Okay, first the Travis update.

I was thinking that it may be a good idea to explain why Travis would want to go to China of all places to get his surgery done (my apologies if I just offended any Chinese people --- I didn't mean to). This page should make it clear. There's a huge amount of stem cell research going on over there, and since it's been outlawed in the U.S., he decided that a country that has experience with it might be a good place to start. (Well, it's not exactly "outlawed" per say, but it's not approved by the Food and Drug Administration, which pretty much means it's not happening.)

Thanks again to all of you who read my first post and donated, as well. :) If you missed it, you can check it out here.



Okay, now for some game discussion. About a week and a half ago, I went up to F.Y.E., my favorite place in the world, and they had one --- ONE --- copy of the Orange Box for the PS3 in stock. New, sealed, $30. I didn't pass that up. The Orange Box was one of the two games that I knew I'd miss playing once I sold my 360 (the other being Gears of War), and although I have a laptop that can run all the games in the collection, I can't turn everything all the way up, and I'm also more of a console gamer. Although I was really excited that I got this game really cheap, I was also a little worried after hearing all the horror stories about the PS3 version being nearly unplayable, especially during Portal. So I popped the game in and gave all of the offerings a go, and I'm pleased to say I haven't encountered a single problem so far.

One of the things I noticed immediately was the lack of rumble. I guess I'm not too surprised, seeing as how Valve seems to hate the PS3 so much, but I was still kinda bummed that an update hadn't introduced the feature into the game by this point. The loading times are a bit longer than the 360 version, I will admit, which makes me mad that there was a mandatory install (of a little over 500mb) before I could play. I'm all for installations if they make the game play better, but if it doesn't do anything or somehow makes the game play worse in some way, then it shouldn't be there at all. But the loading times weren't much longer, and they were easy to look past once the game started up again.

I was also pleasantly surprised to learn that there's a feature in the PS3 version that's completely absent from the 360 version --- The ability to quicksave, much like the PC version. By holding the Start button in for just over a second, you can quicksave your game right where you're standing without going into any of the menus. This is something I absolutely abuse in PC Valve games, and I was extremely happy to see it in the PS3 version. Does anyone know if they added this to the 360 version through an update? Just curious.

Another thing I noticed was the lack of any framerate drops. I had heard that this game jerked around like a typical, horrible port of a game (and it was ported by EA), but I haven't seen any of this thus far. None at all. Maybe that last update fixed that, even though that wasn't in the official features release statement by EA or Valve. Now, I don't know about the lag in Team Fortress 2 --- I didn't even bother to start that game up. I am NOT a Team Fortress 2 person, so I won't be playing that at all for the time being. If anyone on here wants to play, I'm sure it'd be a lot more fun with people I actually know.

An EA port done right? Blasphemy! But it seems like that's the case. If you're a PS3 owner and want to play the Orange Box (and who wouldn't, honestly?), have no fear in picking this version up. The original $60 was an amazing deal for everything you get in the package, but $30, which seems to be the standard price for this version now? That's obscene. In a good way.