Portal is a single-player first-person action/puzzle video game developed by Valve Corporation. The game was released in a bundle package called The Orange Box for Microsoft Windows and Xbox 360 on October 9, 2007, and for the PlayStation 3 on December 11, 2007. The Windows version of the game is also available for download separately through Valve's content delivery system, Steam and was released as a standalone retail product on April 9, 2008. The game consists primarily of a series of puzzles that must be solved by teleporting the player's character and other simple objects using the Portal Gun, a unit that can create an inter-spatial portal between flat planes. The player character is challenged by an AI named "GLaDOS" to complete each puzzle using the Portal Gun with the promise of receiving cake when all the puzzles are completed. The unusual physics allowed by the portal gun are the emphasis of this game, and are an extension of a similar portal concept in Narbacular Drop. Portal has been acclaimed as one of the most original games in 2007 despite being comparatively short in length. The game has received praise for its unique gameplay and darkly humorous story, created with the assistance of Erik Wolpaw and Chet Faliszek of "Old Man Murray" fame. It is also revered for the character of GLaDOS, voiced by Ellen McLain in the English version, and the final credits song "Still Alive" written by Jonathan Coulton for the game.
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_______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries:
1687:
The Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica by Isaac Newton was first published, describing his laws of motion and his law of universal gravitation. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophi%C3%A6_Naturalis_Principia_Mathematica
1946:
Named after Bikini Atoll, the site of the nuclear weapons test Operation Crossroads in the Marshall Islands, the modern bikini was introduced at a fashion show in Paris. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/bikini
1950:
The Israeli Knesset enacted the Law of Return, granting Jews around the world the right to migrate to and settle in Israel and gain citizenship. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_Return
1996:
A cloned sheep named Dolly, the first mammal to have been successfully cloned from an adult cell, was born at the Roslin Institute in Midlothian, Scotland near Edinburgh. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolly_%28sheep%29
2004:
Indonesia held its first direct presidential elections; Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono would later be elected president during the second round of the elections on September 20. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indonesian_presidential_election%2C_2004
_____________________________ Wiktionary's word of the day:
progenitor (n): 1. Any of a person's direct ancestors; an individual from whom one or more people are descended.
2. A predecessor of something. 3. Someone who originates or founds something http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/progenitor
___________________________ Wikiquote quote of the day:
Take a commonplace, clean it and polish it, light it so that it produces the same effect of youth and freshness and originality and spontaneity as it did originally, and you have done a poet’s job. The rest is literature. --Jean Cocteau http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Jean_Cocteau