Below you will find pages that utilize the taxonomy term “Portal-2”
Spending Time as a Female in a Physics Puzzle Game
[caption id=“attachment_6344” align=“alignleft” width=“478”] Chell from Portal[/caption]
Gender is a pretty interesting concept when it comes to video games. Putting aside “Choose Your Own Adventure” books, video games are unique in that the players are active in constructing the narrative. Some games, like puzzle games don’t REALLY have a narrative (but that doesn’t mean my brothers and I didn’t come up with the “story” behind what was going on in Tetris - paragraph seven) But the rest have stories and put the play on a spectrum from games like Mario to games like Mass Effect and all the way to the The Sims franchise in which you have complete control of the narrative through player agency over all the characters in the house. (See here, here, and here) As the player plays, the player takes the character’s story onto him or herself. This is at least partially the rational for the dearth of female protagonists. Everyone “knows” that not only are all the gamers male, but they also couldn’t stand the idea of playing as a female. Off the top of my head the only top tier female protagonists I can think of are Laura Croft and the girl from Heavenly Sword. There’s also Samus Aran, but that’s also a bit of a cheat since she’s nearly always armored and the reveal that she was a woman was one of video games’ first huge reveals. But I know this is untrue - at least among the video game aficionados I know. Dan, members of the Giant Bomb Squad, and others who write about games online played Mass Effect as a female Shepard. Ryan or Jeff (or both, I can’t remember) of Giant Bomb plays as a female every time a video game gives him the option.
May Video Games
Just one game while waiting to feed my daughter
Portal 2 (1 hour) - Just played some commentary levels. It was fun, but the inability to save in that mode kept me from doing it more
2011 in Video Games (and my 2011 Game of the Year)
[caption id=“attachment_5240” align=“alignleft” width=“150” caption=“Team Fortress 2”] [/caption]
Civilization V (75 hrs) - What can I say about this game that I haven’t said already? This is the series that made “One More More Turn…” famous and it still works today. If I were to start a game tonight, I would not go to bed at a reasonable time.
May Video Games
I forgot to check for the May video game play times before it was too deep into June, so I lost my FFX playtime. The others are pretty accurate.
Final Fantasy X - finished the game. Review here.
Portal 2 (3 hrs) - finished multi-player game with Dan. That game is AWESOME. I was only bummed that the puzzles never truly got hard. There were only 3 (max!) that left Dan and I scratching out heads for a long time. Perhaps they wanted to make sure everyone finished the story events and so they didn’t make it hard. Or maybe they had as hard a thinking with four portals as we did when we were first getting used to it. I can’t wait for the DLC as I hope we get some more challenges. Heck, we didn’t even have any white gel in the multi-player games.
April Video Games
Final Fantasy X (36 hrs) - I started playing this game again to get away from computer games. It was hurting my back to sit at the computer. I could just stand in the guest room, where the PS2 is. I hadn’t played for months or maybe even a year, but I hadn’t gone that far in the game, so I wasn’t too lost. (Unlike when I finished FF7 and didn’t even remember what the point was) I’m still not done, but it’s already knocked Assassin’s Creed II from long-time position as my #6 most played game raptr. It’s already taken me longer than Final Fantasy IX. There’ll be a review once I finish. I’m so close, but the final boss keeps kicking my butt. I may need to do some more grinding.
Portal 2 Review and Analysis
If I have to sum up Portal 2 in one word: brilliant! I really enjoyed the first Portal a lot. The sense of not knowing what’s going on and GLaDOS’ obvious demented nature made for a dark video game the likes of which I’d never experienced. It was an artform as much as any other movie or book. And the puzzles were great fun and really got my brain going. But I wasn’t hooked. In fact, there was a two year gap between when I started and finished the game.