That’s right, Valve is planning on releasing a special edition bundle-combo-job, that will enable certain levels within Portal 2 to work with a motion controller. But here’s the catch: the controller in question is the new shiny PC only ‘Razer Hydra’. If I’m honest, I had no idea this thing even existed till now (don’t worry I’ll give myself a slap round the head), and from what I gather the ‘Hydra’ is a motion controller similar to the Playstation Move, but like the Wii’s controller Hydra requires no camera. Instead it uses some sort of magnetic wizardry (never was my strong subject) to accomplish super accurate tracking for all those gamers with a bit of cash to splash.
So far the tech is receiving quite a lot of praise, and the idea of waving our arms about in the test chambers of Aperture science is intriguing. However the other half of the catch is that there is no word on whether Portal 2 will be integrating Move or Kinect support for the benefit of the console crowd, so in many ways this is kinda rubbish news for a lot of people. Yikes.
I always get annoyed when you hear how one platform will be getting a ‘better’ version of a title over another, or how exclusive extra content is being pumped into ‘XXXXXX’s’ machine while the other ones are ignored.
Obviously Valve could be working on Move and Kinect support, and if we’re honest Microsoft and Sony are pushing so hard for motion gaming right now it’d be hilarious if they didn’t get any support from Valve. On the brighter side of things, Portal 2 is shaping up to be mind boggling eye candy. It looks utterly awesome, and it was voted as the most anticipated title of 2011 at last year’s (it feels strange saying that…) VGA’s, so don’t fret, the game will still be awesome for everyone.
Hopefully there will be more news on Portal 2’s flirting with motion control soon, stay tuned.
