Player created content. The land where the developer’s concepts are hopped up on a unique internet blend of creativity inspired by Red Bull, Jack Daniels and Ritalin. Whether in the form of Half-Life 2 mods, storylines in WWE 12 or levels in Little Big Planet 2, giving players a customizable aspect to their game has become a proven asset to developers to extend the life of their game. Portal 2 was lauded as having some of the most creative and inventive puzzles of 2011, taking game physics and concepts to the next level. Allowing for this kind of creative freedom to fans of the series is the logical next step.

Announced last October, the puzzle editor will be a part of the free DLC pack releasing to PCs and Macs on May 8th known as the Perpetual Testing Initiative. Using the Steam platform, players will be able to create, upload, download and rate creations from the player community. What could this mean? It means that you are giving PC gamers, the most “hardcore” gaming audience, free reign inside the most complicated but approachable world in gaming today.

While Portal focused mostly on creativity using gravity puzzles, Portal 2 took things to a whole new level using light bridges, propulsion gel and launching platforms. Now, players will be able to assemble their own Test Labs using these.

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At the start of the month, rumors consumed PC and console gamers alike at the thought of a Steam created console. Most PC gamers thought to themselves, “Well I’ve already got a Steam box. It’s called my PC.” Console gamers had mixed reactions whether it was excitement at the thought of Steam powered games being available on a home console for the first time while others worried about the thought of adding a fourth major console to their home collection, especially with the impending release of the Wii U, next XBox and PlayStation 4 within the next few years.

These rumors were dispelled in under a week when Valve spoke to gaming site Kotaku saying that the company was a long way off from releasing a home system and that the rumored boxes that had been created were meant for internal purposes only to test streaming content from a PC to television, not acting as a console in and of itself. Valve told Kotaku, “We’re always putting boxes together,” he said. “Going all the way back to the Half-Life 1 days, we built special boxes to test our software render…it’s just part of development.”

While on the surface the concept of a Steam box might sound good, there are a few essential problems it must overcome before this idea should attempt to become a reality. The first is the current state of the home console market. Right now, the console market is dominated by the big three: Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft. While Nintendo diverged from the hardcore gamer with the Wii, they claim to be aiming at taking a hold back on that market with the release of a more powerful Wii U.

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As everyone expected, the mod community is having a heck of time with The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim the same way they did with the past open worlds of the Elder Scrolls series. With the official launch of the Skyrim Creation Kit through the Steam Workshop, players are able to build and distribute mods through the support of Bethesda and Steam which allows the community to come together and let each other know what the best and most promising mods are.

Instead of just being a free for all, this community allows players a piece of mind that they are downloading actual content and not a hack or virus that could harm their system. The first of these mods which every player should snag is the High Resolution Texture Pack which will greatly improve the visuals for most players.

The next piece of content any player with a sense of humor that also isn’t too hung up on silly things like continuity is Fall of the Space Core, Vol. 1. Created with the help of Valve, Fall of the Space Core, Vol. 1 brings Portal 2′s third favorite A.I. core to the medieval world of Skyrim.

To celebrate the opening of the Steam Workshop for Skyrim, Valve and Bethesda have teamed up to bring you the Portal 2 Space Core mod, which will let the aggressively space-centric little robot tag along on your adventures in Tamriel.

Also, since Skyrim was the only major release of 2011 without Nolan North in it, you should consider this mod a patch to fix that problem. You can now feel free to include Skyrim in the “Nolan North” section of your video game library, which is to say, your video game library.

Check out a video preview of the Space Core in action and stick to the Flickcast for more Skyrim and Portal news and all things gaming.

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2011 was one heck of a year for gaming. Once again, the Call of Duty franchise set records for the largest entertainment launch in history. A game that was only in Beta was able to sell millions of copies and spawn an ungodly large community to the point they had a convention before the game was officially released. There were tons of critical darlings encouraging developers to rethink how they create games.
Take a look this week at the awards The Flickcast (along with The Bitcast team) are proud to present for gaming in 2011

Think Outside the Box Game: Portal 2

While many may argue that Minecraft may be the most deserving of this award, they need to remember one thing. In Minecraft, there are no rules. The expanses of the box are too extreme to find the outer boundaries of. Within Portal 2, players are asked to explore new viewpoints of physics, matter and… well, portals. The puzzles in Portal 2 completely overtake the complexity and creativity of the original, which in itself was groundbreaking. With additional toys at their disposal and the introduction of a cooperative mode, the team at Valve came up with a game that redefined both the puzzle solving and FPS genres all at once.

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Anyone who follows The Flickcast knows I’m not the film guy by any means. I’m the video game guy. It is a rare feat to find a strong combination of the two. Portal: No Escape is one of those rare exceptions.

The world of Portal is filled with mystery and though some questions were answered in Portal 2 through the oral history of Aperture Science being explained by the recordings of Cave Johnson, many more questions remained. As a result, the world of Portal is ripe for fan fiction to fill in its many blanks.

That’s where director and editor Dan Trachtenberg’s fan film Portal: No Escape comes in. Though it doesn’t provide any new insight into the world of Portal, it gives a different perspective to its inhabitants. As seen by the events of Portal and Portal 2, the subjects who are used for testing “in the name of science” are not there of their own free will and do whatever they feel they must to escape.

Portal: No Escape follows one of these attempts. With music from Inception trailer composer Mike Zarin,  and vision from director Dan Trachtenberg, this fan film is incredibly tense and compelling and can be appreciated by those who are fans of the series or those who may have never seen it before.

Give Portal: No Escape a watch after the jump and make sure to let us know here at the Flickcast what you think of it.

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“How do you expand on Portal?” “How many different test rooms can you come up with using gravity and portal physics?” “What can be created to make the sequel a full retail game instead of being a part of a value packed disc like the Orange Box?”

These were all questions people came up with when they heard about Portal 2 as they were likely to be the same questions that the developers at Valve knew would be thrown their way.

After creating a completely original and satisfying experience with the original Portal, there was tons of pressure on the developers to bring back the magic that made the original Portal so special and at the same time bring about new experiences to prove the value of making the sequel. The result is a satisfying puzzle experience that builds on what Portal set out to do but continues innovating in the way gamers must think and play in order to progress either in the solo or cooperative modes.

Gameplay:

Broken down to its most basic sense, Portal 2 has players using a special gun from a first person perspective that shoots entry portals on select surfaces. Players can use these portals to instantaneously travel from one location to the next by walking, jumping or falling through them.

In addition, players can use these portals to transport items like the weighted Companion Cube or the Redirection Cube around test chambers as well. Various new gameplay elements such as Excursion Funnels (tractor beams), Hard Light Bridges, Repulsion gel, Propulsion gel and Conversion Gel can also be transported through the portals.

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If you’ve got a movie directed by J.J. Abrams, Produced by Steven Spielberg that features some kids who team up and try to save a town from a misunderstood monster, you’re probably going to appeal to a geek audience. However, with all the movies, games and more available for geeks (and others) these days how can you be sure to reach the audience you need to?

How about putting an easter egg trailer for your upcoming film inside a newly released video game? That’s just what Paramount did with J.J. Abrams upcoming Super 8 and the brand new Portal 2 game.

The interactive trailer, which we have for you here, transfers the action to videogame graphics and puts you inside the train car that crashes and unleashes the alien. Sadly, while you can’t really do all that much in the level, it is a pretty cool way to make sure your target audience is fully invested in seeing the movie — not that Paramount really has to worry about that.

Check out the teaser after the jump. Portal 2 is available now. Super 8 hits theaters on June 10th.

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One of the best “surprises” of E3 came during the Sony press conference. When it looked like things were winding down, the hyper passive aggressive voice of GLaDOS sounded through the arena. With GLaDOS’s voice came the trailer for Portal 2.

Seen below, years have passed since the escape from Aperture Science where players thought they had killed GLaDOS. Even though there was no cake at the end of the road as promised, players were thrilled to make it out alive.

Now, player’s return to Aperture Science and find themselves in wholly new uncovered and converted sections of the facility. Still using the Aperture Science Hand-held Portal Device (or simply the portal gun), players must endure an ever increasingly difficult series of puzzles based on physics, timing and sometimes plain luck to make it back out alive… and hopefully finally get the cake.

As you will see in the videos below, they have introduced a series of new physics items to help and hinder the progress through the levels of the game. All of these objects can be sent through the portals created by the portal gun as well. The Excursion Funnel acts as a tractor beam to push and pull objects and people through a level. Ariel Faith Plate is a fancy name for a trampoline which launches players in predetermined directions.

The Thermal Discouragement Beam is a bright red laser that can be used both as a weapon through the use of reflective blocks and as a key to open exits to levels. Pneumatic Diversity Vent is kind of like the tubes you see at drive up banks and pharmacies that suck everything up and spit them out at the other end.

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If you’re a Mac user and also love to game, today is your lucky day. Why? Well, Valve has decided to release its Steam platform officially for the Mac today and also will be bringing two of their best games along with it.

The first games is the awesomely simple Portal where you solve puzzles by teleporting from place to place using the “portal gun.” The best part, the better you do the more you get rewards in the form of cake. And who doesn’t love cake?

The next game coming out is Runic Game’s Torchlight which is a hack and slash in the tradition of Diablo where you explore dungeons and search for treasure. It’s also a great game and will probably do well mostly because, like Portal, its simple.

Steam, which has around 25 million users, was launched in 2004, allowing PC owners to buy and download games to play on their computer. The library of games soon expanded, and there are now more than 1,000 titles available. Even though its taken a few years, I’m glad to see the platform is finally available for the Mac. Thanks Valve, its about time.

Macs are great, except for when you want to play video games on them. Instead, OSX users rejoice whenever new and exciting titles are announced for the platform, and today is no exception. Kotaku has officially confirmed that along with the Steam software, Left 4 Dead 2, Team Fortress 2, Counter-Strike, Portal, and the Half-Life series are coming to Mac.

“As we transition from entertainment as a product to entertainment as a service, customers and developers need open, high-quality Internet clients,” said Gabe Newell, President of Valve. “The Mac is a great platform for entertainment services.”

This announcement has been rumored for awhile, as Mac-specific graphics were discovered in the beta files for the new Steam service last month. Valve dropped some serious hints later, with the release of some images of Valve games integrated with some familiar Mac themes.

Even more exciting is the new feature Steam Play, which will allow anyone who purchases a game on Steam for PC to download and play it for Mac, and vice versa, with no extra charge. Valve also hopes to release titles for Mac on the same day as the PC versions. The first simultaneous release for PC and Mac on Steam will be Portal 2, which was announced earlier this month.

In the first half of The Best Video Games of 2009, we saw Best Portable, Wii, Playstation 3 and XBox 360 Exclusive titles. Now things are ramping up on the way to the Game of the Year.

Best Music Game

Tie – The Beatles: Rock Band and DJ Hero

The Rock Band / Guitar Hero formula has been done to death at this point. Players play songs in a set list to unlock more music. Repeat as many times as needed until all songs have been unlocked. But it was 2009 that the music game genre took two big steps forward. As loved as Metallica is, their Guitar Hero installment couldn’t hold a candle to the weight of the legacy that the Beatles would bring with them in The Beatles: Rock Band. For the first time, there was a career spanning take on the legendary act with amazing and unique visuals attuned to the songs being played out.

With the addition of harmonies for the first time in any music game, The Beatles: Rock Band stepped up the feel of being in a full band to another level. Along with the unrivaled set list that only the Beatles could produce, the game has a shelf life that can outlast the pop-centric songs of current game releases.

A little over a month later, music gaming took another leap but this time into the unknown. Many people grow up hoping to become famous musicians at one point in their life but nowhere near as many look to become famous DJs. DJ Hero from Activision brought in masters of turntablism with the likes of the original hip-hop DJ Grand Master Flash to DJ Jazzy Jeff to electronica legends Daft Punk in the ultimate mashup collection.

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One of the biggest hits this holiday season has already been confirmed to be Left 4 Dead 2. The sequel to last year’s multiplayer hit, the game featured four new campaigns, each with full Story, Versus, Survivor and Scavenger modes.

The new game starred four new survivors as they try to escape from various Southern American environments. But there are still tons of questions left unanswered from the first game like how the infection began, and most importantly what happened to Left 4 Dead’s original four survivors.

Valve has announced that these questions will be answered in early 2010 when Left 4 Dead 2‘s first downloadable content will be released. Valve’s press release states: “Dubbed “The Passing”, the first game add-on for L4D2 brings the original Left 4 Dead (L4D1) Survivors down south for a meeting with the L4D2 cast, while delivering new single-player, multiplayer and co-operative gameplay for the PC and Xbox 360. “The Passing” takes place just after the “Dead Center” campaign of L4D2.

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