It’s me, live with it

Portal’s ending video here.

Here’s the lyrics:

Test Assessment Report

STILL ALIVE

Enjoy, sing along.

Have you ever heard the anime ‘Vampire Knights‘? No? Read about it here, I’ll wait. 

Done? Good, then we can start.

Now, one of the ending song in this anime is titled ‘Still Doll‘, by Kanon Wakeshima. She released the single of the song just last month, and I finally got a copy of it. I never heard this song before, everytime I watch anime, I skip them through.

This Single contains three songs, Still doll, Kuroi Torikago, and Still doll orgel version.

The first one, ‘Still doll’, is a very goth-y music. The first time I played it, the floor shakes. This song is filled with a hell lot of bass notes, but they aren’t overdone, it gives the song the goth-y atmosphere it needed. Kanon’s voice is very… cute, she somehow reminds me of Judy and Mary’s Yuki, and Chatmonchy’s vocalist, whom I don’t remember the name. Anyway, I think this song is great. It has beautiful composition. I especially like the great contrast between all those cello and contrabass’s bass note and Kanon’s high-pitched vocal. They are very contrasted each other, but they make great combination.

The second track, ‘Kuroi Torikago’, means ‘Black Birdcage’. This track has faster beat than the previous one, giving it more energetic feels. Instead of a lot of  low notes from cello and contrabass, this track is filled with violin sounds, which makes it very elegant. And in this track, she sings more, so you can hear her cute voice even more. Yet it still hasn’t leave the goth-y domain, you can stil feel the gothic, yet grand atmosphere just by listening to it.

The last one is pretty much a bonus track, it is ‘Still Doll’, played using orgel-ish instrument. My comment about this one? This will be my ringtone. I like it even more than chakushin ari’s ringtone.

Overall, I like this single. Honestly, I never heard this song before, everytime I watch anime, I skip them through. I didn’t notice it until I read about it while reading Vampire Knight’s review. And when I searched for it, I found the cover above. My first thought was ‘Oh great, gothic-loli… Ah, well, at least she’s cute…’ But after I listened the first 20 seconds of the first tracks, ‘Dang, this is great!’ Is what I said. I think that wraps my conclusion. It maybe underrated , But this is a great single, get it.

Seriously, and don’t forget to download the cover. 

So, around noon yesterday, I got my hands a copy of Portal. Around 3 o’ clock, I finished it. Only around three hours, which is about a third of average first-person shooter length. But I really enjoyed it.

Let’s start with the graphics. Portal doesn’t provide any shocking, emblazing graphics like crysis, but it is not bad at all. Portal uses the same engine that powers Half Life 2 and its two episodes, and Team Fortress. No wonder the graphics looks very Half Life-y. Solid surface, shiny weapons, those kinds of things. But like I said, the graphics is not bad. I can see some HDR working its magic of transforming what used to be a plain, dull object into a shiny, pretty one.

The only weapon in this game looks very much like Half Life 2’s gravity gun, which it might actually be based on. And again, thanks to HDR, it looks nice. Being the only weapon in a game, the Portal gun needs to be great. And I’m happy to say, It is great.

This is a first-person shooter that isn’t focused on killing enemies, but on solving puzzle. Yes, you do find some enemies, and there is a boss battle, but that is only about 5-10% of the whole game. But since you don’t have any ‘real’ weapon, killing them becomes a puzzle itself. But, i’ll tell you this, the whole gameplay is very fun, and every puzzle you solve is satisfying by itself.

The story, however, is not going to win any awards. You play as a woman who somehow ended up as  a test subject in Aperture Science. You were given a portal gun as well as a spring-shoes-thingy to get trough some test levels. After that, you try to escape from the facility. Nothing great abouit the plot. But there is a very entertaining part of the game, the GlaDOS, I’m not going to tell you what that is, you’re going to have to play it yourself.

Now we’ll talk about the portal system. It pretty much work the way you expected, portal A goes here, portal B goes there, and they connect each other. whatever goes into portal A will come out of portal B, retaining the momentum they have when entering. This means that if you jump from a hundred feet high into a portal, you will be launched out of the next portal. This gives variety to the puzzle-solving experience.

Overall, I really think this is a very good game, eventhough it is short, every single minute you spend playing this game is well spent and very fun.

One last thing : The cake is a lie!