The Portal 2 Thread **Warning May Contain Spoilers**

dj_2004 said:
That was one of my favorite parts of the game, and the song is lovely.

Is there any information about the "I'm different" turret? When you meet it again and pick it up before it is be destroyed, it goes on about Caroline and what is below (the old testing facility). I wonder if it was a previous employee used as a test subject...
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Serpico said:
I think...

...it might be that the turret uses some of Glados' AI. They share the same voice, after all, and Glados' AI is part Caroline. Notice that the turret also says "get mad" and "make lemonade", both Cave Johnson-isms. It think it also made a moon reference, I don't remember exactly at the moment. Either way, lots of foreshadowing for people who have played the game before and are now making a second run through the game or achievement hunting. :)
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Yeah I was thinking the same thing almost - GLaDOS is Carline. To some degree anyway. I remember in one of Cave's recordings that he wanted Caroline's personality to be put on a disk and used as the A.I. if his couldn't. With Cave getting sick and dying is why I think GLaDOS is Caroline.
 
Proxy said:
Yeah I was thinking the same thing almost - GLaDOS is Carline. To some degree anyway. I remember in one of Cave's recordings that he wanted Caroline's personality to be put on a disk and used as the A.I. if his couldn't. With Cave getting sick and dying is why I think GLaDOS is Caroline.
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Yeah, to a degree. Remember that Glados deleted the part of her that was Caroline at the end of the game once she had "learned her lesson". :)
 
Serpico said:
You must have blasted through the game. Six hours for an initial playthrough seems to be the minimum for most.

Knowing all of the solutions ahead of time and not stopping to enjoy all of the dialogue and story, I can see blasting through single player in something like three hours just based on quantity of puzzles alone. Four hours on a first playthrough seems like it is on the extreme extreme end of a bell curve (or you used a walkthrough, haha)
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Nah didn't use a walkthrough or know the puzzles ahead of time (except for the ones they copied from portal 1), to be honest only a few had to make me think, the answer to a great deal of them was obvious so it was just a matter of going through the motions of putting the portals in the right place and running about.

I'm pretty good at spatial puzzles, I do a lot of physical puzzles like the Rubik's Cube and stuff like that, I would say I'm probably intermediate at stuff like that, if you're intermediate or above at spatial puzzles the game basically isn't very long.
 
PrincessFrosty said:
I think fanboyism has kind of run rampant here, portal was a cool little game, more of a tech demo really, and surprised us all I think, which was refreshing. But Portal 2 as a full £30 price point falls way short. The quality of the experience is not significantly higher than some other game where you might spend 60-70 hours like DAO or Fallout New Vegas, them games excel in many ways where Portal 2 falls flat on its face.
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I like how you're drawing comparisons between the campaigns of a couple of cRPGs and a puzzle based FPS. You could make the exact same argument about every FPS ever made. Bioshock is only 8 hours, must be a piece of shit. Half-Life 2, well that only took me 10 hours, garbage.

Portal 2 should not have been any longer than it was. That was part of the beauty of the first game: it was short and condensed awesomeness. Many long games drag on and on at parts and it just gets tedious and annoying to play them. A puzzle game in particular can fall into a few traps:

1) Reusing the same mechanics too much. Portal 2 does a wonderful job of bringing in new mechanics and restyling old ones so that they don't feel repetitive. It also does a great job of mixing them all together toward the end in mosaic puzzles.

2) Getting too damn hard. Nobody wants to do really, really challenging puzzle in the single player campaign. Nobody wants to get stuck for hours trying to figure a puzzle out, nor do they want to have to use a strategy guide.

3) The converse of the previous problem, staying too easy for too long. Portal 2 falls a little bit into this trap primarily because they have so many mechanics to introduce the player to. You end up doing a lot of trivially easy puzzles that just feel like bullshit filler.

As far as I'm concerned, the coop should be standard fare for all players and it's a good 4 or 5 hours more even if you coordinate directly with a competent friend. I'm very excited to see custom maps for the coop as well. Challenge maps for Portal always felt unfulfilling for me because they don't fit into any larger context and you can't share them with a friend.
 
I'm not saying it's a piece of shit, that's blowing what I'm saying out of proportion. What I'm saying is that without some kind of additional benefit to cover the fact that it's so short, it's not worth the full price point.
 
It was a short game IMO. Though to the game's credit, it left me craving more. I can't say the same thing about playing through the recent Call of Duty games, or many other recent single player games I've played. The atmosphere, dialogue, characters...they're all top-notch.

If they treat Portal/Portal 2 like they are treating the Left 4 Dead games, I can see myself playing for a long time and getting as much, if not more, of my money's worth as I did with TF2 and UT2k4 (>300hrs and >800hrs respectively)
 
Hmm, just tried to play co-op with my son. Me on PC and him on PS3, but I guess you can't do that playing on the same Steam profile..? Understandable, but still gay since we can play split screen on the same profile. At least give us the option for a LAN game..
 
PrincessFrosty said:
Oh ouch, completed in a hair over 4 hours.

If you're a puzzle fanatic and you're looking for something to get you thinking I honestly wouldn't recommend this, if you're intermediate or above you'll blast through the game in no time. Of the 4 hours I think probably only 3 were actual gameplay, between the loading, the generic entrance/exit areas and the "on rails" section where you're essentially just following a linear path, that's about 1 hour of the game.
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If you're measuring your playtime by the Steam time, it's probably wrong.

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/04/20/portal-2-in-4-hours-the-steam-timer-is-a-lie/
 
PrincessFrosty said:
Oh ouch, completed in a hair over 4 hours.

If you're a puzzle fanatic and you're looking for something to get you thinking I honestly wouldn't recommend this, if you're intermediate or above you'll blast through the game in no time. Of the 4 hours I think probably only 3 were actual gameplay, between the loading, the generic entrance/exit areas and the "on rails" section where you're essentially just following a linear path, that's about 1 hour of the game.
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Yeah...you are way, way off on this.
 
T4rd said:
Hmm, just tried to play co-op with my son. Me on PC and him on PS3, but I guess you can't do that playing on the same Steam profile..? Understandable, but still gay since we can play split screen on the same profile. At least give us the option for a LAN game..
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Yea ... why would you be able to on the same profile? You can't play on the same profile regardless.

The extra copy Valve gives you is merely a "get" to have you get interested in Valve's huge PC business.
 
Yea, the stats are a bit buggy. Steam stopped recording my achievements about 1/3 of the way through the game. So the game is complete, but I only have 4 achievements or so.
 
Serpico said:
There were so many laugh out loud moments in this game. The cap on it for me was the

ANIMAL KING appearance at the end. It was the most bizarre thing I saw in a game full of bizarre things, and this was right after the lunacy of shooting a portal at moon and blasting Wheatley into space.

WTF are they smoking at Valve?
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It's called Charlie Sheen. Yes, there is actually kush called Charlie Sheen.
 
Guy on Speed Demos Archive ran through the game and finished it up in 2 hours counting load screens) without using any glitches or skips...

why do people think 4 hours is impossible?
 
exactly

also...WOW's best Paladin in the World dinged lvl 85 in 5 hours.

When asked about it, this is what he said:

"This achievement is not my own; I merely did it to bring attention to the scientific findings I will be unveiling soon."
 
If I don't get at least 2 hours playtime per $10 spent on a game, the game is worthless.

That's why I love FarCry 2 so much.
 
silasbear said:
If I don't get at least 2 hours playtime per $10 spent on a game, the game is worthless.

That's why I love FarCry 2 so much.
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I played about 4 hours of FC2 before quitting. Not quite the worst $50 I've ever spent on a game, but close.
 
HohnyF said:
exactly

also...WOW's best Paladin in the World dinged lvl 85 in 5 hours.

When asked about it, this is what he said:

"This achievement is not my own; I merely did it to bring attention to the scientific findings I will be unveiling soon."
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You realize that you are referring to one of the greatest trolls on the internet, right?

Still, <3 that you brought Athene into this, the guy is so fucking hilarious. He is trolling the Starcraft 2 and League Of Legends communities now and it is incredible.
 
Serpico said:
You realize that you are referring to one of the greatest trolls on the internet, right?

Still, <3 that you brought Athene into this, the guy is so fucking hilarious. He is trolling the Starcraft 2 and League Of Legends communities now and it is incredible.
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He was #1 in his Battlegroup,
and he holds at least 3, if not all fastest levels progressions.
1-->60-->70-->80-->85

So it's not just empty words


--
You're pro or you're a noob.

That's life
 
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HohnyF said:
He was #1 in his Battlegroup,
and he holds at least 3, if not all fastest levels progressions.
1-->60-->70-->80-->85

So it's not just empty words
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Really? See, I'm positive that his SC2 ranks are bullshit, and his LoL videos are just that, lol, but man is he great at trolling those communities.

I don't play WoW like I do those other games, so I didn't pay attention to how legit he was at that game. If you say that he was that great in that game, I'll take your word for it.

You're pro or you're a noob.

That's life
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\m/ \m/ \m/ :D
 
Yay, just finished co-op. I suppose I can go achievement hunting now.
 
Just beat the game. The ending was fantastic and the method was unexpected. Took me about 8 hours to beat. I feel it was worth the price tag, especially with a coop campaign to try at some point as well. Plus I'm sure the developer commentary will be interesting.

Maybe I have severe memory loss after all of the tests but I can't recall the suction tubes making any appearances in the SP? Looked like a fun mechanic so I was disappointed to not see them. Oh well, guess I just gotta wait for one of my friends to buy the game and try coop. I also didn't really find any Ratman hideouts after Wheatley took over the lab. I guess I was too busy looking at the scenery.

Also, I thought Valve missed out on a golden HL tie in opportunity. The lab in the beginning is falling apart and being reclaimed by nature. So throw in an ant lion or barnacle appearance!
 
Maybe it's just my bad memory, but I felt that the few beginning tests had a far superior immersiveness than, say, the jungles in Crysis. Even though the vegetation was far less den,se, the ivy-like plant growth and ambient sound effects made the experience very authentic. I would love to see some continuation of that in Valve's future games.
 
PrincessFrosty said:
No I'm not, I timed it myself.
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So you timed yourself playing through a game to an accuracy of minutes? I hope you won't try to claim that this did not affect how you played. Plus, you've been saying that you're very good at puzzles, so how exactly are those four hours a meaningful metric? I took almost twice as long, like most other people seem to, and played it with the intention of taking it all in rather than getting to the finish line. I claim that that's probably more relevant to people who are wondering if the game is worth their money. A friend of mine got it before me and was still playing it the last time I checked, but she's also a more casual gamer. So there's that, too.
 
amorpheus said:
So you timed yourself playing through a game to an accuracy of minutes? I hope you won't try to claim that this did not affect how you played. Plus, you've been saying that you're very good at puzzles, so how exactly are those four hours a meaningful metric? I took almost twice as long, like most other people seem to, and played it with the intention of taking it all in rather than getting to the finish line. I claim that that's probably more relevant to people who are wondering if the game is worth their money. A friend of mine got it before me and was still playing it the last time I checked, but she's also a more casual gamer. So there's that, too.
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Did I give my play time to an accuracy of minutes? I said a hair over 4 hours.

It's a meaningful metric because I gave it in the context of my skill level which I said was probably intermediate. my intention was not to beat it as fast as possible, in fact I actually took some time to reach all the secret areas which I spotted on the way through, just to see the trademark scribbles on the walls, although like most peoples first play through I probably didn't get all of them.

You hit the nail on the head when you talk about casual gaming, it's seated squarely within the realm of casual game, what I'm saying is that as a puzzle game fan this doesn't deliver which is a shame. Still it was a laugh, I'll buy this game for sure, just when it drops in price to match it's length.
 
It's not a casual game just because it can be finished it very quickly. Most gamers seem to take twice as long as you did, and for casuals it will last even longer. If you argue that way, any game which casuals get more playtime out of is a casual one... which is pretty much every game, ever.

One point I can agree with is the challenge as puzzle game, if you look at it that way. I've been more interested in the experience as a whole, only part of which are the puzzles.

PrincessFrosty said:
Did I give my play time to an accuracy of minutes? I said a hair over 4 hours.
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Which you can only do when you know it with that sort of accuracy, which is all I was getting at. Looking at the general feedback, four hours is incredibly low, so there's no way your claims of mediocre skill are true without actually skipping parts of the game. Since you played the game after complaining about the length in advance I'm having additional trouble taking your claims at face value.
 
I love how anyone saying that they don't feel it was worth the money is being swarmed by people demanding justification. It's like people aren't allowed to do anything but gush over Valve games.
 
It's a casual game because it's a puzzle game with no difficult puzzles in it, some of the later ones require a little thought before you act but generally speaking there's no real challenge in there, just as they're done with the simple puzzles which explain the game mechanic they switch to another mechanic rather than actually doing some advanced puzzles.

Meh, well maybe closer to advanced skill level, at least with regard to FPS puzzle games which require an element of FPS skills since I've been playing FPS for about 14-15 years now, I certainly didn't skip any parts of the game. The complaints about length stem from Portal 1 which is apparently 4 odd hours of game play but which lasted me about an hour an 20 minutes. That's the reason why I timed my play through of Portal 2 because I knew the claims of a decent length single player were probably untrue at least in my case, and I find it hard to justify the full price point at the estimated play time, much less the true play time. Borrowing the game instead of buying it paid off, I'd be seriously pissed off right now had I dropped £30 on the game.
 
The funny thing is that Portal also took me just 1,5h to complete on Monday. Interesting that we can differ so much on the sequel.

Jellylesg said:
I love how anyone saying that they don't feel it was worth the money is being swarmed by people demanding justification. It's like people aren't allowed to do anything but gush over Valve games.
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I'll gladly accept any opinion, it's just the ones presented as fact that I have a problem with. Most people seem to take as long to complete Portal 2 as they do with any linear FPS game, some are faster, some are slower. I'm also sure that many complaints are based on what Steam shows, and for me that number is at least two hours off.
 
KENNYB said:
It's called Charlie Sheen. Yes, there is actually kush called Charlie Sheen.
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Winning!

PrincessFrosty said:
No I'm not, I timed it myself.
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Personally, I don't think the completion time is really relevant.

Derangel said:
I played about 4 hours of FC2 before quitting. Not quite the worst $50 I've ever spent on a game, but close.
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I played that game for 15 minutes before almost throwing my monitor out the window. I pre-ordered that POS, so I felt like twice the asshole for purchasing it.

So far, I'm digging Portal 2 and not regretting my purchase at all.

"We've both made some choices that you'll regret."

Do you think GladOs is just a tad bit pissed? :D
 
vasta said:
Guy on Speed Demos Archive ran through the game and finished it up in 2 hours counting load screens) without using any glitches or skips...

why do people think 4 hours is impossible?
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For Portal2? Already? Hell, the world record for the original Portal is still 10 minutes from when you wake up to destroying the last core.


Edit: Yeah just checked, Portal 2 is not on SDA yet.
 
PrincessFrosty said:
Was that your first ever play through of portal 1?
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Nope, it was the third complete one I think. Already knew all the answers and could go pretty much straight through. First one was maybe a little under three hours. I've never heard that it supposedly takes four.
 
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