A Problematic Portal Port Report

As of today, Steam is now available for Mac. And to celebrate this, Valve are giving away their much-beloved puzzle-shooter Portal so any Mac user can try it out. So the question on everyone's mind is this: how is Portal on Mac?

Couldn't tell you. Not only did it take me entirely too long to find the Steam client download from the Steam website, but I haven't been able to get Portal to install. This could be because Valve's servers are getting slammed with tens of thousands of requests (if not more) by people all trying to download the same five gigabyte file. This is not at all surprising, not is it completely unexpected. Valve launches are frequently a little wonky, but give it a week and all will be well.

That said, there are 64 launch titles for the Mac version of Steam, so I went about downloading the other eight that I happen to already own--almost all of them indie or casual titles. And so far everything is performing amicably. There are a couple points of frustration--the first being titles that are available for Mac but that haven't been made available on Steam yet, notably Pop Cap's Plants vs. Zombies (which is odd, since it's one of their more popular titles, and since Chuzzle and Peggle are available). Steam plans to make available another batch of games every Wednesday, so I expect we'll see that one soon enough.

The second point of frustration involves a game that is available for Mac and that I own the license to, but is not available for me to install--Civilization IV. This is most likely a bug, which means it should be fixed before Wednesday. In the meantime, one of the attempts to download Portal will be successful, at which point I'll take an hour to re-battle GLaDOS and be ready to report my findings. And until then, Peggle looks great and plays pretty well.

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Angels Are Bulletproof, I Take It

I was not expecting to like this. Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails quit his band after twenty years to start a side project with his new wife.

Was not expecting to like it at all.

Now that I've heard a song, my mind is changed. The music is unmistakably Trent. Most of the textures are straight out of his expanded catalog of musical noise, but the musical sensibilities bear an uncanny resemblance to the simple-yet-haunting piano melodies that show up in any number of NIN songs (off the top of my head, Right Where It Belongs, The Frail, and the bridge from With Teeth).

Additionally, it turns out Mariqueen Maandig (the new Mrs. Reznor) has one hell of a voice, and her introspective musings are an elegant match for the ambient soundscapes, much more so than Reznor's own anthemic wailings. Reznor's vocals are testosterone laden, angsty, and often poignant and intimate, but they're rarely introspective, and never elegant.

Anyway, if you're curious, check out some new music from How To Destroy Angels. Additionally, check their website and Twitter feed for updates. The new song, titled A Drowning, is long (7 minutes) and fairly down-tempo, but the clips on their site hint that the material they're working on is going to be a bit harder-rocking and challenging than this bit of introductory fare.

And while I certainly miss NIN, this is on pace to turn out to be a suitable replacement.

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