In my usual vein of being hopelessly uncool and highlighting things a year later that probably everyone has already heard of, I just discovered a crazy good Portal 2 machinima / animation / music video by a very talented Youtuber named Harry101UK.
It’s entitled, If I Were A Core:
(It does contain some spoilers for the story of Portal 2, in somewhat disjointed form that you’d probably won’t be able to piece together wholesale if you haven’t played the story through, but bah, you should watch it anyway and then take it as inspiration to finish the bloody game.
Or buy it, then finish if you’re even more hopelessly uncool than me.)
And for anyone that hasn’t heard the song it parodies, Beyoncé Knowles’ If I Were a Boy, you should go watch the music video of it too.
Especially if you’re interested in gender issues and role reversal like many recent debates about perceived sexism in games have revealed many gamers to be.
(The latest controversy appears to be some very hasty and curt ending comments from Blizzard in an interview running out of time, about hypersexualized female outfit designs in MOBAs, which can either be construed as demonstrating the fairly male-centered mindset and possibly chauvinistic culture that may be part of their company…
…or being hopelessly taken out of context when the poor guy was just trying to end the interview quickly in response to the PR people while the other guy was hounding him like a paparazzi intent on getting something juicy.)
And when you’re done reflecting on the differences between boys and girls and coming to your own opinion about them, you can pop back to Harry101UK to check out his team’s submission for the annual Saxxy awards, a film competition run by Valve for films made in their Source Filmmaker program.
Which is a ridiculously GOOD Team Fortress 2 piece, entitled Lil Guardian Pyro, that is probably up to Pixar standards.
(Oh, and this is actually recent. Uploaded a week ago or so.)
Why I Game 