Pads & Panels

#5 Portal 2 (PS3, 360, PC, Mac)

Publisher/Developer: Valve

Portal 2 trades the surprise of the first title for anticipation the second time around, but it manages to live up to the hype. While the plot may not be quite as a shocking, it is still funny as hell, with fantastic voice work driving things from start to finish. Portal 2 falters a little in the variety and quality of its single-player puzzles but adds a few new elements to keep things interesting. The real selling point for Portal 2, though, is its new co-op mode. Valve gives us the opportunity to prove that two minds are better than one in a series of much more complex puzzles that involve four portals, rather than two, and seek to drive apart our friendships in the process. (more…)

So what an interesting, top-loaded week for video game news it was, eh? First, I couldn’t use my PlayStation 3 on Monday because, well, apparently the PlayStation thought it was Feb. 29, even though 2010 is not a leap year. Or something like that. Basically, Sony explained that there was some sort of clock bug, in which the console and the network weren’t synced properly, which could have caused data and Trophy loss to anyone who used the console until it was fixed, which happened, as Sony promised, within 24 hours. I risked running mine offline to watch a Blu-ray, and don’t think I experienced any problems. But it’s a good thing I haven’t picked up Heavy Rain yet, or I might have been really pissed.

The other big news came at the end of the day Monday, and unraveled over the rest of the week. It started with a report from G4TV that security had stormed the offices of Infinity Ward, and Jason West and Vince Zampella, two of the studio’s heads, had not been seen since a meeting with Activision execs earlier in the day. Later, readers on sites like Kotaku brought to light a Facebook post by West stating he was no longer employed. Later, LinkedIn updates from both West and Zampella seemed to support this, and it was finally confirmed that Activision fired both men after an investigation into “insubordination” and “breach of contract.” (more…)