Portal 2

[df0]

For all you fans, I will write more about Portal 2 tomorrow. In a WoW raid now.

[RubberJohnny]

That was wierd. I was wondering what the update was about so mooching though the menus. Went into the backpack and then clicked back to see the message "You found an item" (or something similar). And now I have the grey hat with the mini companion cube on it which is £2 in the store.... wtf!?

Quite a bit of the store stuff seems to be tied to Achievements, I unlocked a Weighted Companion Cube flag too.

Also: if you lot just want more Portal 1 - as in a succession of puzzle chambers with no exploration or heavy story, and GlaDoS talking to you the whole time - play the co-op campaign - it's pretty much exactly what you want.

[Kiwi Cake]

Just finished the single player and I'm suitably blown away. Fantastic game.

[Kevvy Metal]

I just finished it too.

Excellent stuff, amazing game all the way through although I do still think it's an odd sequel. Portal 1 really feels so well encapsulated, a perfect neat little package. I don't really feel that the sequel brings anything really new to the table, just more of it; that being top tier grade-A video-game design executed pitch perfect.

[RubberJohnny]

Excellent stuff, amazing game all the way through although I do still think it's an odd sequel. Portal 1 really feels so well encapsulated, a perfect neat little package. I don't really feel that the sequel brings anything really new to the table, just more of it; that being top tier grade-A video-game design executed pitch perfect.

I think the multiplayer is the new stuff it brings, it's the progression of the concept really.

[NecroMorrius]

http://www.thefinalhoursofportal2.com/

There's an iPad app about the making of Portal 2:

The Final Hour of Portal 2 takes you deep within the top-secret offices of Valve, creators of Half-Life, for an unvarnished look at the creative process behind the new video game Portal 2. Journalist Geoff Keighley was granted unprecedented "fly on the wall" access to Valve over the past three years to create this staggering 15,000 word multimedia experience. From the hush-hush Portal prequel that was shelved to the last minute scramble to complete the game's story, The Final Hours of Portal 2 is a gripping and dramatic story brought to life by exclusive photos, videos, interviews, interactive experiences, and other surprises.

[MK-1601]

Surely even Morrius can't deny the character animation, when you can see yourself moving through portals, is pretty shonky. I suppose that's what made me wonder what the praise was for.

That's an... interesting metric to judge it by. You see Chell's model for about 30 seconds during the course of the game, and only because the portals necessitate it.

...

I don't think Portal 1 is anywhere near a 'perfect game'. It's just a very specifically constrained one.

Ultimately there just isn't that much mileage in the basic mechanics introduced throughout the game. The puzzles can only get so complex before they tip over into pure frustration. I think Portal 2 dealt with this very well by not making every puzzle dependent on the player making some new logical breakthrough (more like a wordsearch than a cryptic crossword).

[macosx]

I bought I even though I thought it would wind me up, but the dialogue and quality is so good even my watching of the playthrough hasn't spoiled the enjoyment of playing it.

[James Lyon]

Played through the first two chapters on PS3 last night and the only real beef I have with this game are the loading screens. They seem a little too frequent, breaking up the flow of the game. I thought Valve would have invested in streaming technology by now, especially given those elevators are the perfect opportunity to do so. Is it better on the PC?

[Vorgot]

Am loving this, playing through with a big grin on my face. Steve Merchant made me laugh out loud a few times. Don't want to blast through it though, am trying to play in small chunks to savour it. It's just got a 'this feels fun' factor that I don't tend to get with a lot of games these days, its aces.

[Grobbelboy]

Regarding the PSN outage, will I get the Steam achievements that I got in the meantime when things get back online later on?

[bingowings]

now that i have decided to sack off Crysis 2 and leave it until i am vaguely interested in it again, i got this yesterday to fill the gap and suddenly and without warning i ended up playing it for about seven hours... charming as ever and the way it fills in the Aperture backstory is neatly done, although a little long-winded. i thought the Merchant thing would annoy the fuck out of me, but no - it is actually funny and very well written.

the return of GLaDOS is a delight, all the jibes about being fat laced with just enough venom to make it genuinely unsettling.

nearly finished, maybe another three or four rooms to go but it has been a delight to play a game where you can tell they have polished and refined almost every part of it.

also, confetti!

[The Liberal Elite]

Regarding the PSN outage, will I get the Steam achievements that I got in the meantime when things get back online later on?

What great timing for an outage! I was rather hoping to get a copy of the game on my PC, but with this promised 2 day outage, that clearly isn't happening any time before my flight today!

[moosegrinder]

Am loving this, playing through with a big grin on my face. Steve Merchant made me laugh out loud a few times. Don't want to blast through it though, am trying to play in small chunks to savour it. It's just got a 'this feels fun' factor that I don't tend to get with a lot of games these days, its aces.

Way to hold out until it was cheaper, dude

[moosegrinder]

Also, there's no such thing as a perfect game. Whether Portal 2 is better than 1 is debatable but it's most definitely the best game I've played this year.

[RubberJohnny]

One thing that kind of amazed me in the developer commentary is how late a lot of stuff came together. They talk about getting the

GlaDoS reincarnation scene

rushed in time for E3 2010 (and it is a bit noticeably lower fidelity than some of the later animations - no eye apertures), and the whole plot seemed to have been overhauled from their earlier designs (which they talk about) in about a year. I guess they just had puzzles worked out well in advance and could restructure the whole game quite easily.

[Majora]

Played through the first two chapters on PS3 last night and the only real beef I have with this game are the loading screens. They seem a little too frequent, breaking up the flow of the game. I thought Valve would have invested in streaming technology by now, especially given those elevators are the perfect opportunity to do so.

I agree, I'm up to Chapter 5 and all the loading screens came dangerously close to ruining the momentum of the end of Chapter 4. They really need to sort it out, having to cut to loading screens several times in the middle of a big set-piece in 2011 seems pretty antiquated.

That aside it's brilliant but I expected that anyway.

[Vaya.]

One thing that kind of amazed me in the developer commentary is how late a lot of stuff came together. They talk about getting the

GlaDoS reincarnation scene

rushed in time for E3 2010 (and it is a bit noticeably lower fidelity than some of the later animations - no eye apertures), and the whole plot seemed to have been overhauled from their earlier designs (which they talk about) in about a year. I guess they just had puzzles worked out well in advance and could restructure the whole game quite easily.

I noticed that some of the puzzles shown in were remade to look from different generations.

[MotiVater]

Can anyone expand on the "bad language" thats mentioned on the PEGI rating? I might fancy a game when the kids are about and wondered if that was going to be a no-no. Also may end up doing some co-op with my 8 year old.

[Rudi von Starnberg]

Very occasional 'damn', 'crap', 'hell'. That's about it.

[errollw]

What's weird is that I feel Portal 1 did loading slightly better. It used elevators in the same way but didn't fade to black between levels, sorta just jerking you around into place instead (which makes sense with elevators griding to a halt I guess).

I think the inability to stream is probably part of the Source Engine getting outdated. There's no doubt that if you stop to look around at parts it's clear Looking at games like Dead Space 2 shows the right way to handle it. Obviously Portal 2 is an amazing game but it's definitely not perfect, especially as FPSes are supposed to be at the forefront of technology.

[revlob]

I think part of the reason for the evelators, beyond the Source enginge's lack of a streaming system, is that they allow end-of-level dialogue to complete if the player reaches the exit before someone has finished speaking. The time between entering an elevator and the loading screen appearing is much shorter if GLaDOS isn't mid-sentence.

[Farley]

Where is the cheapest place to buy this, are any supermarkets doing a good deal?

[imp]

Has anyone managed to trigger the final dev commentary node in

the Wheatley boss fight? I got bounced away before I could even try to press it. Not sure I can be bothered to go through 20 odd minutes of play to try again right now either.

[RubberJohnny]

What's weird is that I feel Portal 1 did loading slightly better. It used elevators in the same way but didn't fade to black between levels, sorta just jerking you around into place instead (which makes sense with elevators griding to a halt I guess).

I think loading in Portal 1 took longer, because you had a "lift starting up animation" then a loading screen, then a "lift slowing down" animation. It took like 3x longer than it needed to, worse than the Mass Effect elevators, they were.

Whereas in 2, as revlob says, if you're not mid-sentence the game just kicks you to that loading screen near-instantly.

[deerokus]

The loading takes about 6 seconds when installed (on 360), it's pretty negligible and not really very much worse than just sitting motionless in a lift for 6 seconds would be.

[Majora]

I don't find the loading in the elevators that bad, it's tolerable, but I think all the loading screens at the end of Chapter 4 were really detrimental to the flow of the sequence because they were rather sudden and ruined the pacing a little.

[daveodeth]

Load times on PC are around 7 secs when the elevator drops, not sure how it is on anyone elses though. But for me it's tolerable.

[bradigor]

Friend of mine came round today and we did some co-op split screen. All I have to say is...

[errollw]

Oh yea, it was certainly tolerable! I'm just curious as to why they felt the need to cut to a black loading screen so often rather than the original brief pause in the game with loading icon. As it's only for a few seconds that wouldn't have disrupted the flow as much imo, especially towards the end of the game.

On the other hand I really did like the zoom-out images during loading! Got bored of the black logo screens though.