It’s hard to talk about Portal games without spoiling them. However, it’s fair to say that a strong lineage carries a burden of expectation. Portal 2 rises to that burden with a combination of diverse content, expert craftsmanship, and brilliant writing.

Now that you’re basking in the Portal 2 afterglow, it’s probably time for a quick sucker punch. Sony just announced the cancellation of your non/denominational winter solstice celebration of choice. Ico, Shadow of the Colossus, and The Last Guardian, all of which were scheduled for holiday 2011, just fell off the calendar and into TBA. [...]

I was originally planning to review Costume Quest today, but Valve just announced something worth a brief delay. According to a press release, the PS3 will be the first home console with Steam integration, and the flagship title for the service will be none other than Portal 2. “The features shipping in the PS3 version [...]

There was a bunch of fancy hardware on display at this year’s E3. Sony continued aping the Wii with the Playstation Move. Microsoft debuted the motion-capturing Kinect, and Nintendo hopped on the theatrical 3D bandwagon with the 3DS. However, none of this hardware means anything without good software to back it up. Having already hit up the portable and downloadable titles, we’ll close this E3 summary week with console and PC games. Keep in mind that this includes Kirby: Epic Yarn, but somebody already covered that elsewhere. Everything else is here.

Overlord II is an improvement over the first game in every way. Gameplay is more varied, the writing is consistently funny, and decorating your dark Fortress has never been manlier. The improvements diminish the challenge somewhat, but who subjugates the strong, anyway?

The Wii’s $6 profit margin suddenly doesn’t seem so amazing because Sony has cut the PS3′s manufacturing costs by about $250. Evidently investors were impressed, because the software and hardware giant’s market value rose by over a percent once the announcement had been made.

Although Sony has not yet announced a corresponding price drop, it’s not unreasonable to hope the console will fall into the $400 range.