Portal 2

[FlowerChild]

So, I picked up Portal 2 with the Steam holiday sale, and just finished it tonight.

I know this is going to be an extremely unpopular opinion, but:

meh.

Honestly, I didn't think it was as good as the first one. I definitely had a few 'lol' moments, and the story and such were great, but in terms of gameplay, I think it was actually a step back for the series for the following reasons:

-Way too many "hunt for the texture" type puzzles. I think moving it into wide-open areas was a big mistake. To me, it was like someone putting a jigsaw puzzle in front of you and saying "I may or may not have hidden a bunch of pieces around the house". In other words, more frustrating then fun because you're never quite certain in those big areas if you've yet to figure the puzzle out given the pieces you know about, or if you need to look to far off corners of the level or at weird viewing angles to find the missing piece.

-Way too many linear sequences where there's really no gameplay at all and you're in what amounts to a barely interactive cut-scene.

-A hell of a lot of level loading, particularly early on in the game where you barely play for a few minutes before you hit a loading screen.

-It may just be me, but the puzzles seemed way easier this time around. Maybe I'm just so used to the mechanics by now that this was the result, but it really felt like things had been dumbed-down to reach a broader audience. If so, I think that's a shame because mind-bending puzzles were really what made Portal appealing to begin with.

Anyways, I just got the impression they focused way too much on the fluff surrounding the title in this game, and while they did an amazing job on that fluff, really didn't give enough love to the gameplay itself. I still enjoyed it, but like I said, in the end my reaction was a decided "meh".

Having said that though, if anyone here has recently picked it up and hasn't played through the co-op before (I really don't want to play with someone who already has it all figured out), I'd like to give that a go sometime.

[Gilberreke]

I can agree, though there was the occasional puzzle that had me stuck for a while in a good way, while I played around with the physics.

I think I like the game best near the end, when everything comes together and puzzles consist of everything you found so far, not just the "gimmick du jour" you just learned about.

As a sequel, it's okay. It would have been really hard to top the first game anyway and I think they might have been right to choose for depth over extra complexity. It does feel, however, like they chewed off more than they could handle. A lot of the areas feel like they simply didn't have the gameplay content to fill up the world they create with the story.

One weak point to the story was the whole secretary/GLaDOS plot. Was I the only one to figure that out right away, only to have to listen to another half hour of sparse dialogue hinting to what I already know?

So yeah, a large "meh", but with sprinkles on top now and then

[FlowerChild]

One weak point to the story was the whole secretary/GLaDOS plot. Was I the only one to figure that out right away, only to have to listen to another half hour of sparse dialogue hinting to what I already know?

Hehe...no, it was exactly the same for me :)

And yeah, there were a *few* good puzzles, and things definitely picked up a bit at the end. Again, it's not that I didn't enjoy it, just that I was rather underwhelmed, especially given all the absolutely raving reviews that I had seen for it.

On the bright side, I thought the humor was largely stellar, that's just not what I usually focus on in a game.

Anyways, at 15$, I'm certainly not complaining. I think I'd be feeling rather let-down if I payed full price however.

[Gilberreke]

I was rather underwhelmed, especially given all the absolutely raving reviews that I had seen for it.

Yep, same here. Maybe I go into a game with different expectations, being a game designer myself, but I usually disagree on key points with reviewers. It's just that I tend to analyze why I'm not having fun at certain points in a game and that's when I notice the grating issues that could've been solved during development, but just weren't caught for whatever reason, like Portal 2's open areas just being too sparsely populated with actual content.

I mean, I loved the look of the "quest hub" for the 50's era puzzles, but I spent way too much time looking for portal-accepting areas, which quickly turned it into one of those "find the 5 differences" games. There's a point when you just stop saying "that gap looks really daunting, it's really eerie" and start saying "where's the damn piece of white wall, so I can get on with it". Total immersion breaker right there.

[thekyz]

Well if you found the single player campaign as easy as I did, and it seems like it, you won't be too pleased about the co-op one.

Only in the additional maps have we found a level which had us thinking for some time before finishing it. The regular campaign is so easy you have the impression you're going through a huge tutorial. I was really disappointed by it and wished valve had made the game a lot more difficult.

[FlowerChild]

I mean, I loved the look of the "quest hub" for the 50's era puzzles, but I spent way too much time looking for portal-accepting areas, which quickly turned it into one of those "find the 5 differences" games. There's a point when you just stop saying "that gap looks really daunting, it's really eerie" and start saying "where's the damn piece of white wall, so I can get on with it". Total immersion breaker right there.

Yup. That's exactly what I meant about playing "hunt the texture". Way too much of that was going on at certain points.

[Stormweaver]

lacking any hardware capable of running it at any reasonable speed, I ended up settling for watching a co-op lets play (BDouble00 and Guude could make paint drying funny) and...I have to admit. If you can figure out how to solve a puzzle quickly while someone else is controlling the camera something is seriously wrong with the...you know, puzzle aspect of the game.

[Mrchaim]

No, i think it's a fair take on things - I enjoyed it for the story, and laughed my head off at the ending, and the Co-Op's suprsingly good as well. But the actual puzzle aspect ended up lacking - My particular take on things is they spent so long teaching you things that by the time the game should be throwing the real brain twisters at you...

it ended.

That was a mite of a bugger, lemme tell you.

That said, there's a level editor comming (Valve time, huzzah) that's using a friendly to everyone style interface, rather than arcane digging into... whatever the level making tools are. Depending on how easy it is to use/to get the levels out there, this could be a very good thing for the mind-bending puzzle lovers out there.

(Ceartinly, i plan to try my hand at things. I also plan to laugh alot, as i suspect there's going to be any number of puzzles that are less puzzles and more "Dicking you over in the name of poorly thought through difficulty" which always tends to be a problem with puzzle games)

[Mac]

On brain twisters and the upcoming editor,
if someone can do a remake or even better a new kind of mod in the style portal: prelude,
I would be real happy.
That thing was real intense and quite hard on the puzzle aspect.

On the frequent loading,
that is unfortunately due to the console versions and the subsequent interconnectivity between
the systems in co-op.

But all in all it is just a medicore game that has it's strength and weaknesses in various aspects.
Story is good at best.
Level design is good
Atmosphere is fitting
But the important aspect: puzzles, is in most cases to easy to say the least.

Which reminds me that the crusher which looked awesome in the trailers, was removed due to
people saying they where to hard in difficulty. Thats as far as I know of course, based on coverage.

[Itamarcu]

I pre-ordered it (at 40$) And I really enjoyed it, but I have to agree, it's not what I expected.
I think the problem is that the developers wanted to make a game for all ages, and for both gamers who played the prequel and those who didn't. Because of that, there is a lack of "interesting" puzzles.

I do love the addition of gels, although the laser is not a good idea. it's basically the energy ball from the previous game, only easier to move and not challenging.
The map editor seems like an awesome step in the right direction, though. Most of the games that give such tools to the community turn out great (TF2, Minecraft, Super Meat Boy...) and this probably would keep me playing for a while.

I barely played the co-op, only helped my brother in a few levels, but I've got to say it's a lot more challenging and it's less centered about the story, which is nice. I think they could also add a minigame for large groups, something like a CTF game, that makes the player want to play this more than once.

I would give it a 10 "fluff" points, but 7 "crunch" points (I hope I'm spelling this correctly).

[MoRmEnGiL]

I played the first portal back in the day and absolutely loved it. So much that I'm not sure I even want to play p2, despite picking it up for €5 yesterday. Dunno.

It was the same deal with my favourite FPS game of the past decade, AKA Bioshock. I loved the first so much, I didn't want to start the second. And I was right, it totally ruined everything.

[Kwilt]

I do definitely agree, it was a bit underwhelming. That was a big bit of talk back when the game came out, though, and it's basically been summed up to introducing to a more casual player-base.

To be honest, though, I did love the Old Aperture sections, because I love me my sewer levels. And with some of the newer gel mechanics I will admit I was stumped at some of the puzzles.

To be honest, the real strengths of the game are in multiplayer, where actually found some really, really brainwracking puzzles (here's to you, Section 3 Finale, you fucking bitch). And I've gotta say, that's pretty damn funny, considering I remember a time when VALVe said multiplayer in Portal wouldn't work.

[Glox]

The puzzels were a bit easy, yeah, and 'hunt the texture' was annoying too sometimes, but for the rest it was awesome imo. Great humor, great setting, puzzels are fun, voice-actors were superb, playing the co-op with a friend is pure gold, lots of attention to details (co-op robots and their animations, how those robots 'respawn', the quest hub room, ....), free DLC and once the level editor is out, hundreds of great new maps.
I think it was well worth the 45€ i paid for it.

[Slev]

I thought the puzzles were much easier in this one as well. I finished the whole game in under 4 hours, and half and hour of that was me stuck backtracked because of a hunt for texture.

[BinoAl]

I enjoyed the game, but I definitely agree about the "find the texture" parts of the game. I haven't played co-op yet (I got it later than all my friends, so there was nobody to play it with), but I doubt it will be much better. The gels were an interesting dynamic, but I feel like valve limited them a bit too much. I still had more fun with the game than a lot of other games, but it didn't live up to the hype

[morvelaira]

I have to admit, I really enjoyed Portal 2, but that's because I do focus on the humor and the story and all of that fluff :) Even if it hadn't become a meme, I think the rant about combustible lemons would have entered my lexicon regardless.

If you are up for it, I've not done anything with the co-op myself, so I'd be here if you wanted to try it out.

[FurkeyRefills]

I really enjoyed playing the Co-Op with my step-dad but I stopped playing the campaign after about an hour because it was stupidly easy.
Plus, shooting your partner with a portal gun to annoy them is just too much fun !

[FlowerChild]

Huh. I'm actually surprised so many people feel similarly to the way I do. If you take a look at metacritic, the reviews for the game are all so astronomically good, that you would think no one had a single complaint about the game.

On a vaguely related note (this being the off-topic forum ;) ) in the broad subject of puzzle-games, I started playing SpaceChem last night, which I also picked up during the holiday sale, and holy-shit...now this is my kind of game. It really had me *thinking*, which I think after my Portal 2 experience was what I felt was ultimately lacking in any serious way.

I'm not very far into it but I had to force myself to go to bed at a certain point because I was just enjoying it way too much :)

[Shengji]

Huh. I'm actually surprised so many people feel similarly to the way I do. If you take a look at metacritic, the reviews for the game are all so astronomically good, that you would think no one had a single complaint about the game.

I'm betting a lot of that is to do with the power of that song and the internet meme it became. I'm with you too, it was OK, but nowhere near as challenging or as fun as the first. I felt that the solution was always signposted even right at the very end of the game so you often found yourself in a room knowing that you need to spray orange goo along there and blue goo here, a portal needs to be opened on that conveniently angled portal sized plate etc etc

The storyline was OK I guess, although I thought the potato bit was stupid.

Honestly, from the start, I thought it would be an equal at least, but that lasted up until you find GlaDOS, then it slowly faded into tedium.

Spacechem is absolutely ace though! If I had thought that there was anyone here who hadn't already played it, I would have been banging the drum a long time ago!

[johnt]

The difficulty of the puzzles aside (I thought single-player was too easy, and co-op was just about perfect), Portal 2 is pretty much a master-class in videogame narrative. The acting, writing, set-design and flow were pretty much flawless, and one of the few game stories that has genuine ambition -- not just scale, like a modern warfare game, but telling a story with some subtlety and that had some emotional resonance.

I've been having an ongoing debate with some friends about whether videogames are art or not, and one of my favorite arguments about games-as-art is that games essentially contain or can contain every other art form -- how can a game that includes acting, architecture, writing, music, cinematography (etc, etc) not itself be art? So when they had you stare at the painting at the beginning while the game told you to 'appreciate the art', that pretty much sold me on the game. They were throwing down the gauntlet to critics on games as art, more or less, in a very clever way.

If you don't buy games for the story, I can get why it wouldn't be as appealing, though.

The original portal was more of a pure puzzle game, where the narrative kind snuck up on you. I knew absolutely nothing about it when I played it at a friends house mwhile I was hung over and beat it in one sitting, and literally stood up and applauded at the end, but to me, the storyline in portal one was just the (forgive me) icing on the cake, while the second game seems very much to have been designed around the story, and I think the extra time spent playtesting and polishing the second game actually hurt it, since all the difficulty of the puzzles was kind of sanded away. I like difficult games.

[FlowerChild]

If you don't buy games for the story, I can get why it wouldn't be as appealing, though.

Yeah, I've made my opinions on that subject well-known. I couldn't give a rat's ass about story in games :)

[001010]

Having said that though, if anyone here has recently picked it up and hasn't played through the co-op before (I really don't want to play with someone who already has it all figured out), I'd like to give that a go sometime.

I don't even have the game, but I do know someone who beat the co-op by their self by using 2 different computers. (At least that's what they told me)

[M!C]

I do know someone who beat the co-op by their self by using 2 different computers. (At least that's what they told me)

If I remember correctly there's at least one level where you can't get through like that ... anyway I don't remember much of the game (which I think also says something about its quality since I usually don't forget the more difficult/fun puzzles of a game).

[MoRmEnGiL]

Yeah, I've made my opinions on that subject well-known. I couldn't give a rat's ass about story in games :)

Funny thing is, what I enjoyed most in portal 1 is that setting/story :P
Same with Bioshock really. Did you play that?


Anyhow, I only have one thing to say: SpaceChem is probably the best puzzle game of 2011.
At this point, I'm afraid to fire it up cause I'll be having alien abductee symptoms. Ie, missing time.
Picked up the expansion recently too.

[FlowerChild]

Anyhow, I only have one thing to say: SpaceChem is probably the best puzzle game of 2011.
At this point, I'm afraid to fire it up cause I'll be having alien abductee symptoms. Ie, missing time.
Picked up the expansion recently too.

Yeah, I grabbed the expansion too for .50 cents during the Steam sale, even before trying the title, as it looked like my kind of game ;)