Portal Required Reading At Best College Ever!

Wabash College recently announced that it would be adding Valves popular puzzle game Portal to it’s syllabus of required “reading” materials, a list that includes famous works such as Gilgamesh, Aristotle's Politics, John Donne's poetry, Shakespeare's Hamlet, and the Tao Te Ching.

The following is a description of the class:

Enduring Questions is a required freshman seminar offered during the spring semester. It is devoted to engaging students with fundamental questions of humanity from multiple perspectives and fostering a sense of community. Each section of the course includes a small group (approximately 15) of students who consider together classic and contemporary works from multiple disciplines. In so doing, students confront what it means to be human and how we understand ourselves, our relationships, and our world.

The daily activity of the course most often involves discussion, and students complete multiple writing assignments for the course. As such, assessment of student performance emphasizes written and oral expression of ideas.

Students may not withdraw from the course. All students must pass the course to graduate from Wabash.

Portal sounds like a great choice for this class to us. We tried playing GameBoy during our college classes, and as a result we got a D-; looks like we were just born in the wrong era. To read more about how Portal got chosen check out TheBrainyGamer.

If you were to pick a list of games that were “required reading” what would they be?

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Check Out The Stupid Map I Made In Halo: Reach's Forgeworld

I just wrapped up two marathon days of playing Halo: Reach. In my over 20 hours of playing this week, I beat the campaign, played a ton of multiplayer, and messed around quite a bit in the new Forgeworld. Like many gamers, I didn't spend too much time in Halo 3's Forge. It wasn't the most user-friendly interface, and the opportunities for creativity were somewhat limited. Thankfully, Reach features a hugely improved Forge mode, complete with its own massive canvas named Forgeworld. Naturally, I immediately felt the need to turn that canvas into a really dumb battleground.

My creation was Rock Monster, a CTF map featuring dueling monsters composed mostly of giant stones. Up above, you can see a wide shot of the titans duking it out. Rock Monster on the left is heaving stones at...um, we'll just call him Dragon Mountain or something.

This is Rock Monster. The Red Team's flag is on top of his head. Sorry for the picture quality, I had to use my cell phone. We were playing on demo kits, so there was no way of saving direct screens from the game.

Red Team starts near the base of Rock Monster. Down near his legs, you can find rapidly respawning jetpacks to help out with the journey to Dragon Mountain. To get to the blue flag, they'll have to ascend these platforms until they enter the back of his mouth.

Once inside Rock Monster's mouth, they'll find a man cannon that propels them directly towards Dragon Mountain's open mouth (where the Blue flag is).

Things are a little tougher for the Red Team, because the trip will kill them if they don't ease the impact with a jetpack. However, Blue Team can still return the enemy flag here even if they die. The capture plate is directly where your dead body will fall if you do it wrong, so it's possible to sacrifice yourself and still earn a capture point.

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Guy Gets Hysterically Angry At Halo 3 Teammate

Halo 3's theater mode allows players to watch post-match gameplay footage to revisit strategies and gawk at memorable moments. As this YouTube video demonstrates, it's also a great way to torment your friends' lack of skill.

This video, posted by user LtMkilla, is definitely not safe for work, elementary schools, or anywhere else that frowns upon an unrelenting hail of F-bombs. It is absolutely hilarious, though.

(Please visit the site to view this media)

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Vikings Outraged (Kind Of) Over Exclusion Of Long Snapper In Madden

EA Sports' slogan "if it's in the game it's in the game" apparently doesn't apply to special teams long snappers. Though Madden NFL 11 supports full 53-man rosters, they often exclude the less glamorous specialists in favor of practice squad skill players. One NFL team has taken notice, and it doesn't sit well with many of the players.

Minnesota Vikings long snapper Cullen Loeffler has been on the team for seven years, but he has yet to appear in a Madden game. "I'm very disappointed that they overlooked one of the best players on the team," said Vikings superstar running back Adrian Peterson. "He's invaluable."

Loeffler isn't the only long snapper left out in the cold by developer EA Tiburon. Only one true long snapper is included in Madden NFL 11, Zak DeOssie of the New York Giants, but he'd probably rather not be. His long snapping rating? A slanderous 0 out of 100. The player currently listed as the Vikings long snapper in Madden is center John Sullivan, who said "I did long snap that one day at practice, but I did terrible." Apparently Madden ratings czar Donny Moore, who determines each team's depth chart in the game, thinks he can handle the job.

Vikings public relations director Bog Hagen believes something must be done to recognize these overlooked players. "I think it's a slap in the face to the profession of long snappers," he said."How can long snappers get in the Pro Bowl, yet not be in one of the topvideo games in America?"

When reached for comment, Loeffler said he doesn't even bother checking out Madden anymore. "I don't even play it, mainly for the reason I'm not in it," he admitted. "I feel disrespected." With 31 of 32 long snappers missing from the game, they've created a quasi-support group to deal with the pain of being left out. "It's brought us together, we've kind of formed a band of brothers since we've been disrespected for so long," Loeffler joked. 

EA Tiburon's exclusionary policy toward long snappers has created yetanother schism in the Vikings locker room, which is no strangerto controversy. While some teammates have come to Loeffler's defense, other haveused it as yet another tool to alienate the special teamers. Three-time Pro Bowl defensive tackle Pat Williams loves to give Loeffler a hard time about it. "[He] was laughing at me all day long yesterday for not beingin the game," Loeffler admits. "He said I don't even exist."

The team's grey bearded gunslinger Brett Favre, who worked with EA Tiburon when he appeared on the cover of Madden NFL 09, may be in on the conspiracy.  "I think it probably makes the game better," said the all-time NFL leader in touchdowns/interceptions. "Who the f*** is Cullen Loeffler?"

With the help of punter Chris Kluwe, who calls himself "Chris Warcraft" in the third person, we polled the Vikings, and the controversy has the team split down the middle. Here's what they had to say:

Set The Long Snappers Free Camp
Kevin Williams – "I think it's a travesty, you should always have the snapper in the game."

Sidney Rice – "That's messed up.Madden's supposed to be for everyone in the league; it's not right tobe missing a person. Handle that!"

Percy Harvin – "It's a total disrespect to long snappers."

E.J. Henderson – "Tragedy."

Antoine Winfield – "That's disappointing and disrespectful."

Visanthe Shiancoe – "Why the hell isn't he in there?  ...for real, why not?"

Ray Edwards – "That's f***ed up!"

Ryan Longwell – "I actually returned the game once I got home and found out, that's how much [Cullen] means to me."

Chris Kluwe – "As an avid gamer, it wrenches my heartstrings to seethis unfortunate lack of respect for one of the best snappers in thebusiness. Also, [EA] should bump my stats up."

Rhys Lloyd – "I think it's a disgrace, when wetalk about realism in the game, that we don't have the real snapper andholder (Tarvaris Jackson is currently the holder) in the game. CullenLoeffler is a fantastic human being. Boom."

Who Cares Camp
Jared Allen – "I do NOT care."

Steve Hutchinson – "I DO not CARE."

Pat Williams – "I feel good about that, that's the greatest thing I've heard all day."

ChadGreenway – "I feel like, as a snapper, he should be grateful to be inan NFL organization, so he should shut his mouth and not worry about avideo game."

Ben Leber – "I think it's appropriate. I don't think he deserves to be in there. I'm not even sure he's a human being."

Jim Kleinsasser – "Awesome!"

Cullen Loeffler – "Seems like just another day at the office."

Will EA Sports do the right thing and start including the the long-overlooked long snappers in future roster updates? We've reached out to them for comment and will update the story when they respond.

Content manager Matt Bertz contributed to this report.

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City Of Heroes: Going Rogue Giveaway

Last week, NCSoft launched Going Rogue, the second expansion pack for their superhero MMO City of Heroes. I'm a big fan of the game and this latest add-on, so I'm pleased to announce that we'll be giving away 10 copies of the full City of Heroes package. Check below for details on how to win a ticket to Paragon City!

For your chance to win, you need to leave a comment on this story telling us your best idea for a superhero -- give us his or her name, powers, and, heck, even a brief origin story if you're feeling ambitious. Here's all it takes:

1. Log in to your Game Informer account and leave a comment on this story with the name and superpower of your hero. Do so by 12:00 a.m. CST tonight (i.e. midnight). Be sure to leave your Twitter name in the comment as well!

2. Around midnight, I'll dig through the entries and pick out 10 winners. I'll update this post with the winners and their entries tomorrow.

3. You'll receive a Twitter DM from the @gameinformer account with your code if you're a winner.

Winners will receive a download code that will give you access City of Heroes: Going Rogue as well as the original City of Heroes and City of Villains. The code will also provide a month of game time and a bunch of bonus items.

Remember that in addition to leaving a comment, you'll need to be following our @gameinformer account on Twitter in order to receive the DM with your prize! Good luck!

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Sony Exploring Own Version Of EA�s Online Pass

A variety of publishers have explored ways to get money from the used-games market, and Sony could be among them. In an interview with GamesIndustry, Sony’s European president, Andrew House, says that Sony supports backs publisher efforts to recoup money by charging players who don’t have a code included with new games.

"On the principle of making online portions of the game available or unlocked from the disc-based release for a fee, we're broadly supportive of that," House said. "And we're exploring actively the same option for our own content," he added.

While Sony might be flirting with the idea of an EA Sports-style Online Pass, House says that flat-out charging for online on a game-by-game basis doesn’t line up with PlayStation’s business model.

"In terms of just a charge for basic online play, that's something that we have to talk about a lot more and we struggle with a little bit because we feel very vindicated and base a lot of the success of PSN today – a 70 per cent connection rate across consoles – on the fact that we've removed that major initial barrier to entry."

Check out GamesIndustry for the entire interview here.

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LittleBigPlanet Will Probably Have Fully 3D Gameplay In The Future

LittleBigPlanet 2 might be sticking with 2D gameplay, but according to Media Molecule co-creator Alex Evans, the first LBP was originally a completely 3D game -- and the series will probably go that way in the future as well.
Speaking with Joystiq, Evans revealed that the original version of LittleBigPlanet had full 3D depth and moving cameras, but that gameplay was slowly scaled back due to the difficulty of creating content without any restrictions. "It's really unconstrained in 3D. It's really hard -- I mean creatively unconstrained, it's really difficult to have something to push off...We found our level designers wasted tons of time in 3D land, so we iteratively reduced it, first of all we reduced the scope, then we added the layers, and with each restriction we did, it improved the quality."
Evans went on to say that he is "...assuming at some point we will go 3D," and that the problem holding Media Molecule back at this point is a design one, not a technical limitation. "...I'd love to see a fully-3D creation game. I'm not saying it's impossible, I'm saying we haven't cracked it yet."

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