In Round 1 of our Vs. Mode exchange with MTV News reporter Stephen Totilo (also featured on his blog Multiplayer) on Valve Software's Portal, Totilo opened with a rare business analysis of why publishers would rather seek the next BioShock than the next Portal, then volunteered three lessons that developers should absorb from the latter game. As instructed, we followed suit, but distilled our assessment of Portal to a single phrase: Portal is a triumph of minimalism. In today's Round 2, Totilo takes issue with our lavish praise of Portal's final section; prompting us to put large chunks of his post under the microscope. WARNING: SPOILERS ABOUND--BEWARE. Some excerpts:

Stephen Totilo: About the final boss: story and boss battle converge smoothly in this game, as I've stated. And while I can't find much to fault with this game, I'm surprised to see you say that the final encounter in Portal is "rivaling 'Metal Gear Solid 3's sniper duel with The End for my favorite boss fight of all time." That's not praise I was expecting. That good? Really? It couldn't be because of the gameplay. Even though I'm far less enamored of The End confrontation than many others, I recognize the value it provided in letting players try different take-down strategies. Fighting GLaDOS doesn't. You have to remove her orbs. Give her the HAL 9000 treatment. De-evolve her. And fry her. And she's dead. So what drew you in?

N'Gai Croal: By the way, you still haven't managed to convince me that there's a story in Portal. The only thing that we know is true is what Chell we did--GLaDOS, after all, is far too unreliable to trust anything she says--so if that amounts to Portal having a story, what then of Tetris, Bejewelled and Lumines? As for the cake being real, that certainly wasn't Chell's our POV. Who are you going to trust--GLaDOS or your lying eyes?

To read Round 2 of Vs. Mode in its entirety, click on the link below.

We were curious to see how Level Up's readership would respond to Darren Pai's November 5th guest post on the wants and needs of what we termed the 'hardcasual' gamer. As Pai put it in his original email to us:

It seems that games for "hardcore" gamers make the assumption that you have large blocks of time to sit in front of a console. So-called "casual" games can be entertaining for short periods of time, but that's not why I play video games. I want the presentation, the action, the experience of a "big" game. Gamers like myself don't want casual games, we want that hardcore gaming experience redesigned to reflect the way we live.

Pai then went on to offer a list of complaints and possible solutions. We obviously can't share any of our correspondence or conversations with industry figures on this topic, but we do know that at least two top executives at major publishers forwarded Pai's post to people they felt should consider his suggestions. As for our readership, the response was varied. Some, like full-time law student Jomolungma, were sympathetic, writing:

While I enjoy my DS games like Picross, and play Scrabble and WordJong on the PC, I really get the most enjoyment out of the hardcore FPS action games I fell in love with in and after college, games like Wolfenstein and Doom and Quake and Half-Life and Rainbow Six. In order to get that same kind of enjoyable gaming experience in small chunks of time I absolutely must play games that allow for unlimited quicksaves (not unlimited slots, just unlimited number of times you can hit save). Most recently I got a tremendous thrill out of Bioshock and the Orange Box. Those games allowed me to play at my pace and provided really short intense moments that I could enjoy at my own pace. I was also able to complete them in a relatively short time because the story line was not 40 hours long.

To read this installment of "It Came From the Comments" in its entirety, click on the link below.

1. ALL...over the place: see the review scores for Assassin's Creed
2. OUR...must-have game of the year, still just out of reach 
3. HOW...appropriate: Mario's appeal transcends Red and Blue America
4. VSM...Microsoft plays Switzerland in Silicon Knights-Epic Games battle
5. $$$...Five indie game concepts, funded by Kongregate
6. RND...Protest politics meets the sedate world of bridge