So Valve Software’s latest addition to the gaming universe isn’t Half-Life 3, but it’s intriguing nonetheless: it’s a Portal-themed table for Zen Pinball, co-developed by Valve and the good folks over at Zen Studios.
The table will be out in the week of May 25, and cost $2.99 (R36) on PC and consoles, and $1.99 (R24) on Android and iOS. That’s just slightly more than the cost of a cup of coffee – not too bad a price to pay to see Chell, GLaDOS and the gang again doing fun stuff with physics, albeit in a non-FPS setting.
What I’m most looking forward to is seeing how, exactly, Zen Studios will make use of the brilliant portal technology of the games that lets you make a doorway between two points by essentially folding space. You know, the thing that scientists think wormholes do. It’s beyond cool.
Zen Studios has put out a bunch of screenshots of the table, but unfortunately no video. The screens look nice and crisp, though, and provide a glimmer of hope that the Valve-Zen collaboration will deliver a pinball table worth playing over and over again.
I’m definitely going to be picking this up at the end of the month. It’s not a new Portal game per se, and it’s certainly not Half-Life 3, but it’s at least something from Valve. Sort of.
And who knows, maybe it’s a subtle hint that some other Portal project is in the works. One can only hope.
[Source & Images – Zen Pinball blog]
