Since no-one else created it, here it is...

I have a question. I am not sure if I finished the game because sound vanished after Glados send me up that elevator. Some turrets are wiggling around but I do not hear anything. Did I finish the actual game? I would watch the outro at Youtube then. 

Once you see the credits. 

SPOILER


The sentries are just singing as you go up, must have bugged if you didn't hear it. 

I liked how the portal gun worked in portal more than how it does. Anyone else have this grievance? 

 

@jt_, I don't see how it works differently...say more?

Also, some of the dialogue is hilarious in this. I also like the new puzzle elements. 

When pointing the gun at a surface, the crosshairs would light up if you could place a portal on it. 

getting the bloke off of the office to do the voice of the droid is a bit meh, as in its a bit cheap. But he does a good job cause he obviously has a good comprehension of the context which he is speaking in. 

When pointing the gun at a surface, the crosshairs would light up if you could place a portal on it.

Yeah, they don't do that, but I personally haven't missed it. It's pretty obvious (at least so far) what surfaces will take a portal and which ones won't. I could easily see why the loss of that would annoy you and others though. 

Was that supposed to sound like you're insulting my mental capabilities? If so, calm down. 

The only thing that was supposed to "sound like" is me agreeing that the feature is a pretty elegant and handy visual cue. People have different playstyles and different likes and dislikes, so I could understand some people really appreciating it, even though it might be less important to others.

From what I've seen of your posts, your mental capabilities are just fine. General sense of persecution and free-floating paranoia might be cranked a little high on this particular day though. If so, calm down. 

The aliens in the new doctor who were creeping me out. I blame that. 

Thanks Bal!


Ok, the ending was absolute bollocks. Not rewarding or even remotely challenging. The moon bit was completely off.

I loved most of the music and sounds. The "func_" induced musical sequences were ace. Subtle background droning was good.

Did not get the Caroline bit in the end. Sure, it was obvious that Glados started out as Caroline (or however) but then it was never mentioned again or subtly hinted at until the end. Felt like random, undeveloped and without any purpose. I'd guess the whole 60s bit was to give a background for Portal 3.

What really annoyed me were the "there is only one way to solve this, even if it seems explorative and 'your' discovery". How often was I clipped away from a solution. And then in other puzzles you had places that magically were not clipped off this time. Or maybe I did find a different way to solve? Eg the 4 turrets you drown in blue fluid near the end. For the final jumps I hopped from a tiny window ledge.

Several times I quit in frustation after staring at a puzzle for too long and not finding a way. Then on the next attempt it often was a no-brainer.

Sometimes it felt really dumped down. Eg when you make the "dangerous jump" by simply keeping to walk. Puzzles sometimes being super simple.

There could have been many more puzzles. Some variations of gameplay elements were only used once or even never I think.

Wheatley's voice was no good. It was a human speaking. Why didn't they apply effects similar to Glados'? Also, having that disgusting prick from Extras in your mind when hearing the voice did not help. Apart from that of course he did a great job.

Potato-Glados' voice was too weak for me to still understand it, it drowned in the background sounds. I had to enable subtitles then. :((

I liked that they waited for speech to end before loading in an elevator.

A bit more time variation for voice-triggers would have been nice. Especially in the beginning it was a bit repetitive. Also Glados felt weird then. (Also, czg == glados! Those insults were proof!)

Beginning felt a bit too "look at all our fancy moving things, look at the rotating bits, everything moves, we are so dynamic!". The frequent loading sucked.

I think it took me about 5-6 hours. But that is a random guess. Always sad how so much detail is just for a 10 second walk-through.

Overall: Story felt undeveloped. Frequent loading was annoying. Gameplay was fun. I expected much better. Good game.


PS: I would love a explorative Quake/Quake3 where you had all the freedom of the ingame physics with the weapons and movement (and not every ledge clipped off). 

You just weren't paying attention. Cave Johnson explained it earlier. 

Right, I forgot about that. Does not change the fact that I felt it felt awkward. 

 

Is there any way to get the developer commentary in a more easy way? I really don't want to play through whole chapters at once without even being able to save. 

So many emotions. There were times, near the beginning, where I was sure I was playing my favourite game of all time. They play with player expectations so skillfully, I could use the word 'meta' without any danger of vomiting. There's the moment when Wheatley asks you to speak, and you're given the spacebar prompt to do so. Knowing that you're playing a classic Valve Silent Protagonist (TM), you're shocked about what's about to happen. Then you press space and jump into the air. If it isn't breaking the 4th wall it's certainly leaning on it, and in the process creating a hilarious moment AND teaching the player how to jump.

It's a funny game. Maybe the funniest game. Wheatley's monologues at the beginning are brilliantly written and delivered, and there's attention to detail in buckets. A highlight for me was the bit where he was up in the rafters, and you only hear snippets of his monologue as you bounce up in the air beside him. Certainly, the first quarter of the game is pretty sublime, and I played it with a grin fixed on my face.

You can probably sense the objection train pulling into the station, toot toot here it comes: Portal 2 has some serious problems. It never again reaches the quality it achieves right off the bat, because a load of things go wrong. The heel turn is clearly a turning point, both because of how annoying a plot point it is, but because it signals the start of the retro Aperture sections.

Firstly, I love the idea of seeing these old-school versions of the company, the idea has a lot of potential, and it certainly has it's moments, but on a whole the environments just aren't that interesting, and the level of detail seems a lot lower than in the modern day... most locations and offices aren't very unique. I was surprised to find so many rooms with nothing of interest in them. Too often what I originally thought was a puzzle was actually an observation test - I'd be figuring out some crazy way of using momentum to get somewhere inaccessible, and then would finally spot some portal-able surface in the far distance. Oh. So I don't have to do anything. Make me think a little!

This is a major problem, the game is way too easy. I understand this is probably the effect of wanting to appeal to the mass-audience, but sex-jokes aside, Portal the first was successful largely due to it's deep and narrow approach to gameplay: take one idea (Portals, momentum) and explore it to it's fullest potential. Portal 2 takes the shallow, scattergun approach (like i did with your mom last night), throwing the bounce gel, the fast gel and the jizz gel at you, and all sorts of light tunnels and thingamajigs as well as everything from the first game, but it never explores anything in depth. You feel like you've jumped a load of knee high walls, rather than having ascended a majestic peak. You rarely feel smart.

Before I stop talking about the middle bit, Cave Johnson. Pretty funny, and he has some great moments. Obviously he's dead though, and as such, doesn't have any relationship with the player. It's increasingly obvious, especially in a game this (relatively) long, that a sound file plays when you enter a room, you move to point B, then sound clip 2 plays. I thought the relationship with Caroline was ripe for some real meaty character stuff, some but alas, no.

The game does pick up again as it returns to the modern day setting. I thought the puzzles got a good bit more challenging, and on completing a good few of them, felt nicely satisfied.

The ending then. To be honest, even though at the time I wasn't that excited about it, I look back at the moon bit and smile. Total wildcard move, pretty ballsy. Kind of a change of tone but pretty fun. The song and the turret bit sucked. The CGI field of wheat bit was nice though. Despite the companion cube coming along for the ride, I thought they did well to keep the meme-y stuff to a minimum. God knows I can't handle another 5 years of people parroting bakery product deceit quotes inanely. 

 

this is a fiver on steam for the next 10 hours if anyone else doesn't have it yet (i must shamefully admit i've been waiting for this day since the release date...) 

Picked it up today, enjoying it so far. The Valve polish is certainly there, the presentation is fantastic.

Nice to see the source engine keeping up to date technology wise also, it looks lovely.

Gameplay wise, well its more Portal ;) I'm not really into puzzle games which is why I didn't pick this up for full price, but for the money I paid I really cannot complain, it is very competently done. 

not sure why its more, but grabbed it. 

At this exact moment in time. Im VERY tempted. 

I wasn't a fan, even though I played through most of it, I think.

Collecting spleens and pornographic playing cards whilst navigating through quest / dialogue trees got me down eventually.

If the game had been half as long but twice as polished it'd have been much better.