Last Sunday, I was fortunate enough to get hold of the popular title, Portal. Before starting to play this game, I had heard a lot of great things about it. To my memory, I haven’t heard anything bad about it (excluding Yahtzee’s ranting, but even he gave it a positive review.) The main reason for me finally getting my hands on this game was not because of all the talk from last year, but the song at the end. I am not going to go into the story of the game because there is Wikipedia for that.

The idea of this game, going through one door (or portal) and ending up at another door, that is basically what the game is about. Something this simple makes it an amazing game. There is so much you can do with these portals such as getting to unreachable areas, getting from one place to another in a matter of seconds, falling through the sky as well and dropping things through the portals. It may sound like nothing but it is genius idea!

The only issues I had with the game is that is so awesome that I had to finish it. I couldn’t do anything else till I had gotten to the end of the game and got some cake. Another issue I had was that it didn’t work well on my laptop, and it ran a little less sloppy on my sisters laptop (which I used to play Portal because it was the only machine that played it decent.) This did ruin the experience of the game with the dropping of frames and the lag at times when things got busy. It is annoying trying to get through a portal but because the game lags, you turn too far and miss the portal. That was slightly frustrating. I know I can’t blame Portal for that, but it was part of my experience of playing it.

Some people probably think the game is really short. There are only 19 levels and you get through the first five in a couple of minutes which doesn’t seem to pleasing but I do have to say that the length of the levels gets longer as you progress (thank God.) The last two levels were especially long but it made it more enjoyable after going through a whole heap of small and easy levels in the game. I think the game is a perfect length, not too short but not too long either.

But the real incentive for me to play and finish this game was for the song and the end (oh, and the cake is a lie) which is by Jonathan Coulton. After hearing him sing this song on Rock Band with a few web celebrities, I went to find the one that is played at the end of Portal on YouTube and loved the song. After that, I had to get to get the game and get to the end of it to get that song during the ending credit. Still Alive was the only reason I played the game in the first place. It was extremely satisfying getting to the end of the game and getting that song.

To conclude, Portal is the best game I have played in a while and it is definitely on my list of games to play while you are alive. Great level design, great gameplay, great concept, great puzzles, great 5 hours of my life to be honest. If you haven’t already played Portal, you HAVE to get your hands on it, beg, borrow or steal it! You will not regret using half a day to play this game at all.

One of the podcasts I listen to daily (well Tuesday to Saturday) is Cnets Buzz Out Loud podcast. I have been listening for about a year now and in that time, my favourite host, Veronica Belmont has left, and the show has become dull, we at least in my opinion. For this reason, I have unsubscribed from the podcast.

There were other factors that also influenced my decision for example news that I am not interested in and/or news that I have already seen on half a dozen websites and end up hearing on another (or a few other) podcasts I currently listen to. I am interested in mainly technology news, which is what BOL mainly consists of, but before I get to download and listen to the podcast, I have already read most of the news, especially the big announcements, either on Digg or in my RSS reader. I don’t really need to hear it again in a podcast, even though if it is big enough, I will hear it on next weeks TWiT or other podcast on their network.

So I have unsubscribed from their podcast and now have about 40 minutes extra each day, or 200 minutes a week, to listen and watch the current media I download. I couldn’t think of any good reason to keep downloading it everyday and listening to it. The past few months, I haven’t really been listening to what they have been saying and generally zone out or use it as background sound while I am on the computer. Oh well, I won’t miss it that much, I still have my other podcasts to listen to and watch.