***This post is practically spoiler free***

For everyone who hasn't heard already, the people who preloaded the Orange Box had a "small" glitch when you played Portal, there was no voice track for GLaDOS, the computer that talks to you through the testings. Now for everyone who hasn't played Portal yet, STOP FAILING SO MUCH AND GO FRIGGIN" PLAY IT, but, on a point more relevant to my post, you have no idea how much it detracts from the game. Portal is game built on a mind bending puzzle scheme and a very, very quirky sense of humor. Without GLaDOS' voice there, the game feels very barren and unsettling, which makes the goofy parts (i.e. the companion cube, the cake room, and the comedic ending "video") very jarring.

Well, I was one of those unfortunate/overexcited people who preloaded the Orange Box, and, not only played it on its release (2 a.m. my time), played through its entirety. So through the game's short but rewarding story, I trotted along and just thought the game was trying to mimic the desolate, post-apocalyptic feeling of HL2. Then, I got to the end, and was very puzzled by it's sudden shift from gloomy to flat out silly. I still found it funny, but it felt out of place.

So when I found out about that I had played through the game without the most important part (minus the portal gun), I had to play through it again. So after spending 1 1/2 hours last night retreading through the same material I had already played I can safely say that it was totally worth it. GlaDOS is f*cking hilarious and I don't even know the number of times I laughed after she said something. If I had counted, that would have been kind of weird. Who counts the number times they laugh??

Rhetorical question aside, I wish that Valve didn't drop the ball and give out incomplete version of their game to people. Yes, I know, the remedied the problem within the 24 hours of releasing it, but it still sucks that they had to fix it. There's probably one person out there who lives in a cave with internet access, who doesn't really use their computer that often, who happened to preload Portal and play through it on release night, and will never what they are missing out on. And with that I give Valve this: