If you live near Brooklyn or Denver, get ready to ROCK for charity.

F?nde Razor is a charity event where gamers gather to play Guitar Hero and Rock Band on huge screens, to drink, and oh yeah, to give the joy of videogames to sick children around the world. 100% of the money raised goes to Child's Play.

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Behold! The grand prizes of this year's F?nde Razor, two life-sized plush Weighted Companion Cubes. Each of the two cubes will be awarded to one test subject in each F?nde Razor facility.

This year there are two events: one at Barcade in Brooklyn, NY, the other at The Walnut Room in Denver, CO. Hit the F?nde Razor site for details and a picture of the CCs.

The two of them discuss some of the groundbreaking aspects of Portal such as the remarkable length and how it just plain makes players happy.. In a three part series, there are more words than the entire script of Portal, but it's an interesting read:

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The secret of "Portal"'s success, you see, is that it may well be a 2D game in 3D clothing. Not in terms of how it's actually designed, but in terms of the values in the design: its spartan life. "Portal" is a reminder that a three-dimensional game can be simple. It's a refinement of what "P.N. 03" ? the GameCube game that looked like a 3D action game, played like a shmup ? was designed to express. It's a victory for those like me who enjoyed "Crackdown" because ? not despite ? its neglect of the "GTA"-style side missions that clutter so many open-world games. Ultimately, it's a reclamation of 2D game design values. Keep the concept to a simple thing and do that thing right.

Just beware: to keep the argument interesting, the authors had to consume some pretty serious amounts of Haterade.

Valve has posted the results of their user serveys on the Steam website.

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Episode Two includes a reporting mechanism which tells us details about how people are playing the game. We're sharing the data we collect because we think people will find it interesting, and because we expect to spot emergent problems earlier, and ultimately build better products and experiences as a result.

These statistics show how long players took to complete Episode Two, average deaths per map, which advanced rendering options were enabled, and a whole lot more. They even have color-coded "topographical" maps that show where in the map most players died.

Unfortunately, there doesn't appear to be any Portal-specific data.

Steam stats page: http://steampowered.com/v/index.php?area=stats
Episode Two gameplay stats: http://steampowered.com/status/ep2/ep2_stats.php
Results of Steam hardware survey: http://www.steampowered.com/status/survey.html

Featuring the four contestants from the October Mapping Contest, the pack has got a ton of gameplay in store for you. If you're looking to play some custom content and want it all together, here's the best place to start.

Get the goods here.

Any problems can be reported in the comments here, or PMed directly to me. Good luck, and have fun!

In Valve's 9 November status update, they mentioned that little SDK business, as well as providing information and some pictures.

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Here's a sneak peek at the plush Weighted Companion Cube coming soon to the Valve Store. Your rear-view mirror will want a pair of companions, too.

I'm disappointed they're not actually cubes, but Lorithad says he'll be buying one. I still prefer the more puzzling solution to this problem.