Still Alive
Postscript to Portal:
I did finish, after all. It wasn’t too hard, although it took considerable trial and error to find a reliable place to…um, place the gates to do what you need to win in the final sequence. (No spoilers.) I went back and played it through again, taking about four hours—while knowing the solutions to every puzzle ahead of time, knowing where to look, which bits were red herrings. A two-to-three hour game, my ass.
Winning brought more rewards than simply being able to go back and test my time, however. I also got to watch the end sequence, which included a brief look at some cake, and a fucking hilarious song that rolled while the credits played. You can find the entirety on YouTube, though it won’t make mean as much if you haven’t lived through of the evil computer GLaDos’s “experiments,” or her HAL-like demise.
I’m really not angry.
I’m being so sincere right now.
Even though you broke my heart,
And killed me.
And tore me to pieces.
And threw every piece into a fire.
As it burned, it hurt because
I was so happy for you.
Only on the second listening did I realize this was a Jonathan Coulton, at which point I thumped my head and thought, “Of course!”
It matches his style, and Coulton was the perfect match for the vein of institutionalized black humor that made Portal such a success. It’s a short step from Chiron Beta Prime, and not all that far from the rage-against-the-machine Code Monkey and All We Want to Do is Eat Your Brains, and I’m delighted to see another stone paved in Coulton’s path to success. I’d like to see him pop into the national conscious as Weird Al Yankovic, but until that time, he deserves your ear, and your encouragement.