Getting excited

Just finished reading an article that Valve will not showcase Portal 2 at E3 this year, instead opting for a "surprise."
If it's Left 4 Dead 3 I will be pissed.
Hey, I love Left 4 Dead, it's one of those games that my wife and I can lose hours in together slaughtering the hordes while preparing our minds and coordinations for the upcoming zombie apocalypse (oh it's happening).
It's just that I've had enough of that ride.
It's like that kid you take to Six Flags that wants to keep riding the same ride again and again, not caring that it takes over an hour from the moment you get in line until you get off the ride. They love watching the cartoons in between while you are stuck there holding the water, personal items and everything else on sore feet that scream for a bench and a bucket of ice water all the while wanting to ride the raging rapids just to cool down.
That's how I feel about the Left 4 Dead franchise. It was amazing, and I bought both games and all the DLC since, but after a while you want to get on another ride.
And with Valve, there are two great franchises that are worth riding again, those being Portal and Half-Life.
Sure, you could add Team Fortress to that mix, but my hatred for actual people can only be trumped by my hatred for screaming children over microphones who have nothing better to do than not do homework and instead play Halo (yeah I went there, god I hate Halo).
Portal and Half-Life both have soft spots in my heart. Portal was that great game that my wife and I spent a week just agonizing over, laughing at not only GLaDOS, but also our own failures.
Meanwhile, Half-Life is the first shooter that I really went into wanting to play, and in the end coming out loving shooters.
I'm being completely serious here. I hated shooters, and since Doom 2 I vowed to never play them. Not because Doom 2 sucked, I actually loved that game. I just didn't want to play them anymore.
I was a fan of RPGs, computer RTSs and 3rd-person shooters like GTA, and I was happy about that.
Then Gordon Freeman came along and changed my life.
Valve has this ability to create suspense in a constrained environment. It was like a rail shooter where I had the choice to go into that room on the right or not. Half-Life opened the door to me that a game can have the illusion of a sandbox while not being sandbox, can have the illusion of freedom while instead being quite rigid on where you have to go.
It was brilliant.
I was excited to hear that Valve was going to show off Portal 2 at E3, and it was a title that I was excited to see and purchase.
However, if this surprise is instead Half-Life 2: Episode 3, I think I will pee my pants with excitement.
Oh I went there, I will dawn a plaid skit and giggle like a girl if I see Gordon Freeman on a big screen at E3.
Valve has been treating him like the Beastie Boys treat albums, it takes forever to get anything new, but the end product is more than worth the wait.
But I shouldn't get my hopes up too much, I have done this before and just got another spoonfull of zombies for my troubles.