Elaborate! Please?
I won’t spoil it. You have to figure it out on your own. The only thing I’ll say is to take a look at the Aperture Science computer keyboards in the later levels …
As well, there’s an egg in Episode Two related to another intellectual property renowned for driving us nuts with its slowly unfolding mystery. In the chapter “Our Mutual Friend”, there’s an inaccessible area in the missile silo near the room where our labcoat-wearing Vortigaunt friend is hanging out (his nametag says Uriah, actually). The narrative is designed to move you through this area quickly without doing any exploring, but if you look behind the large gas tank and metal boxes along the wall, you’ll see a side room with an old CRT display with a series of green numbers along the top, and a very familiar logo spraypainted on the wall …
Yes. Yes. Depends on what you mean by Portal easter eggs. Yes, on hard mode to boot (the copter part was fun, it’s all about timing because when you’re in the car and moving you take little damage). Well, if anyone needs help on doing the “Neighborhood Watch” goal in HL2: Ep2 I have a demo of me doing it on hard mode here.
The only thing I have left to do in Portal are the steps challenges. I’m not sure how quickly that’s going to happen considering they seem to be the least fun of all the challenges.
As for that bonus cake screen, if you wait around for awhile the camera will shift and reveal your faithful companion. Cite.
I take it you uh, read the official Steam forums?
No, but close … the halflife2.net forums, which for the most part mock the Steam forums. 
Congrats on the Garden Gnome. It’s the only achievement I haven’t done but I may get around to it one day when I replay the episode in its entirety along with the developer commentary. I’ve finished all the advanced Portal maps, but getting some of those timing challenges done under par is an exercise in frustration on levels requiring double-flings. Placing all the portals to knock the four turrets over in Advanced Chamber 18 took forever to get right. I’ve never reloaded so many times in my life!
Yeah, I’m currently trying to deal with the gnome, which I’ve named Wilson due to the number of times I’ve flung it away from me in irritation only to run desperately after it begging its forgiveness. “WILSON!!! Never again!” [/tomhanks]
But right now I’m desperately stuck right at the section with the helicopter chase by the trainyards. Previously, I’d stick Wilson in the car for a few yards, have him drop out, and then use the gravity gun to shoot him ahead so I can drive up and meet him. Slow but it worked.
However, during this chase scene, once I get out of the car, the helicopter slaughters me. What strategy do you suggest for transporting Wilson through this section?
(During this round, I also spent ages hunting through the antlion grub section to squish those little suckers to a pulp, only afterwards to check the “achievements” area and find that for some reason the grub achievement was still locked. ARGH. Why??)
anamnesis:
I see. Did you ever see an HL2 speedrun? Or go to the SDA? You might recognize me from awhile ago since I did the first two HL2 speedruns before the HL2DQ team got together.
Haha, so true. I lost the gnome several times on those twisty road sections because I would punt it far away but then when I got down there I’d look around all the rocks/bushes/trees for like five minutes before giving up. Sometimes I think he doesn’t want to take a vacation in space.
Like I said, it’s all about the timing. The main point is that when you’re in the car and moving the copter does very little damage to you and if you’re out in the open you die pretty much instantly (at least on hard). You need to get into a rhythm of driving while the copter is shooting and tossing the gnome between attacks. I’d suggest using F6 liberally.
Achievements won’t be activated in developer commentary or if sv_cheats = 1. You also need to be connected to steam (so no playing in offline mode).
If you’re amused by GLaDOS’ dialogue, check out http://www.aperturescience.com
I recommend typing “help” first.
Then “login” with the username “cjohnson” and password “tier3”
Then type “dir” which will let you see there are two things you can read/do. “Apply” is very, very funny (and somewhat interactive) “Notes” is the story of the company.
And when you’re done those, type “lib” and try playing around with the list of commands it gives. I tried “play portal” and it sent me to a Youtube page… Except the videos had been removed by the user. Most of them don’t let you do anything, except “lib” (which you’ve already done), “play” which you need to find something to play, and “interrogate”… But I don’t know any employee names.
Here’s the blog of the guy who wrote the song:
http://www.jonathancoulton.com/2007/10/15/portal-the-skinny/
The Everyday Happenings of Weebl (and Sometimes Weebl’s Friend Bob) have apparently brought them in contact with the events at Aperture Science. Watch and laugh!
VGCats has done a comic for Portal, it looks like.
And an older comic from Penny Arcade 
You don’t have to go into that room at all. If you go into the first little side-room that you have to crouch to reach, you can get a CPU. Take that to the door, and lean it against the middle, so it will fall over when the door opens and prevent it from closing. Go to the button, then race over while the door is still open, because a door blocked like that will eventually expel the object and close, and with a small object like the CPU it closes faster.
That’s a mighty interesting strategy, Carrot … one that I can’t seem to execute. I lean the CPU over onto the door at a 45 degree angle where the center seam is, but every time the door opens, the CPU flies out of the way, rather than falling over to block the doors from closing. 
Well, I’ve played through Portal and holy cow, it’s hilarious and charming and devious – what a fun experience! The writing’s terrific, and GLaDOS is the best game character I’ve ever met – HAL as designed by the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation. The first several puzzles were just easy enough to seduce me into thinking I could whiz through this, and eventually they became challenging enough to make me feel accomplished when I finished 'em.
Spoilers for a few sections:
[spoiler]- The companion cube! I kept wondering if there were a way to get out of incinerating it, but the truth was all too clear. What I especially enjoyed about this dilemma was that it wasn’t just a funny/touching bit of business: it was actually a hint to solving the game as a whole. Valve always plays fair with its players – one of the things I most admire about their games.
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Those turrets, soooo freakin’ creepy and adorable. “I don’t blame you…” “No, don’t shoot, it’s me!”
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The scribbled rantings of past test subjects. I found them difficult to read at times, but how awesome were those hints that they’d been driven mad by the companion cube? Snatches of bastardized love poetry… drawings of cake… drawings of companion cubes with angel wings…
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GLaDOS’s devolution from “friendly” to “threatening” during the endgame was almost chilling, although you gotta love her attempts at insults. “What are you doing with that thing? I don’t even know what that thing is. It is not important. Why don’t you marry that thing if you love it so much?” “Nobody likes you and nobody will mourn you when you die. No one shall mourn. Also you are adopted, which is funny.”
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THE SONG! Awesome. Adorable. Addictive. I want it as a ringtone.[/spoiler]
I can’t wait for a follow-up, assuming there is one. Also finding out more about Aperture Science, and the future of the protaganist (and if she’ll show up in HL episodes). But most of all, I want the damn cake.
So huge thanks to those who recommended Portal. Can’t rave enough about it!
http://www.encyclopediadramatica.com/ Portal
The above link has several very NSFW Portal related pictures, although you have to scroll down to see them. Also, I found the “Female FPS” section pretty funny.
Who here is playing TF2? Is it just me that thinks that it’s pretty mediocre? The game is basically a spam-fest. The team with most demomen and HW+medic combos basically wins.
I’m reluctant to agree, but I kinda do. If I still went to LAN parties, I think it’d be the “social game” du jour, but I don’t derive as much fun playing on my own with strangers as I still seem to with CSS. The visuals are wonderful and the gameplay is mostly balanced (I think future updates will address balance issues with certain unit combos) but it’s very frenetic and quickly paced whereas CSS is obviously more realistic. I think TF2 is most fun if you’re playing with others in your physical proximity. It’s one of those party/gathering games to me.
Hee! I love how she even goes so far as to call it the “Aperture Science Emergency Intelligence Incinerator”. On a side note, I love how every object in the facility seems to be a trademark of Aperture Science
Well, there is a way to avoid euthanization by fire, at least, although it’s a bit of a cheat. If you enable the console (with -console at the end of the command line in Steam properties), you can spawn a cube by typing ent_create_portal_weight_box in the console, and incinerate that one instead. GLaDOS will think you tossed Companion Cube in. Of course, the real CC will get zapped by the Emancipation Grille if you try to carry it through, but I reckon it’s probably a less painful death than being burned alive. 
I play it all the time. (I go by “WeightedCompanionCube”)
It’s basically just the old Team Fortress with new graphics. Gameplay is pretty much exactly the same - which is why I like it.
The servers I tend to play on aren’t usually spamfests. Most HW+Medics are easily neutralized by a good spy. Demomen are easily killed by a scout or sniper. Provided you have two decent teams, there’s no spamfest.
As far as maps go, the stock ones are balanced very well (I would make a couple changes to a few of them, but nothing major) I’ve only played a few custom ones, and they were’nt that good, but soon some good ones will come out.
At first I was underwhelmed by TF2, but I think that was due to the 10 year wait. Now I adore it.
I love how it supports many different playstyles. The Red Bull infused Counterstrike twitch kiddies get their snipers and scouts, the slow ponderous Sim City players get their engineers, the social MMORPG players get their medics, the anti-social Metal Gear players get the spy, and the people who want to blow shit up but have rapidly ailing hand-eye coordination like myself get the pyro.
Best of all, it’s the most balanced system I’ve ever played. The different classes work together organically, and it never feels like the developers crammed in rock-paper-scissors for the sake of balance. You just have to get over the fact that all of this was pioneered over a decade ago by a mod team, so you might be wondering what they’ve been doing all this time. But it looks great, has a fun sense of art style, and is full of humor and soul. It’s the best multiplayer shooter since Battlefield 1942.
Now all we need is Duke Nukem Forever to go gold, and hell will have officially frozen over.