Epic just recently announced that they’re never releasing it outside of their store. They’re the exclusive publisher, so they have distribution rights, and their CEO Tim Sweeney is determined to snub his nose at Steam, even though Alan Wake 2 still hasn’t earned back its production costs. It’s a complete flop, but they won’t extend to the Steam market to help sales.

Unlike other games, where publishers sign exclusivity contracts with Epic Games for a certain time period, Alan Wake 2 was actually published by Epic Games, meaning that Epic Games gets to decide what systems the game releases on. So it’s not coming to Steam. Which means I’ll never get to play it, because I’m never giving a penny to that awful store of theirs.

The plots of Portal 2 singleplayer, co-op, and PTI are very “distant” from anything happening with Half-Life.

From what I understand (it’s been a while since I read up on the lore), Portal 1 and 2 take place after the Combine invasion of Earth, shortly after the first Half-Life game. That’s why Aperture Science is almost completely devoid of life, minus the personality cores that are attempting to continue running things. It’s because of the resonance cascade incident at Black Mesa that Aperture Science is now mostly defunct, and Chell is trapped as a lab rat at GLaDOS’ mercy.

So the Portal series is pretty reliant on Half-Life’s story to justify their plot, even if it’s never directly addressed in the game itself.

This is actually my second Steam Deck. I bought the original LCD-screen one back when they were first announced, but they had a nasty habit of the bumper buttons (L1 and R1) breaking. Sure enough my L1 button broke and I just never sent it back to get it fixed. I’ve just been re-mapping that button to the L2 (trigger) button instead.

Recently, my wife expressed interest in having a Steam Deck (she almost bought her own when they first came out), and she claimed she was perfectly content taking my old one, since she doesn’t game as much as me anyway. So I bought a fancy new HDR OLED-screen Steam Deck. It’s much more responsive than my first one. And the bumper buttons work! I forgot how nice it is to just play a game without re-mapping buttons first.

I’m just an enthusiastic gamer, raving about some of the games I’ve enjoyed. But I’m sure the developers of this game will be glad to hear that you’re interested.

I have not; although I have been warned that it’s not at all what it appears to be and that I should go into it blind for the best experience. So I’m assuming it’s going to be something like MiSide. It’s definitely on my list of games to play!