodes of HL2; if there's more to it than leaping around killing and getting killed—the whole lack of point to the first one—I might be okay with it; that it's a total cartoon might also make it better, the original being oddly uppity about trying to look like a real wargame.

Oh. Also, I worked out why at least some of the people telling me to play Portal wanted me to see it: it's all about the portable holes from the S97S. So, yeah: it's kinda neat to see those in application, even if there's no mesphotical transition between holes [to be real, even I'm not sure what the Mesphos looks like; and I invented the damned thing]; though, playing the game has got me thinking a bit about all that again—if the S97S ever got filmed somehow, given the technology these days, it would probably be purely CG [if more Beowulf than anything Pixar end up making] and, in a perfect world, voiced mostly by the bases for the characters themselves. Just because that would be really cool. Though the 'badguys' [everyone in the S97S is a badguy, but the good ones are in competition against the Forces of Dimness] were people I couldn't stand at the time, so I wouldn't go looking for them, even if they'd be likely to go for the idea of being themselves in a context where it's evident that no one likes them.

I guess I'll go look at TeamDumbass for a bit. If it doesn't suck like the first one, I might have more to talk about here later. Of course, eventually, I should have more to talk about here; hence: more later....

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