Life/Portal 2

Mi idea was to get home from a late night at work and write some words for my almost not visited blog... while drinking some WINE. When I imagine myself in the future drinking wine, I'm doing it from a  Red Wine Glass. Then I realized; I do not have a red Wine Glass in my house! I had arrived home like 2 minutes ago but i knew I had to get out again, so i changed my boots to running shoes, got my coat, a small amount of money(but enough for the thing) and went out again. The closest supermarket from home was closed for sure, so i went for a small store, they didn't had red wine glasses but they told me of another supermarket that could still be open like 6 blocks away. I started running a bit and when i got a block away i could already see the lights off, no buying people around, and already in the market's door, 3 well dressed transvestites walking in the night looking for some fun. So... I started walking to another place where i thought I could get a chance. For the next minutes I visited like 2 small stores, one gas station and one place that almost hit the spot, they had 2 of the things in one box... expensive fancy box that didn't match the money in my pocket. Then I thought to myself: "If this was a video game I wouldn't have a problem about going to a bar and ask for a glass, just to see what could happen(and paying it of course)". So I did; In the first one they wont sell me the thing because they had just a few, those things brake a lot. In the second place, this time bigger but cheaper almost folkloric bar called "La Pasiva" (that will be "The Passive" for you). This time, old angry looking folks running the place, and already a bad vibe but what the hell... "I can't sell you the service of the house"........ OK, then I got a little frustrated and thought: "C'MON MAN?! WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME A GUY CAME TO YOUR BAR SMILING AT YOU ASKING FOR BUYING A RED WINE CUP IN A COLD FRIDAY EVENING?! COULDN'T YOU BE A LITTLE MORE FRIENDLY?  so I went home, defeated... In a video game, some may choose to kill the guy and get everything from the bar and maybe empty all the town from any walking living thing too. I provably may choose to sneak on him and rob the goddamn thing, but I had quit that, I only do that in video games nowadays.

You can say I'm fancy, well... sometimes I am, but now I'm drinking wine from a glass... it's not that terrible, tastes good, makes me wanna smoke that abano venezolano while i hear Jamiroquai's, funky good.
SO... a week ago I wanted to write about provably one of the best games that I ever played, you know? a blue portal here, then an orange portal there, and voila! This mechanic repeats itself in all the game and if you didn't play this thing an you start to imagine you can think that this could be kinda boring in a while, but the truth is that is not. This amazing mechanic transforms itself in your new way of thinking, and its always reinventing itself in combination with other elements of the game. 

You have this gadget then, and I'm calling it a gadget couse this is not a weapon, although it fires something, you wont kill anybody with it. Hey, I'm talking about Portal 2 here!, this game deserves an award (oh.. I think it did won some of those). 

I didn't play Portal 1, actually I did for some minutes, but i was affected but the effects of marijuana and I felt so trapped in that lab that I had to run away, I thought I didn't like the game but my friend Joaquín insisted that I was some kind of imbecile for not playing it, especially for not playing Portal 2, because the first its some kind of experiment that went really good he says, something like that... I'm getting a little drunk, like getting into a portal in the floor and appearing in the roof falling upside down.

Please, do me a favor and click this image so you can watch it for a second in full resolution. Something happened to me in this game several times; I stood still. It's not the first time that that happened to me in video games but, in Portal 2, I had to stood still in almost all the levels of the game. Right now my brain stood still on "levels", I'm realizing that in the game you actually have "levels". Every time you finish a "test" you find at the end an elevator that gets you to the next "level" in the Aperture Science labs, and in that lift the game loads. I was curious about that, I was remembering "Half Life", where the game loaded from time to time in some points but trying to make the thing just one experience without levels. In Portal 2 they did the exact opposite thing, make the levels a literal thing. Awesome, this guy are the best. Why did I had to stood still?

 ...and that's only a still image from this amazing game, man... the sound and music made for this game is like one of the best things that I ever heard playing a game. It was like listening to one of the best electronic musicians that are around, combined with a sound that came from the another side of the portal. The music is made by Mike Morasky, and you can listen to this awesome album here, its an intense electronic existential  also nostalgic beauty. And the sound design moves with you, when you start figuring out the puzzles the music is telling you that you'r warmer to get there, adding samples like adding instruments in an orchestra. The animations moves the same way, like an amazing huge clock that works to you, and you'r inside of it. And to say something about the design, well... It's like the everything in that place is made by an schizophrenic forgotten robot mother that built things to feel less alone. Sounds very sad & insane but, all the game is filled with an amazing quite black humor that keeps you going.

ALERT: If you keep scrolling down non stop you'll get the biggest spoilers you could get for this game. You have been advised.

I know lots of people that doesn't know the power of video games, and its understandable, the video game industry still is a new industry. Movies born like 110 years ago and video games have like 40 years, and i think that we have to count from 1990 up, when games started to be really in 3D, so just a few years ago(like 20), we can do whatever we want as developers and players to make a really good full experience. There are no limits, the distance between the player and the game is minimizing itself more & more. A time will come when you will play almost as yourself, putting yourself in that experience so much that you'll forget about yoruself, its crazy, its science fiction, and the games will open up to be lots of things, whatever you want..

                        You're there.
              You're doing it, seeing it, hearing
              it... feeling it.

                             KEITH

              What kind of things exactly?

                             LENNY
              Exactly anything.  Whatever you
              want.  Whoever you want to be.
                 (handing Fabrizio a twenty)
              Fabri, get us another round, would
              you.

    Fabrizio gets the hint and heads for the bar.

                             LENNY
              You want to go skiing without
              leaving your den, you can.  But I'm
              assuming a guy like you, you wanna
              go skiing you fly to Aspen.  That's
              not what you're interested in here.
              It's about the stuff you can't
              have... right?  The forbidden
              fruit.

    Keith nods, mesmerized by Lenny.

                             LENNY
              Like running into a liquor store
              with a .357 magnum in your hand,
              feeling the adrenalin pumping
              through your veins.  Or...
                      (pointing discreetly)
              ... see that guy, with the drop-dead
              Philipino girl friend?
                      (Keith looks)
              Wouldn't you like to be that guy for
              twenty minutes?  The right twenty
              minutes.  I can make it happen.  And
              you won't even tarnish your wedding
              ring.

    Keith touches his ring self-consciously, then grins.

                             KEITH
                      (hooked like a carp)
              Sounds good.

                             LENNY
              I can get you what you want.  You
              just have to talk to me.  I'm your
              priest, your shrink, your main
              connection to the switchboard of
              souls.  I'm the Magic Man, the Santa
              Claus of the Subconscious.  You say
              it, you even think it, you can have
              it.  You want a girl, you want two
              girls?  I don't know what your thing
              is or what you're curious about...
              you want a guy?  You want to be a
              girl... see what that feels like?
              You want a nun to tie you up?  It's
              all doable.

..That's a piece of the script of the 1995's movie Strange Days, the thing in that movie is that some people smuggle videos that you fully experience with a contraption that goes directly to your cerebral cortex. Those videos where previously recorded by people using that contraption thing doing also some ilegal things. Not all the movie is good for me but I like that cerebral cortex thing a lot. I think some of that is happening with video games but we are not really noticing it in its full form. I'm not saying its evil or nothing, I'm saying that games could make some changes in the mind, get into your psyche, your dreams... you experiencing this thing wanting or not, you play it... your there.SO, if you don't want to get no spoilers from the end of Portal 2, this is good time to close the Screenshooter blog and go bake come cookies, because now I'm uploading one of my favorite screens where I shoot that last portal to..

the...

MOON!