Aside from being an all around fantastic game, Portal 2 featured one of the most interesting and enjoyable game soundtracks of 2011 thus far. Valve, being the cool dudes and dudettes that they are, have released Volume 1 of the Portal 2 soundtrack for free download along with a few ringtones.

The 22 track OST appropriately titled Songs to Test By is sure to help you get through the day with the power of science. Just don’t go jumping off any tall structures while you listen to the eerie sounds of this minimalist electronica. You’re not wearing the right boots for it.

Source: Valve

“Friday Old Games” is a series of articles in which we review a game from the older generations of consoles, share why we picked it, and whether or not it holds up with time.

I have never been a PC gamer. When Half-Life came out for the PC, I was still rocking my Commodore 64 (which was just a teensy bit short in the RAM department). Besides I was too busy with my PS1 to worry about insanely awesome FPS games with pitch perfect atmosphere; I had some Battle Arena Toshinden to conquer.

In all seriousness Half-Life dropped with the force of a judo throw from Segata Sanshiro (which is equivalent to 10 megaton bombs.) It completely revolutionized the FPS genre. Everything from the graphics to the story to the puzzles to the combat pushed the genre in fantastic new directions. Even dedicated non-PC guys like myself stared enviously at our buddy’s copy and hoped for a console port.

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When Valve first announced a sequel to their popular co-op FPS, Left 4 Dead, their was an uprising in the Steam community. Gamers were crying fowl, saying that Valve had broken their promises and their hearts.

Why isn’t this DLC? You PROMISED! They cried.

Some even started a boycott group on Steam that is currently over 30,000 strong. Never mind that the first random group member I clicked on has logged over fifty hours in Left 4 Dead 2, and the second random person I clicked on had over two-hundred hours in the main game and over eighty in the authoring tools (used for modding).

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This may come off as grumpy old man complaining that “Back in my day, we only had Combat on Atari, and we liked it!”, but it is something that has been on my mind a lot lately. I’m warning you now this is a full on opinion piece.

Do we, as gamers, complain too much? Do we take into consideration everything that goes into making the games we play in the first place? And do we, or should we, care?

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