
Nvidia and Valve have teamed up to offer gamers a late Christmas present: an extended version of the Portal demo, plus a few oldies, but goodies, including Half Life 2: The Lost Coast and Half Life 2 Deathmatch.
The new downloadable pack, available at this address, is one of Valve's pleasant surprises for the debut of 2008. While the end of last year was literally divine from gamers' point of view (think of Crysis, COD4, Hellgate: London, Mass Effect, Halo 3, BioShock...do I need to count more? oh, let's not forget the Orange Box, that too...), this year seems a bit dry, at least until Q3, when Metal Gear Solid 4 launches. As usual, Valve thought at sweetening things up for us and came with this irresistible offer that no one care skip.
Well, actually, almost no one, since you'll need an Nvidia graphics card to download and run the games. The aforementioned section of Steampowered.com scans your hardware and checks whether you have a greenish GPU plugged-in. If you do, only then you'll be able to grab the extended Portal demo (dubbed "First Slice"). Sorry ATI fans, access through the Portal is denied.
For happy Nvidia video card-owners Christmas prolongs with Half Life 2 Deathmatch, Half Life 2: The Lost Coast (a tech demo released a year after HL 2) and Peggle Extreme. Valve and the Sunnyvale, CA-based GPU manufacturer have also announced that they will extend their partnership in the future, with sponsorships for Valve's Counter-Strike and Team Fortress 2 events.




