Roger's Roundup
The Valve Corporation is a computer game software company that makes some of my favorite stuff.
My first experience with Valve was the computer game Half-Life. In Half-Life, you take on the role of Gordon Freeman, an engineer and test subject at the Black Mesa Research Facility. Something goes wrong at the start of the game, and the player must get Freeman back out of the depths of Black Mesa as it’s invaded by extra-dimensional beings — and covert government troops sent to eliminate the aliens — along with any witnesses.
Freeman interacts with several of the scientists, guards and other characters at Black Mesa, but oddly, never speaks.
While he makes use of a number of weapons in Half-Life, including his trusty crowbar, the sequel Half-Life 2 introduces the gravity gun. This device emanates a form of energy allowing Gordon to pick up, manipulate, drop or fire away from himself items he finds in the game. Need to get over a wall? Use the gravity gun to use junk to build a ramp. Need to kill some zombies? Use the gravity gun to fire off a few circular saw blades.
Half-Life 2 also introduces more friendly characters and expands the story started in the first installment.
There’s a new Half-Life game out called Half-Life: Alyx. Alyx is a character that Freeman meets in Half-Life 2. I haven’t played Half-Life: Alyx because it’s strictly a virtual reality game, and I don’t currently possess a virtual reality setup.
An offshoot of the Half-Life games involves a corporate rival of Freeman’s Black Mesa Research Facility known as Aperture Science Inc. These are the Portal games.
In Portal, you take the role of a woman named Chell. There’s some indication in the games that Chell might be a clone. At any rate, she wakes up to discover herself in a sterile laboratory. The game consists of a series of puzzle rooms which Chell must navigate.
At one point in the game, Chell receives a portal gun. This gun fires two unique “portals.” These look like glowing oval-shaped doorways ensconced in whatever flat white (it’s got to be white — we don’t find out why until Portal 2) surface the gun is aimed at. Pressing the left mouse button fires a blue portal, while pressing the right mouse button fires an orange portal. If you enter the blue portal, you come out the orange portal, and vice versa.
As Chell progresses through the “test chambers,” she’s guided, mocked, cajoled and threatened by the voice of the computer GLaDOS.
In Portal 2, Chell wakes up long after the events in the original Portal. Guided by another computer program called Wheatley, she must survive the automated destruction of her quarters in the now well-aged Aperture Science and make her way through a testing and research facility that’s far more vast than we guessed playing the original game.
Where Portal focuses on structured puzzle rooms and progressing from one to the next, Portal 2 involves Chell using the portal gun to make her way through the wilds of the decaying Aperture Science.
One of the great joys of Portal 2 is being introduced to the inimitable Cave Johnson. Not the 19th Century Congressman from Tennessee, but the billionaire founder and CEO of Aperture Science.
We don’t actually get to meet the man — chances are he’s been dead for decades if not centuries — but we encounter quite a few voice recordings he’s left behind (voiced by J.K. Simmons), and we become acquainted with his unique world view. Here's just one of the many verbal tidbits he's left lying around Aperture:
"Those of you who agreed to be injected with praying mantis DNA, I’ve got some good news and some bad news. Bad news is we’re postponing those tests indefinitely.
"Good news is, we’ve got a much better test for you: Fighting an army of mantis men. Pick up a rifle and follow the yellow line."
For many reasons, Portal 2 is my favorite computer game. Valve also runs the Steam PC gaming platform.
Roger Cline is staff writer for The Snyder News. Comments on his article can be made to roger@snyderdailynews.com