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News & ArtsFriday, September 16, 2011
Games Download Portal for Free, for Mac and PC
Posted by The Stranger Testing Department on Fri, Sep 16, 2011 at 11:36 AM
As part of some sort of educational something or other, Valve is offering Portal 1 for free on Steam, for Mac or PC, until Tuesday. If you don't know what Portal is, what's wrong with you? It was an almost throwaway spatial-reasoning puzzle game added on to to 2007's Orange Box, which became a sleeper hit by virtue of being both funny and awesome. It's a great game, even if you're not a gamer.
We absolutely buy the notion that Portal is educational gold, making "physics, math, logic, spatial reasoning, probability, and problem-solving interesting, cool, and fun," and cheers to Valve for making it available for free—but this video is a little depressing when you realize that all the kids are $20K/year "highly capable" private schoolers who almost certainly don't need a leg up. (Then again, we finally got around to seeing Waiting for Superman last weekend, so maybe we're just bitter.)
It's not the first time they've done this, and it might not be the last, but you never know, right? Go get it now.
The Stranger Testing Department is Rob Lightner and Paul Hughes.
1
Video games are the greatest teaching tool, and we are just now realizing this in spite of how long Oregon Trail has been around. But at least we're progressing a little bit. There are so many uses for video games in training, medical, teaching, and many more that have not been explored. Support your gramers, support your game companies. If you've never played, try a few, you never know, you may like some video game somewhere.
2
The www.learnwithportals.com site doesn't appear to work any more. (and portal is still the normal price on Steam)
4
Go here: http://store.steampowered.com/app/400/?s…
Click play Portal. It'll give you Portal w/o the rest of the Orange box.
Portal is my favorite video game (next to Tetris).
Click play Portal. It'll give you Portal w/o the rest of the Orange box.
Portal is my favorite video game (next to Tetris).
5
Hmm... for some reason www.learningwithportals.com works, but www.learnwithportals.com just takes me to a URL-squatter site. Odd.... and I did just notice if you actually try to buy Portal on steam it's free, but when I searched for it it still lists it as $19.99, which must be the price of the whole Orange Box.
Cool, thanks!
Cool, thanks!
6
@5 I believe Steam doesn't show the discounts in the listed prices on most sales, and you find out at checkout.
7
jesus christ people, if you play video games you are a fucking child. grow the fuck up and read a book.
8
@7 Nope, sorry, you're wrong. Plain and simple. Anyone who has played video games knows that they are not designed for kids, kids are not their largest target audience, and most kids should be more active. It's a social hobby for many adults, instead of getting drunk at a bar they play Playstation with their friends. Others it's a learning tool, if you give up learning when an adult you really fail at being human, and reading isn't a viable learning method for many people. Some it's a way to relax and vent, would you prefer they used drugs? There are other reasons to, many many more, I just don't recall them all.
9
@7: From your halting, monosyllabic comments it doesn't look like you've been much of a reader through your life.
Perhaps you should delete your online profiles first?
Perhaps you should delete your online profiles first?
12
I hope the game isn't as challenging as the CAPTCHA implementation that Steam uses to verify you are human. I had to try 3 different times, and that's with refreshing it to get something approaching legibility scores of times.
I was impressed, though, that after going through the Steam installation, Steam actually remembered that I wanted to install Portal. I was expecting to have to choose that again.
(Sorry, I'm a user-experience geek.)
I was impressed, though, that after going through the Steam installation, Steam actually remembered that I wanted to install Portal. I was expecting to have to choose that again.
(Sorry, I'm a user-experience geek.)
13
steam is the steamingest pile of crap on the internet , even more so than steamingpilesofcrap.com . steam should be eliminated with extreme prejudice . you can't write a full complaint about the failures and faults of steam in this space . its just not possible . valve hasn't done shit since swat 3 . both should be burned at the stake . yeah i'm pointing at you steam , DIE IN A FIRE ! ARRRRRGGHHHH !
15
@12 The CAPTCHA is probably one of the most annoying systems used to prove human users ... I never liked it on anything.
16
My favorite bit of knowledge about Portal (from the Wikipedia entry):
"[The game's unique physics are] based on a similar concept from the game Narbacular Drop; many of the team members from the DigiPen Institute of Technology who worked on Narbacular Drop were hired by Valve for the creation of Portal."
DigiPen being the only decent 3D school in the area, located next door to Nintendo's office.
"[The game's unique physics are] based on a similar concept from the game Narbacular Drop; many of the team members from the DigiPen Institute of Technology who worked on Narbacular Drop were hired by Valve for the creation of Portal."
DigiPen being the only decent 3D school in the area, located next door to Nintendo's office.
17
@15: CAPTCHA absolutely works to prove humans, though. It doesn't necessarily prove legitimate users, of course.
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