Portal 2

[Guitar Woman]

Well, would you look at that: apparently Valve employees have been actually getting up for work on a daily basis in the past 4 years, because Portal 2 is the best thing they've ever done.

Not even internet fuckshits parroting lines from the first game Monty Python style something like 50 billion times a day could ruin how fucking awesome this game is. Thankfully, there haven't been any cake jokes yet, so they haven't gone and reminded me of it, either. Yeesh.

Good show, Valve. Hopefully it won't take them another 4 years to get on with Episode 3 already, although if it's as good as this then I won't get too raged about it.

I think the funniest part of the game so far is when you first discover the springboards and fly up to the ceiling 3 or 4 times and catch snippets of Wheatley's run-on sentence.

Or the part where he's like, "I jammed the door with some bird's eggs that I found lying here! That'll stop AHH! BIRD! BIRD!"

[Phoenix Gamma]

What happened to "bark bark bleh portal?"
>:

I actually kiiiinda prefer Portal 1's campaign. Portal 2 has waaaaaaaaaaay funnier writing, but the level design feels kinda cumbersome at times (the second act, which I like to call "BioPortalShock" is just plain frustrating), and there's hardly any mystery to the game like the original.

I just beat co-op with a random dude. My friend was busy doing the campaign so I decided to just pick up a random guy. Turned out he was about as good as I am at it so we breezed through the campaign pretty quickly. Kind of a shitty ending, since they put hardly any narrative into co-op whatsoever.

I'm gonna go for all the achievements. I hate doing them, but I wouldn't mind, because it seems like I missed a lot of things.

[darkvare]

have you seen all the hate the game is getting in metacritic is hilarious

[LordSappington]

I thought the gameplay was much better than in the first one. The first one was fairly obvious that it was just a test game; this one had you basically doing your own thing for a lot of the time. The humor was definitely better, as well. I was laughing my as off the whole time.
Things that will stick in my head: When you first get to the old test chambers and there were those huge geodomes above water, I was convinced there was going to be an Icthysaur or something in the water. I don't know what made me imagine it, but it made it TERRIFYING for me.
Also, putting a portal on the goddamn fucking moon was one of the high points of my entire gaming history.

[Guitar Woman]

What happened to "bark bark bleh portal?"
It went away when Portal 2 was actually a game instead of a 3-hour proof-of-concept demo that had its dick sucked much more than was warranted

Plus I had already bought the second game when I said that, I was just wondering why the hell we were getting excited about shaving 2 days off the release date.

Portal 2 is better than the first one in pretty much every way I can think of, except maybe that it's still too short. Haven't tried co-op yet.

[Izlude]

I just got it, but I am at work, so I cant play it yet. I'm super excited. However, I prepared my brain-juices for playing by passing through the Flash version of Portal. It was a lot of fun, and very frustrating, but I beat all 40 levels and think I am ready to do Portal 2.

If you wanna play the flash version, I have it uploaded here:
http://izlude.wikispaces.com/file/view/404612_Portal.swf

[LordSappington]

Portal 2 is MUCH harder than the first one. A lot of puzzles took me a pretty good while, because there are a lot of puzzles that are solved over a HUGE area and with a lot of different walls and stuff that look like potential solutions.

[LordSappington]

Also, This song is AWESOME. Huge spoiler though, so don't watch it if you're gonna cry about it spoiling the game for you.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_kPyGvqNn4Y

[Immortal Goat]

This is as close to perfect as any game has ever been. Sublime experience.

[Fathom Zero]

I just passed what seems to be like the end of the first act and this shit is blowing my mind.

I shall never ever be afraid to spend $60 on a game so long as it is from Valve. I dunno what they're gonna do with the upcoming DOTA 2, but it should at least be entertaining.

[LordSappington]

One thing about Valve that I love is that they legitimately do their best to make their fans happy. Say all the shit about hats you want; when you buy one of their games, you are getting a great damn experience.
/fanboy

[Fathom Zero]

I finished it before I had class today. Yes, it's wonderful. Cave Johnson for President.

[MarioRPG]

I played both coop and single player today... I love it. I will end up buying this for sure.

[OxBlood]

Finished Singleplayer today. Hell yeah, that´s how you make a good Videogame. The end was...just great, so great :)

[Chojin]

i am in space

great game, good ending, 5 stars, etc

haven't even played coop yet and feel like i got my money's worth

[LordSappington]

Co-op is the best I've ever seen in a game, simply because there is absolutely no room to be a dick. If you want to get anything done, you better be damn sure you're helping your partner and being at least friendly to him/her, or you'll either get dumped or repeatedly killed. I've only gotten paired with one asshole, and I just kept dumping him in the water and hitting him with cubes while he was mid-air. All the other partners I got paired with were total bros.

[dextire]

Co-op is the best I've ever seen in a game, simply because there is absolutely no room to be a dick.
...I just kept dumping him in the water and hitting him with cubes while he was mid-air.
:lol

I finally finished single-player last night and can now look at threads about Portal 2. Absolutely fantastic game! :)

[Chojin]

some things that i didn't think were as cool

Sooo aperture's had portal technology since the 40s? But never sold it or anything for 70 years?

The glados=caroline thing was neat, but it would have been a lot better if they hadn't beaten you over the head with it and outright explained it in the credits song. I would have preferred they left it at glados saying "why do those people look so familiar" when you look at the hidden portrait, and the special turrent saying "she was caroline" if you hold her for a while. then again it's important in explaining why glados saves you at first, but i still would have preferred to have been left wondering. Maybe it's just my latent homosex for marathon that makes me want everything to be a secret.

Also my anus was firmly clenched during the end elevator ride when all the turrets were singing. I expected them to open fire at any moment.

[LordSappington]

As for the portal thing, I think it can be firmly set into the category of 'Aperture Science is fucking insane and not much else'. The game made it pretty clear that nothing they did was taken much more seriously than 'DO IT FOR SCIENCE!'
They did explain too much about the Caroline thing. I would have stopped after Cave telling them he wanted her to run the place, and not her flipping out about it all over the place.

I still laugh my fucking ass off whenever I remember certain parts of the game, like Wheatley's accent that GLaDOS can't hear. :lol

[dextire]

Maybe I just don't remember, but I didn't see anything that said they had portal tech back then.
They had blue-gel, orange-gel, and moon-gel that made things portable, just no portals.
Did I miss a key moment?
Yes! Parts like that really helped me to forgive the problems I had with the story and just enjoy the game. :)

[LordSappington]

Maybe I just don't remember, but I didn't see anything that said they had portal tech back then.
They had blue-gel, orange-gel, and moon-gel that made things portable, just no portals.
Did I miss a key moment?
They made multiple references to a different sort of portal device, like a back-pack version. I think it even had illustrations. That, and the puzzles are impossible without one, and how would you know the moon rocks made great portal conductors without portals?

[Phoenix Gamma]

The developer's commentary kinda spoiled some of the game for me, since every node is pretty much:

"We wanted to do this but we took it out because our playtesters were idiots."

Lots of stuff from trailers were flatout removed, like the excursion tubes. Plus, it kinda explains why I felt the game was so piss easy in singleplayer. Here's hoping for DLC, or user-created maps since it's Source SDK compatible.

[LordSappington]

Excursion tubes were rendered pretty moot by the funnels or whatever they're called. No point in adding a feature that's like a less cool-looking version of another feature.

[Chojin]

The developer's commentary kinda spoiled some of the game for me, since every node is pretty much:

"We wanted to do this but we took it out because our playtesters were idiots."

Lots of stuff from trailers were flatout removed, like the excursion tubes. Plus, it kinda explains why I felt the game was so piss easy in singleplayer. Here's hoping for DLC, or user-created maps since it's Source SDK compatible.

i love the dev commentary, but on the ps3 you can't teleport between commentary nodes, and fuck if i was solving shit just to get to the parts where the comments are.

so now i get to wait a week+ until PSN wakes up so i can get my free pc copy ;<

[Chojin]

oh also how the fuck did you end up in the relaxation center after portal 1?

not a spoiler since this happens in the first second of the game

[LordSappington]

They changed the ending of the first slightly; at the end, something grabs you and drags you back inside as you fall unconscious.

[Phoenix Gamma]

Yea, there was an ARG maybe a year ago where a few seconds were added. Also, there's an official comic on sites like Escapist and IGN that covers the timeframe between Portal 1 and 2 and talks about Rattman. It's actually really good!

Excursion tubes were rendered pretty moot by the funnels or whatever they're called. No point in adding a feature that's like a less cool-looking version of another feature.
Even still, there were other levels that were yanked out completely that were shown in trailers to make the game easier.

And excursion tubes had the bonus of violently tearing panels off the walls. I was actually really looking forward to that since you could basically replicate the ending, but on a much smaller scale, and anywhere you wanted.

[LordSappington]

They probably realized that clever/retarded players would probably rip off every piece of the walls they could, leaving everything a huge mess. I think it'd also subtract some of the hopeless feel to it; when you're in a test chamber, you're not in control, and being able to rip off panels at your whim might hamper that feeling a little.
That's how I felt, anyways.

[Wiffles]

some things that i didn't think were as cool

Sooo aperture's had portal technology since the 40s? But never sold it or anything for 70 years?

The glados=caroline thing was neat, but it would have been a lot better if they hadn't beaten you over the head with it and outright explained it in the credits song. I would have preferred they left it at glados saying "why do those people look so familiar" when you look at the hidden portrait, and the special turrent saying "she was caroline" if you hold her for a while. then again it's important in explaining why glados saves you at first, but i still would have preferred to have been left wondering. Maybe it's just my latent homosex for marathon that makes me want everything to be a secret.

Also my anus was firmly clenched during the end elevator ride when all the turrets were singing. I expected them to open fire at any moment.


portal gun was actually developed by glados, years after civilization as we know it ended. It was never sold because human kind was almost wiped out during HL1.

Aperture didnt have portals prior to that, only gels and stuff..

took me like 15+ hours to finish the game. because i like looking for small details rather than running through everything ^^

[Phoenix Gamma]

The Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device, originally marketed in the 1950's as an Aperture Science Portable Quantum Tunneling Device, also commonly known as a Portal Gun or by its acronym, "ASHPD", is an experimental tool used to create two portals through which objects can pass.
1950's
Nope.

[Wiffles]

The 50's gun they had was huge and prolly emitted radiation due to its reactor. Glados made the new version though. But yeah it seems dumb for APERTURE to not release it back then... maybe they were looking to refine the design further?

I never really thought how much they retconned the old story of Portal gun being invented after Cave's death. Absolutely makes no business sense, the again Aperture science never made any sense

[LordSappington]

Aperture wasn't about marketing. It was about doing science, because WHY NOT?

[Fathom Zero]

Cave Johnson died and I think a lot of the steam ran out of the company when that happened.

[executioneer]

lets hope valve's steam doesn't run out ha ha ahha oh god kill me

[Wiffles]

OK heres a rational explaination why they didnt sell the portal gun back in the day.. it basically peeled off your skin if you tried to enter it, because a proper portal conducting surface wasnt invented yet... as heard from the audio clips

This was before they invented the Conversion Gel which I assumed they use it to paint their test facilities with too.

Still, they had a portal gun (bulky) and conversion gel back in the 80s. This was also when cave Johnson was terminally ill (due to the convesion gel), so I guess they werent able to market it properly. Carolyn, the new owner of the company probably didnt know what to do with it either.

[LordSappington]

well, I think the biggest reasons they didn't market it were:
1. It was huge, bulky, and unfinished
2. It was horribly unsafe and expensive
3. All Aperture has ever really cared about was just fucking around with science and making new things. The shitloads of money were just a plus to do more science with.