Portal 2 PC User Review Backlash

[krotch]

1.) I did not say I liked Call of Duty. In fact, I find it to be a terrible game.

2.) At least the settings are somewhat remotely believable.

One of the games I liked the best from a weapons and gameplay standpoint was the S.T.A.L.K.E.R series. Semi-realistic ballistics, real guns, less emphasis on fast twitching all combined to make it a great game.

Unfortunately it didn't have a particularly good multiplayer ability. I thoroughly enjoyed single player though

The perfect game to me would be as follows:
Start with Counter-Strike.
Update the visuals to modern graphics.
Take the movement and ballistics from S.T.A.L.K.E.R and apply it intelligently to the CS lineup of guns.
Make the guns less accurate than they currently are in CS. Take bullet drop over distance into account.
Tweak it to limit silly things like running and zooming with sniper weapons, etc.

This I would really enjoy playing I think.

Go play Blackhawk Down. Sounds like something you'd enjoy. Sniping is a pain in the ass. You spend forever in a day to get out to a sniper point (I'd spend at least 2-3 minutes running out somewhere. Longest was about 10 mins, as I had to low crawl the whole way), are constantly adjusting your scope for distance, and because of the distance from you to the target, you have to lead them by 10-20 ft. If they turn in 5 ft, you just missed.

Of course, a true sniper crawl is laying flat on the ground. Using only your hands and feet to move. You don't move your leg or arm whatsoever. To sniper crawl a football field would take you an hour or more.

Bullet drop is pointless for most weapons, as you aren't going to be bothering to shoot at real long distances anyways. Unless you're a sniper. My M4 is zeroed for 300m. I'm not bothering to shoot at anything over 500m away, as it's just a waste of ammo. Only reason why I'd shoot past that, is for suppression. As a sniper, you'd get the range, adjust your scope, bam. No worries about bullet drop. Also where's the downtime? Don't I ever have to sit down, spend an hour or two cleaning my weapon? Think a weapon is going to work flawlessly after throwing 500-1000 rounds down range?

Counterstrike is hella unrealistic. The stock maps are extremely short distances, where bullet drop doesn't matter. Full auto or 3 round burst a weapon and you aren't hitting shit at 200m or further. There's no intel gathering, planning, execution, or debriefing. The tactics that some of your best teams in the world use, would never work in the real world. Unless you like to be dead a lot. I never played Stalker, but I'm sure I can rip that one a new asshole in how unrealistic it is too.

The only somewhat realistic thing about games, the setting. The rest is just shit the developers came up with. Hell, even the game that the Army paid to have produced isn't all that realistic.

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

The only somewhat realistic thing about games, the setting. The rest is just shit the developers came up with. Hell, even the game that the Army paid to have produced isn't all that realistic.

Agreed, As I mentioned before:

I partially agree here. Too realistic and it becomes desperately boring.

There is a perfect balance somewhere in there between fast, twitchy and fake, and slow boring and realistic. I think current games fall a little bit too much on the twitchy fake side, but they are better than games of the past.

Too unrealistic - however - (magic, zombies, one guy mowing down hundreds of enemies without ever getting hurt and carrying 7 different weapons with him wherever he goes) and I just can't get into it.

As I said before, there is a line, with twitchy fast paced unrealistic gameplay on one end, and realistic slow and dreadfully boring gameplay on the other.

A good game will fall somewhere in between. Excatly where will depend on taste, but for my tastes, most games (counterstrike included) fall too close to the fast paced twitchy side of the line, but they are better today than during the Doom/Quake/UT days.

 

[JayteeBates]

I had a decent few hours playing it. Took me about 8 hours overall with some breaks.

 

[krotch]

Agreed, As I mentioned before:



Too unrealistic - however - (magic, zombies, one guy mowing down hundreds of enemies without ever getting hurt and carrying 7 different weapons with him wherever he goes) and I just can't get into it.

As I said before, there is a line, with twitchy fast paced unrealistic gameplay on one end, and realistic slow and dreadfully boring gameplay on the other.

A good game will fall somewhere in between. Excatly where will depend on taste, but for my tastes, most games (counterstrike included) fall too close to the fast paced twitchy side of the line, but they are better today than during the Doom/Quake/UT days.

I play games. Too unrealistic, somewhat realistic. Whatever. I can enjoy them all. I didn't get into Q3 or UT, until I had more gaming oriented equipment. Mostly just a better mousepad and better mouse. Trying to use a cheap $10 ball mouse wasn't great. Neither was a cheap $10 optical mouse. Once I finally broke down and got a nice $50 high dpi mouse, I started enjoying them more.

 

[DrRockzo]

this game is smart, fun, and mind blowing all at the same time.

well worth the $35 I paid on amazon to get it on release day.

anyone calling it a console port is (A) a troll and (B) hasn't played it. the menus are the same as L4D2, the settings are the same as every Valve game. The only valid criticism as far as how the game is made is that Valve is still using an old ass engine. That being said, the engine still looks great.

The settings are not the same. It's missing a FOV option at the very least. It's also missing any challenge or advanced maps that might require quick and accurate responses not suited to a controller.

 

[Unknown-One]

Still waiting for them to fix the crosshair.

If you the aspect ratio of your monitor (or combined aspect ratio of your group of monitors) is too wide, the crosshair vanishes. This would be VERY frustrating for precision shots in Portal 1, but Portal 2 doesn't seem to have any of those...


Oh, and they removed the option to disable Portal Funneling (which was available in Portal 1).

Portal Funneling grabs you mid-air and nudges you into portal automatically, sometimes in ways that mess up multi-portal jumps horribly. It's also cheapens the game greatly, since you nolonger have to be as accurate with your portals for things to work right. I imagine this was done to make it easier for console players to get portals into positions that work with their less-accurate controls.

 

[DrRockzo]

Still waiting for them to fix the crosshair.

If you the aspect ratio of your monitor (or combined aspect ratio of your group of monitors) is too wide, the crosshair vanishes. This would be VERY frustrating for precision shots in Portal 1, but Portal 2 doesn't seem to have any of those...


Oh, and they removed the option to disable Portal Funneling (which was available in Portal 1).

Portal Funneling grabs you mid-air and nudges you into portal automatically, sometimes in ways that mess up multi-portal jumps horribly. It's also cheapens the game greatly, since you nolonger have to be as accurate with your portals for things to work right. I imagine this was done to make it easier for console players to get portals into positions that work with their less-accurate controls.

Not to mention it seems like all the surfaces where you can shoot a portal in #2 have a pre-determined grid for where they will land. They can only be perfectly vertical or horizontal, and only in the spots on that invisible grid usually. This was not so in Portal 1 and I felt like I had a lot more freedom to do thing the way I wanted to.

 

[krotch]

I mentioned that same thing earlier. Guess I wasn't the only one to notice it.

 

[Gorankar]

Not to mention it seems like all the surfaces where you can shoot a portal in #2 have a pre-determined grid for where they will land. They can only be perfectly vertical or horizontal, and only in the spots on that invisible grid usually. This was not so in Portal 1 and I felt like I had a lot more freedom to do thing the way I wanted to.

Some areas seem to have that, while others do not. It does not even make sense why, so far as I can tell. In some areas I can understand it being part of the aim assist system for controllers, and in other areas it seems pointless to force it into a grid, and yet others do not force it into a grid at all. Aside from being very mildly annoying, that it is either used or not used universally/where it makes sense to me, it is no game breaker or anything.

 

[DrRockzo]

Some areas seem to have that, while others do not. It does not even make sense why, so far as I can tell. In some areas I can understand it being part of the aim assist system for controllers, and in other areas it seems pointless to force it into a grid, and yet others do not force it into a grid at all. Aside from being very mildly annoying, that it is either used or not used universally/where it makes sense to me, it is no game breaker or anything.

Yeah, it's not absolutely every where and I agree that it isn't a game breaker. However something that is everywhere is the grid that makes all portals be either perfectly vertical or horizontal. I suppose this may be because there are no puzzles that benefit from having your portal rotated in a certain direction. It just seems like more evidence of dumbed down puzzles.