Got Nvidia? Get a Slice of Portal.
By Steve on Wednesday, January 9th, 2008 at 5:18 PM PST In Computer, Game Companies, Game Platforms, Games, Half-Life, Valve
Got Nvidia hardware? Still haven’t checked out Valve’s critically acclaimed 3D shooter inspired puzzle-type game Portal? Here’s your chance at an exclusive(?) extended demo of sorts.
Nvidia and Valve have teamed up to bring Nvidia powered hardware owners a “special version” of the game (free of charge) they are dubbing Portal First Slice. Straight from Steam:
Effective immediately, all NVIDIA gamers may receive a free copy of Portal: First Slice, a special version of the award-winning new game from Valve, by visiting www.steamgames.com/nvidia and “Taking the test.” Steam will then auto-detect the presence of NVIDIA hardware and make Portal: First Slice available immediately, free of charge. To make it easy for all NVIDIA customers to redeem this offer, a link to the Steam offer will also be included in all NVIDIA drivers.
Of course, this does require one to 1. own some type of Nvidia hardware (video card = safe bet) and 2. have the Steam client installed with an account setup. While I doubt non-Nvidia hardware owners will feel too left out, it does seem kind of silly (at this point) to see Nvidia pimp itself in this way. And sorry Doug, it’s not exactly impressive these days to learn that Nvidia hardware is on more machines than any other gpu (not that there’s alot of competition to pick from). I think Nvidia’s dominance in 2007 pretty much speaks for itself.
Marketing hubbub aside, this is still a nice way to inspire gamers to investigate what Portal is all about. Seriously though, if you haven’t checked Portal out by now…
Via Steam
Awesome! I now love my Nvidia card!
So.. what’s so special about this version? I tried installing it on my account that already had the full version and no game was added (although I went through all of the dialogs successfully).
I got to the checkbox part of it and was about to install when I realized that it might somehow ruin my Portal retail savegames. So I abandoned the install. Now it doesn’t show up under my applicable games lists.
I guess you have to committ to installing it from the get-go - at least for full version owners. I’m not about to mess with my full version install to find out, honestly.
i commited to the install but it neva showed up, btw got the full game is this a demo?
This is nothing but a very short demo of the full version of Portal which itself is quite short to begin with. In Valve’s typical, exaggerated marketing-speak this “extended” demo is nothing but the first four maps of Portal and is only about 10 minutes of gameplay. Of course since Valve charges $30 to play TF2 and it only has two more maps than the number in this “extended” demo, by that stingy standard, this demo is “extended” and quite a bargain.
Of course if Valve wasn’t run by a bunch of money-grubbing pricks, the entire Orange box would have real demos that are truely free to all consumers (not just those with a certain brand of video card) and that have significant playable content as demos from other game companies do.