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Portal 2...Follow

#1 Apr 21 2011 at 9:30 PM Rating: Decent
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What the FUDGE Valve? Seriously, you guys are fudged up. I'm almost done with the game and it is easily one of the creepiest games I have played, I'm not even finished yet and I already feel dirty. After I finish I'll post spoilers about why this game is just so very wrong. Prepare to **** bricks, and then be told to bathe in said excrement while a retarded man watches you.
#2 Apr 21 2011 at 9:44 PM Rating: Excellent
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Oh joy, another Portal 2 thread Smiley: rolleyes

I kid, I kid. I'm actually interested in your analysis. Did you write anything about the first one? And when you say you're not finished yet, have you done both co-op and single player?
#3 Apr 21 2011 at 9:53 PM Rating: Good
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I've heard positive things overall, with the one major complaint that it is way too short to warrant the cost.

Then again, I don't think Allegory and I agree on anything when it comes to games, so...
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#4 Apr 21 2011 at 10:32 PM Rating: Decent
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LockeColeMA wrote:
I kid, I kid. I'm actually interested in your analysis. Did you write anything about the first one? And when you say you're not finished yet, have you done both co-op and single player?

Depending on whether you count the other thread, this might be the first portal 2 thread.

I don't remember writing anything in depth about the first game. I like it, and if it was more recent in my memory I'd feel better about going into detail about why, but it isn't and this thread isn't about that.

I'm almost done with single player, and a fair way through coop. I have a person I'm specifically playing coop with so that we figure out the puzzles at the same time, also griefing is more fun with friends.
#5 Apr 21 2011 at 10:33 PM Rating: Decent
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idiggory wrote:
I've heard positive things overall, with the one major complaint that it is way too short to warrant the cost.

As a quick response I'll say I've found the game to be a positive experience overall, and that I don't believe it was too short for the cost. Those who would disagree, I think they missed the point of the design intent.
#6 Apr 21 2011 at 11:39 PM Rating: Decent
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And Single Player complete.

1. Overview. A good game, as would be expected of both the sequel and Valve. The first game earned a lot of points from people for being fairly fresh and original. As a sequel, it's difficult to find a balance between providing a new enough game while still paying homage to and feeling like a continuation of the original. I felt Valve did a fairly good job.

1. Game play. I'm glad there were plenty of new mechanics to mess around with. The general play style of the game was maintained without the feel of solving all the same puzzles you solved in the last game. I felt one of the biggest changes in the game was the decision to make puzzles far more discrete. It's less about discovering where to place your portals and more about finding the order and timing of placing them in the 3 spots you have available. While this can allow for better puzzles, it does cut down a lot on the playfulness and exploration inherent in making portals wherever you please. Portal 2 plays a lot like the second half of Portal 1, with the limited amount of surfaces and great amount of time spent outside the main testing rooms.

I found the puzzles to be easier than in the first game. My greatest frustrations weren't so much "what to do" as "where to go," because finding the intending exit or portal placement in a dreary and poorly marked environment wasn't always easy.

2. Story. The first portal game was quite light on story, relying strongly on ambiance. Portal 2 is comparably much heavier on plot. Gladdos seemed weaker as a character when I had to interact with her more heavily. Wheatly I found to be annoying at first, but he began to grow on me until... we'll talk about that in a bit. I felt the background on Johnson became a bit too melodramatic. The humor was as strong as ever. Portalling the moon was definitely a high point for both series, and simply a brilliant piece of writing.

3. Creepiness. This is what I was getting at in the first post. While the first game might be considered eerie and somewhat frightening, Portal 2 took the it to down right creepy and sexual. I was ok with spraying myself in white spooge and covering whole rooms with it. That didn't bother me. But when I hit chapter 8 and saw my first crab cube, I shat bricks. It was a really clever combination on their part, even if only incidental. Throughout the entirety of the first game we had been taught to love cubes and fear the robot guards, and so they were combined into a grotesque monster where ambivalence manifested as both pity and disgust for them. Then there was Wheatly; dear god Wheatly. The thick sexual innuendo at him finding orgasmic pleasure would have been enough to bother me, but then they add in his constant frustration that he just can't come. The experiments just don't do it for him anymore, and so he becomes increasingly more perverse in his methods. I felt genuinely molested and abused by him. I felt dirty; I felt raped. I don't know why Valve did this, but they did it very well. It's something I've never felt from a videogame before. It may have been out of place, but I was intrigued.

4. The ending. It's hard to follow Portal's ending. There is again the dichotomy of following the first while breaking from it. The guardian bot song was a classy route, though not memorable. The ending song was well written, but ultimately an homage/imitation of the first.
#7 Apr 22 2011 at 12:41 AM Rating: Decent
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And Single Player complete.


...and this is why I'm glad I decided not to buy this game until I can get for next to nothing off of Steam next Christmas. Sixty dollars for a two day experience? No thanks. It could be the greatest two days of gaming material ever conceived and it still wouldn't be worth full retail.
#8 Apr 22 2011 at 1:10 AM Rating: Excellent
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Turin wrote:
It could be the greatest two days of gaming material ever conceived and it still wouldn't be worth full retail.

I don't understand this perspective at all. Why would any want a game to be longer simply for the sake of being longer? Would adding 60 hours of mindless, pointless, story-less collection quests make you feel like you got your dollars' worth? Adding sawdust to your cake to produce more batter doesn't make it better, it makes it worse. Watering down your milk to get more of it doesn't make it better, it makes it worse.

I understand buying games with value in mind. With Starcraft, Warcraft 3, Smash Brothers, Team Fortress 2, Left 4 Dead, and many MMORPGS are several games I bought specifically knowing I'd get more than an hour o game time per dollar spent. But that isn't the kind of game Portal is intended to be. Portal is the game you spent $30 dollars to enter the theme park for and an hour to wait in line for. If you wanted the cheapest, longest lasting ride you could have driven around in the parking lot and gotten a better deal. I'm not saying that Portal is some amazing game that absolutely is worth this short duration and price, though to some it is. What I'm saying is that if you order a shot glass and then find that you got too little drink for your money, then the problem isn't with the drink, the problem is with you. You have mismatched expectations about the purpose of the item you just purchased.
#9 Apr 22 2011 at 6:11 AM Rating: Excellent
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Allegory wrote:
Then there was Wheatly; dear god Wheatly. The thick sexual innuendo at him finding orgasmic pleasure would have been enough to bother me, but then they add in his constant frustration that he just can't come. The experiments just don't do it for him anymore, and so he becomes increasingly more perverse in his methods. I felt genuinely molested and abused by him. I felt dirty; I felt raped. I don't know why Valve did this, but they did it very well. It's something I've never felt from a videogame before. It may have been out of place, but I was intrigued.


Smiley: dubious

I just found him funny.
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#10 Apr 22 2011 at 2:48 PM Rating: Excellent
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GLaDOS is more than enough to warrant full retail price.
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#11 Apr 23 2011 at 11:05 AM Rating: Good
Mazra wrote:
Allegory wrote:
Then there was Wheatly; dear god Wheatly. The thick sexual innuendo at him finding orgasmic pleasure would have been enough to bother me, but then they add in his constant frustration that he just can't come. The experiments just don't do it for him anymore, and so he becomes increasingly more perverse in his methods. I felt genuinely molested and abused by him. I felt dirty; I felt raped. I don't know why Valve did this, but they did it very well. It's something I've never felt from a videogame before. It may have been out of place, but I was intrigued.


Smiley: dubious

I just found him funny.


Well, you didn't have the bottom bunk.

So to speak.
#12 Apr 23 2011 at 3:38 PM Rating: Decent
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I am waiting till my Finals are over before buying this...
#13 Apr 23 2011 at 3:49 PM Rating: Good
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I don't really have any intention of buying P2. I think it looks like a lot of fun, and I loved the trailers, but length definitely does matter to me. My spending money is extremely limited, so longer games get prioritized above shorter ones.

Mass Effect 2 (for the PS3) will likely be my next purchase. Replay value + Great story + good gameplay = WIN.

Of course, Allegory won't agree with me on that one. :P
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#14 Apr 23 2011 at 4:01 PM Rating: Good
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idiggory wrote:
I think it looks like a lot of fun, and I loved the trailers, but length definitely does matter to me.


How are your feelings on girth?

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#15 Apr 23 2011 at 4:03 PM Rating: Excellent
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Nice to look at, hurts to take. D:
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#16 Apr 23 2011 at 4:07 PM Rating: Decent
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idiggory wrote:
Of course, Allegory won't agree with me on that one. :P

I don't have anything against not buying portal because you don't think you'll get enough value for your dollar, what I take issue with is considering the duration of Portal 2 to be a flaw or solely considering the length of a game without any thought to the net enjoyment you get out of it.
#17 Apr 23 2011 at 4:37 PM Rating: Good
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I was more talking about your disdain for all things BioWare. :P That was you, right?

Quote:
I don't have anything against not buying portal because you don't think you'll get enough value for your dollar, what I take issue with is considering the duration of Portal 2 to be a flaw or solely considering the length of a game without any thought to the net enjoyment you get out of it.


But in response to this...

I think your point about adding 60 hours doesn't necessarily make a game better is perfectly fair. If a game is super fun and will only suffer from the additional play time, then it might better off without it. If the additional hours actually make it boring, then it's WAY better off without them.

But, by the same token, I am paying $60 for the game. If I can pay 60 for a game that's tons of fun for 15 hours, or pay for one that's fun for 60 hours, I'm going to go for the latter. It's just way more bang for the buck. If I had the kind of money to spend on games that I wish I had, I might not care about the economy issue though. As it is, I only by a new game every few months or so (on average).

Overall, I'm pretty utilitarian when it comes to making gaming choices.

Suppose Portal 2 is 100% fun (really abstract, but it's just for comparison). for 10 hours (I probably wouldn't do the multiplayer). Say that equals out to 1,000 "fun" points (100x10).

Now take something like, IDK, FFXIII (I actually enjoyed it :P). That's, let's say, 45+ hours of enjoyment, but it may only be 60% as fun as Portal 2. Well, 60x45 is 2700. That makes it a much better investment, if your wallet is limited enough that which you buy is a concern.

And of course, demanding more game time doesn't necessarily mean reducing the fun factor. It's perfectly feasible to add playtime and only make a game better. I can't say if that's the case for Portal 2, but it seems to me like people are demanding more fun playtime, not just more play time without regard to how fun it is.
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#18 Apr 23 2011 at 8:22 PM Rating: Decent
let us quantify these easily quantifiable things, chums
#19 Apr 23 2011 at 11:15 PM Rating: Good
While the single player can certainly be completed in a couple days, especially if you have previous portal experience, the co-op is almost a completely different game.

Portal 2's single player is fantastic though, but i understand the single player's replay value is quite low. That being said, each game of co-op play is completely different if you're playing with different people so the co-op's replay value is fairly decent.

If you liked Portal, you'll love Portal 2 as its a much more polished, plot driven, & longer game than the original. If you haven't played Portal, then you can wait for the cost to go down before giving it a go.
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#20 Apr 26 2011 at 12:16 PM Rating: Good
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All I can really add is that I loved Core 1 in the ending.
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#21 Apr 26 2011 at 1:23 PM Rating: Good
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lolgaxe wrote:
All I can really add is that I loved Core 1 in the ending.



SPAAAAAAACE
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#22 Apr 30 2011 at 9:28 AM Rating: Good
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Kavekk wrote:
let us quantify these easily quantifiable things, chums


Well, we could measure the relative dopamine levels in the brain.
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#23 Apr 30 2011 at 6:04 PM Rating: Default
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I played CO-OP with a friend today; we finished it in one setting.
Good Game.
#24 May 22 2011 at 12:19 PM Rating: Decent
lolgaxe wrote:
GLaDOS is more than enough to warrant full retail price.
This.


Also, one in six children will be abducted by the dutch.

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