

Get Portal for free - abraham
http://store.steampowered.com/freeportal/

======
henning
Didn't we have some fun, though? Remember when the platform was sliding into
the fire pit and I said 'Goodbye' and you were like 'NO WAY', and then I was
all 'We pretended we were going to murder you'; that was great.

~~~
Gormo
Is this a metaphorical commentary on the PC gaming industry?

~~~
ehsanul
Nope. That's what GLaDOS, the AI you beat in Portal, says in one part of the
game. GLaDOS is a psychotic AI who says hilarious things like that. It's only
funny if you know what happens in the game though.

~~~
msg
ehsanul is lying. The computer is your friend.

And there will be cake.

~~~
RevRal
I laughed so hard when it was revealed that there was actually cake.

~~~
rufo
You may not want to eat the cake when you find out what's in it.
<http://www.planetfortress.com/dfa/portal-recipe.html>

~~~
sketerpot
I don't know what a "trans-borehole magnetic imaging rhubarb" is, but I want
one. It's in the recipe, too, but for some reason the rhubarbs were not
transcribed on that page.

------
TrevorBurnham
Easily one of the best games ever made. It takes a mere four hours to play
through, but I call that a feature, not a bug. Most games keep going long
after they've became repetitive and dull. Portal is a pure pleasure from start
to finish.

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spudlyo
Tip for OSX: If steam complains that it needs to be on a case insensitive file
system, you can go to the disk utility and select 'New Image' from the toolbar
and create a files system, make sure it's case insensitive, and mount it in
/Volumes/SteamDisk.

Then you have to make some symbolic links to this file system, like:

~/Documents/Steam Content -> /Volumes/SteamDisk/Steam Content

~/Library/Application Support/Steam -> /Volumes/SteamDisk/Steam

Once you've got that set up, you should be able to drag the steam icon over to
the /Volumes/SteamDisk and then run it.

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davidmathers
This is a triumph.

I'm being so sincere right now.

~~~
marvin
Nice try, GLaDOS. I'm not touching that 1500 megawatt Aperture Science Heavy
Duty Super-colliding Super-button.

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jokermatt999
To any hackers who haven't played this game, I highly recommend it. Even if
you aren't the gaming type, it's a short and highly enjoyable experience. The
writing is great, the gameplay is fun, and the puzzles will get you to use
your brain (if not in the main game, then in the challenges). It's only a few
hours long, and you could potentially beat it in a few hours. Above all, it's
free. Try it out; there's no reason not to.

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DLWormwood
I'm officially disappointed in Portal, and glad I got it for free. Everybody
in the trade press said it was this extraordinary thing: a short but sweet
puzzler. Sadly, the game/dev's roots as a FPS house really shows here. Not all
of us (especially us older people) have the reflexes anymore to do some of the
real time tricks required to solve the last couple of stages. _sigh_

~~~
maushu
Funnily enough, the game developers are not from Valve if that is what you are
implying by "FPS house" since they are team that attended Digipen and made a
similar game called Narbacular Drop (also a fps). You should check it out.

~~~
DLWormwood
It know this is late, but...

I really wanted to try Drop first, but that's probably never going to be
ported to the Mac. (I have Parallels, but no Windows license to install it
with.) I want to play "Devil's Tuning Fork" for a similar reason.

I now better understand the love Portal got. The final level (including the
boss sequence) made up for most of the frustrations of the last couple of test
chambers. According to Portal's commentary track, the developers realized that
real time and complicated puzzles needs separation, and this game design made
the last level much more enjoyable.

------
DTrejo
"The Steam servers are currently too busy to handle your request. Please try
again in a few minutes"

~~~
MikeCapone
I don't even get that, just a blank screen :(

edit: It seems to be working now. I think I needed to go verify my email
first. If you are also a new Steam user trying to download portal, go check
your inbox first.

~~~
MikeCapone
Steam is being a huge pain so far. I was downloading portal and it crashed. I
relaunched it but it didn't resume downloading, yet I couldn't play the game,
and didn't find a way to restart the download. Ended up deleting the whole
thing and I'm now trying again from the start... _sigh_

edit: Great, I re-installed but it still lists Portal in my "library", and I
don't see any way to re-download it or delete it or anything. This sucks.

~~~
aperiodic
Did you try cleaning out the local game cache files in ~/Documents/Steam
Content/?

Also, if you right-click on the game in your Library, and then select
"Properties," there's a "Local Files" tab which lets you delete the local
cache, and verify that everything's there. Hopefully one of those will make it
realize the download didn't finish.

~~~
MikeCapone
I'm on a Mac, so this doesn't quite applies. But thanks anyway. If someone
else on a Mac had the same problem, I'd love some help. Thanks.

Update: Okay, somehow my download resumed from where it crashed last time. Not
sure what I did; i think their servers are just really slow, and if you keep
trying, at some point it will work. I think that what I did is go to
"library", then went to Portal (my only game), and the "downloading" thing on
the left ended up connecting after a long time. Then I could click on the
downloading progress bar on the bottom and I can see the download speed.
HOpefully it'll work this time.

~~~
aperiodic
I'm on a Mac, too. ~/Documents/Steam Content/ is where Steam dumps all its
content on a Mac. The "Properties" option is in the context menu when you
right-click on Portal in your games list in the Steam client, and that brings
up another Steam box that lets you verify the local game cache. I wasn't
referring to the Windows Explorer "Properties" option (which I think you
thought I was referring to).

~~~
MikeCapone
I'm sorry, I think I read what you wrote too fast because I thought I
recognized a windows path at a glance. Thanks for the tip!

------
msg
It's apt. APT!

<http://xkcd.com/606/>

~~~
MikeCapone
That's totally me. I never played portal, got very late into COD4. The only
game that I'm likely to get when it's released is Starcraft 2.

~~~
msg
You should be able to get a beta key if you preorder it, and you could start
right now...

~~~
MikeCapone
Oh, I didn't know that's how the beta worked. Thanks!

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fairlyodd
Well, this is a great way to get the Steam store on to my computer.

------
jfi
"Now these points of data make a beautiful line and we're out of beta we're
releasing on time" ... my favorite video game song ever. Full lyrics here:
[http://www.lyricsera.com/513316-lyric-Valve-
Still+Alive+port...](http://www.lyricsera.com/513316-lyric-Valve-
Still+Alive+portal.html)

~~~
sp332
Put a spoiler alert on that link. The lyrics refer to events late in the game.

------
mkramlich
I installed Steam on my Mac, started download of Portal, then Steam crashed to
desktop. Upon restarting it prompted me for my root password so that it could
update itself. The combination of crashiness and needing my root password
earned it an immediate delete. I'll try again in a year or two.

~~~
zweben
I installed Steam on my Mac, started download of Portal. It saturated my 15
megabit internet connection for nearly the entire download. Portal launched
just fine and ran very smoothly at 1920x1200. I already beat portal on Xbox
360. Mac version is easily as good if not better.

------
herdrick
So, this is because it's an older game? Or are the going to be getting into
the virtual goods business?

~~~
stevejohnson
I would say it's a move to get new Steam users, particularly users with Macs.

~~~
ax0n
The "Free" part will work for me. Although I dual boot my Mac with Windows 7,
and I've always wanted to try Portal, I never really got into it. That will
change when I get home.

------
oomkiller
Note that the ending changed since we all first played it!

~~~
borism
how?

~~~
Deestan
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g7lgqS-yq88>

------
Cayenne
So it's free for Mac and Windows... what about Linux?

~~~
johnswamps
You can get the game without steam installed (though you do need to sign up
for an account on-line and you may need to give your CC info), so you may as
well "purchase" it now. Worst case you never get to play it and are out 5
minutes of your time.

~~~
JadeNB
> You can get the game without steam installed (though you do need to sign up
> for an account on-line and you may need to give your CC info), so you may as
> well "purchase" it now.

How does this work? I don't see anything but a big red button that downloads
Steam.

~~~
johnswamps
At what point in the process does this happen to you? You should be able to
add Portal to your cart, at which point it'll ask you to create an account.
After you've registered you can then checkout. It shouldn't ever force you
download steam.

And just so there's no misunderstanding, I didn't mean you can play the game
without the steam, I meant you can purchase games without steam.

~~~
JadeNB
Originally, I got the Big Red Button upon clicking on the provided link; but,
right now, the linked page is blank for me.

Anyway, I went ahead and downloaded the Steam client, so it's not a big deal.
I remember the original web-based preview (or rip-off?) of Portal quite
fondly; Lore Sjöberg linked to it somewhere from his vast empire.

------
zitterbewegung
This looks like a ploy to reward people for the mac beta.

~~~
MWinther
I'm guessing more like getting people to install Steam on their Macs. Worked
on me! _installing_

------
michaelbuckbee
I had some worries that it wouldn't work so hot, but it was decent playing on
my MBP.

~~~
megablast
Do I need steam, or can I just download the game?

Do I need to have internet access when I run the game?

I really don't like the new model of needing to know all this, a good reason I
gave up on games along time ago.

~~~
icegreentea
You need steam. You don't need internet access to run the game.

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swolchok
Link is getting Error 324 (empty response) for me, using Chrome on Linux.

~~~
crocowhile
same here. just hit reload a few times, it'll work.

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mkramlich
I'm making a note here, "Huge success."

EDIT: corrected the quote

~~~
davidalln
(ahem) the correct quote is "huge success"

------
tel
Free Mac play testing before releasing the entire platform?

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dmn001
good find. you need a steam account and steam installed though.

