Chindie Posted April 19, 2011 VT Supporter Share Posted April 19, 2011 Didn't get our delivery today. Damnit. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The_Rev Posted April 19, 2011 Share Posted April 19, 2011 My review of the first hour or so: That is all. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
P3te Posted April 20, 2011 Share Posted April 20, 2011 finally managed to put some words to this. portal 2 review If there was ever any doubt as to how eagerly anticipated Portal 2 has been in the past few months, one need only look at the unbelievable hype that spread like wildfire through the internet late last week when Valve hinted at the fact that the game could see an early release. The potato driven madness that followed resulted in some of the craziest game related conspiracy theories we have ever laid eyes upon, as fanboys the length and breadth of the globe tried their best to uncover the secrets hidden within Valve’s latest ARG and help push forward the release of Portal 2. Whether your view is that it was a legitimate fan participation exercise by Valve, or merely a very clever viral campaign used to boost Steam sales of select indie titles, the fact of the matter is that it was a glorious success. And now, after all the hype, it’s finally here. When you’re following from on a hugely successful new IP, it’s imperative that you strike the correct balance between offering existing fans exactly what they want, and making the game as accessible as possible to the countless newcomers who are bound to get swept up in the marketing madness. But when the original game was something as fresh and innovative as Portal, the tried and tested sequel rules go right out the window. What Valve have done here is nothing short of masterful. They’ve covered all the bases with apparent ease, delivering what will surely go down as one of the best sequels of all time. Everything that made the original so good is back and has been greatly improved, while the new additions go above and beyond what anyone could have reasonably expected. Given that the first game was little more than an experiment, as Valve’s Chet Faliszek admitted in our interview with him earlier this year, the aim was always to push on to bigger and better things – but with that came the risk of diluting everything that made the original Portal so special. If Valve had screwed up in any real way with this title, their legacy would have been tainted forever. They didn’t. And it hasn’t. Portal 2 follows on from the events of the original, and you reprise your role as Chell who has been awoken from countless years of stasis following her deactivation of her newly found arch nemesis GLaDOS, the darkly comedic supervising robot of the Aperture Testing Facility. Armed with just a portal gun and your wits, you again find yourself thrust into a series of tests while seeking a way to disable GLaDOS for good – however, this time around things are slightly different. The first half of Portal 2’s single player campaign plays out very much along the same lines as the original. After being reactivated GLaDOS is understandably unimpressed with her “murder” at the hands of Chell, and has decided to put her through an endless chain of increasingly more difficult tests to exact revenge in typically sadistic style. In order to accommodate players who were unfamiliar with the first title, the early stages are quite pedestrian by Portal standards, easing newcomers into the mechanics of the portal gun system. For those of you who are unfamiliar with how it works, it’s actually rather simple. Your portal gun shoots two different types of portal. The first is a blue one, the second orange, each assigned to a trigger on the controller. Once you have deployed both a blue and orange portal, you’ll be able to instantaneously transport yourself from one to the other simply by walking, jumping or falling through. At its most basic, that is essentially all there is to Portal. Obviously things are made a little more complicated by virtue of the various puzzles set for you including automated gun turrets, highly focussed laser beams and the increasingly useful Weighted Companion Cube – just a swanky way of saying a box. Using the Portal gun’s tertiary function, gravity manipulation, you’ll be able to carry these Weighted Companion Cubes around your various testing chambers in order to use them to solve puzzles enabling you to progress to the next room. It doesn’t sound all that impressive, we know, but when you witness it in full flow it’s truly a sight to behold. Portal 2 is as much a lateral thinking experiment as it is a video game. Every ounce of your gray matter will be required to successfully navigate your way through each chamber, with new ideas and suggestions on how best to utilise the functions of the portal gun introduced at regular intervals. Very quickly the game becomes as much about figuring out how best to manipulate the in-game physics to your own advantage as it is about thinking linearly. Very few games stimulate the thought centres of the brain as Portal 2, just like very few games possess the ability to leave you feeling incredibly stupid after finally solving a puzzle that has had you stumped for half an hour (or the best part of 9 hours in my case, damn you chapter 6). “Why didn’t I think of that earlier” is just as common a reaction as “God damn you Valve you evil geniuses” during gameplay, although both tend to follow other thoughts so full of graphic and explicit terminology that we daren’t commit them to print on a family website. Portal 2 takes everything the original game established and expands upon it in ways you never thought possible. There are fleeting moments early on where you get glimpses of what is to follow later, when the game takes an unexpected twist into exploratory waters. The feeling of being able to run around the facility without needing to outsmart GLaDOS’s tests feels almost overwhelmingly fresh within the confines of the established game world. Assisted by Wheatley, a dim witted robot voiced by Ricky Gervais’ sidekick and all round funny man Stephen Merchant, whose job it was to look after the thousands of test subjects held in stasis following GLaDOS’s demise (a population reduced to just one after a minor mishap stemming from inadequate power being supplied to the essential life support systems) your escape unfortunately hits a slight setback when freedom is within touching distance. And by slight setback I mean Wheatley reactivates GLaDOS… and boy is she pissed at you! Eventually though, thanks to the bumbling Wheatley actually managing to do something right for a change, you manage to get the best of GLaDOS and escape into the bowels of the Aperture facility. While you would typically expect this to be near the culmination of the campaign, it actually marks somewhere around the midway point. Unlike the somewhat short lived original, Portal 2 is quite substantial. Even if you’re one of the lucky few whose brain is perfectly wired for this sort of challenge you’ll likely find yourself racking up somewhere in the region of 8 hours for a complete play through (assuming of course you stop to take in some of the sights and sounds on offer). If, like me, you’re prone to bouts of complete idiocy, you can expect to lose somewhere in the region of 15-20 hours to your first complete play, which isn’t really ideal when you’re trying to beat a deadline, let me tell you. On top of all those lovely hours of new gameplay, Valve have been kind enough to introduce some all new concepts to the game. Those of you who have been following the title closely in the past few months will no doubt already be aware of the inclusion of Repulsion, Propulsion and Conversion gels, coloured blue, orange and white respectively. Each of these gels has its own distinct properties that prove to be conveniently handy when it comes to getting around the game world from the second half of the campaign onwards. The Repulsion gel converts regular hard surfaces into violently repellent ones, acting in much the same way as you’d expect a big goopy blue trampoline to. The obvious applications here are to enable you to reach previously inaccessible areas by virtue of “bouncing” atop the Repulsion gel – although as you progress, you’ll need to think a little harder about the best way to utilise it. Propulsion gel is used to speed up the relative velocity of anything that touches it, accelerating Chell or anything that happens to come into contact with it to breakneck speeds, giving you the ability to traverse huge distances with a single leap – or smash face first into a wall really, really fast. Finally, Conversion gel allows you to turn non-portal friendly surfaces into the perfect site for your latest traversable gateway. This comes in particularly handy later on in the game where appropriate surfaces are conveniently less common. Taken individually, the new gels are a good idea, but when thrown into the already established mix they’re nothing short of a masterstroke on Valve’s behalf. They have enabled huge changes to the in-game dynamics, as well as opening up the potential for a huge number of new puzzle types allowing the twisted bastards who design the levels a whole new suite of tools to work with. For many, one of the most memorable features of the original game was its wonderfully dark sense of humour. GLaDOS’s brutally judgemental and over the top sarcasm proved a real driving force behind the game’s narrative, and you’ll be happy to learn that this is another area where things have really gone into overdrive. Within the first few hours of the single player campaign, there are countless laugh out loud moments, mainly stemming from GLaDOS’s stone cold delivery of some of the most cutting one-liners ever heard in a video game, but also helped in part by Merchant’s enjoyable stint as Wheatley. The humour does die down a little in near the end, but when it raises its head again you just know you’re going to be in for a real treat. Arguably the most important addition to the Portal universe with this sequel has been the addition of co-operative mode. Claimed by Valve to be the single most requested feature following the release of the first game, the team have done an excellent job in putting everything together in such a way that promotes not only teamwork and co-operation, but also screwing with your partner in the most inconvenient of ways, just as they’re about to reach a goal or milestone, purely because you can. And because it’s funny. Although they may not necessarily think so. The puzzles within the surprisingly substantial co-operative mode put even the best from the single player campaign to shame with their ingenuity and, in many cases, dastardliness. The main thing to remember here is that you are part of a team – failing to act in such a way (aside from the occasional hilarious portal beneath your partner’s feet when he’s not looking, of course) will lead to complete and utter failure of the task at hand. The best bet here, initially at least, is to stick to playing with people you know – at least until you grasp the basics enough to feel confident enough to jump into the big bad and often foul mouthed world of strangers that awaits you. If you’re the strong silent type (or you just hate talking during online gaming, like me) then you’ll get quite a bit of use out of the handy market system implemented by Valve. Obviously aware that not everyone enjoys the delights of conversing with faceless strangers while staring intently at a TV screen in the hope that nobody walks into the room at that moment, Valve have to be commended for taking the chance on such an unproven system in order to make the game accessible to everyone. Assuming you and your partner pay attention, these context sensitive markers will just about do the bare minimum to communicate your intentions, making progress possible, although in reality it’s a hundred times better actually talking, you know, with your voice. The co-op mode introduces us to two brand new characters, P-Body – a turret gun – and Atlas – a modified personality core, like Wheatley from the single player mode. Rather than trying to shoehorn this new style of play into the existing single player format and storyline, Valve have instead gone with the approach of creating an entirely new one specific to the mode. The interactions between the two robots, coupled with GLaDOS’s never ending stream of sarcastic abuse never fail to raise a smile as you make your way through the Co-operative Testing Initiative. We could very well be looking at a brand new gaming double act, and if the reception of the game’s early trailers are anything to go by, they look likely to go on to be every bit as GLaDOS was after the first game was released. If you forced me pick an area where Portal 2 fails to excel, I’d probably be inclined to point my finger at the graphics. Now, don’t get me wrong, this is not one of those “oh the graphics are crap, don’t bother with it” rants you would normally associate with the most pathetic dregs on the internet, this is merely an observation that the ageing engine is surely approaching the end of its shelf life. The physics are absolutely spot on, that’s not in question, but the game lacks the sheen and finesse of some more modern titles. It’s perfectly serviceable, and there are still plenty of moments that manage to take ones breath away, but remember, you did force me! With two lengthy and thoroughly enjoyable campaigns on offer here, alongside some of the best writing ever seen in a video game, Portal 2 takes all that was good about the original and turns it up to eleven. It does have a few moments that could possibly have been signposted a little better (or at least an option to turn on an “I’m really stupid and I’ve spent an hour on this bit and I’m still stuck” help system of some description), but usually taking a break from the game will be enough to get you back on track when you try to tackle things again from a new perspective. All the new additions work brilliantly, from the new characters to the three gels, and the fact that it actually feels like a real game now as opposed to an all too brief experiment just proves how good a development studio Valve are. While you’d perhaps have feared that Portal 2 couldn’t possibly live up to expectations if it were made by anyone other than Valve, the delightful reality is that they’ve actually managed to exceed them. If this is the sort of improvement we’re going to be looking at with each additional iteration of Portal, then bring on Portal 3! Hell, I won’t even complain if that one sees a 6 month delay too! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hogso Posted April 20, 2011 Share Posted April 20, 2011 PC fanboys are demonstrating their rage at day 1 DLC and a 'short' single player by giving the game low scores on metacritic :| Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
P3te Posted April 20, 2011 Share Posted April 20, 2011 the single player isnt short, its all a load of crap. its just an effort from some fanboy forum to drag the score down. theyre claiming a 4 hour sp campaign, but its nothing close to that short Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phumfeinz Posted April 21, 2011 Share Posted April 21, 2011 the single player isnt short, its all a load of crap. its just an effort from some fanboy forum to drag the score down. theyre claiming a 4 hour sp campaign, but its nothing close to that short Maybe if you know exactly what you are doing at all times yeah, but for a first run it takes a bit longer. Just completed it by the way, it was pretty good. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
IainG Posted April 21, 2011 Share Posted April 21, 2011 Steam tells me I was playing for 11 hours by the time I finished. The last few moments are incredible. Never worked out which bit you were talking about P3te... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
P3te Posted April 21, 2011 Share Posted April 21, 2011 Steam tells me I was playing for 11 hours by the time I finished. The last few moments are incredible. Never worked out which bit you were talking about P3te... the entrance to the old aperture lab Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phumfeinz Posted April 21, 2011 Share Posted April 21, 2011 The last few moments are incredible. For real. 'Oh that's a nice touch, I finally get to see the outside. Hmm, I wonder... *ping* holyshit' Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Risso Posted April 21, 2011 Share Posted April 21, 2011 Just purchased this, will be giving it a crack tonight. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The_Rev Posted April 21, 2011 Share Posted April 21, 2011 http://steamcommunity.com/id/Nayson/ Add me on Steam if you want. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kiddybloke Posted April 22, 2011 Share Posted April 22, 2011 Amazing game from start to finish. One of the best games ive played. The feeling of satisfaction you get when you solve one of the harder puzzles is something you almost never get from video games. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ingram85 Posted April 22, 2011 Share Posted April 22, 2011 SPOILERS! Been playing the single campaign for about 3 and a half hours so far and am on chamber 19 (i think) so these claims of a 4 hour story are just bitter childish nonsense. The beauty of the game made itself apparent to me this morning, was stuck on room 19 (you got a lone turret at the back behind cover, a light bridge going up to the ceiling in the middle of the room, laser & exit on left, cube switch at back over some water etc.), anyway, tried for 45 minutes to work it out. I managed to get the 2 cubes, have directed the laser halfway but when going to redirect the beam again i keep getting shot, for the life of me, i couldnt work out how to direct the beam and get out the firing line quick enough so i gave up & went to bed. Woke up this morning, eureka! Use one of 2 cubes to direct laser towards turret to blow it up. Feel so stupid that something so simple eluded me for so long. This really is, well so far anyway, shaping up to become the best game of this generation of consoles for me. Stunning. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Risso Posted April 22, 2011 Share Posted April 22, 2011 Started the game last night, but I was too far too tired and couldn't concentrate on it properly, so expect my initial non plussed reaction probably wasn't fair. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chindie Posted April 22, 2011 VT Supporter Share Posted April 22, 2011 Not even managed to put in the console yet. Sort of savouring it I think. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
IainG Posted April 22, 2011 Share Posted April 22, 2011 Ingram, I had exactly the same issue on that test. I tried approaching the turret from every angle before working it out. I kicked myself when I worked it out... I think that's the genius of the game. Later problems are so complex, but the solutions are insanely simple. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ingram85 Posted April 22, 2011 Share Posted April 22, 2011 Ingram, I had exactly the same issue on that test. I tried approaching the turret from every angle before working it out. I kicked myself when I worked it out... I think that's the genius of the game. Later problems are so complex, but the solutions are insanely simple. Glad im not the only one yeah thats definitely the beauty of it, it drives you mad but its out of your own stupidity rather than the game itself. Just escaped, got to a big gate now with two switches each side with a countdown clock on them, stumped again Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phumfeinz Posted April 22, 2011 Share Posted April 22, 2011 It's almost as if you need to be in two places at the same time. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ingram85 Posted April 22, 2011 Share Posted April 22, 2011 It's almost as if you need to be in two places at the same time. DING! D'oh. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GarethRDR Posted April 22, 2011 Share Posted April 22, 2011 "I'm in space. SPAAAAAACCCCCEEEEEEE!" Best. Game. EVER. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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