Portal 2 Review

Sylocat

Sci-Fi & Shakespeare
Nov 13, 2007
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Memo to the fans: Please don't come crying to me when the game doesn't live up to your impossible expectations.
 

Sonic Doctor

Time Lord / Whack-A-Newbie!
Jan 9, 2010
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Sober Thal said:
Russ Pitts said:
Portal 2 Review

The indie darling returns in a AAA sequel, but is it still good enough for science?

Read Full Article
Three times the originals length is vague. How long is the single player?

EDIT: Seriously, swear on your companion cube the single player is over 8 hours long. Please??
Well considering that it took me a little over 3 hours to beat the first Portal, and Russ says that each act is as long as the first Portal, I'm willing to bet that the single player is almost 10 hours long. But of course, it is a puzzle game, so it will take as long as how good each player is at solving the puzzles.
 

mikev7.0

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Jan 25, 2011
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Wow that review came out fast for still being a great review! Puzzles aren't as challenging huh? Glados is offline too? Hmmmmmmmmmm Looks like lots of new features though, and a cool co-op mode where you each control a hand? What's that? Jonathan Coulton has a NEW song in this??

SOLD.

Pleaseusethezendrum,pleaeusethezendrum....
 

duchaked

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Dec 25, 2008
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Metcarfre said:
Queue immediate complaints that you 'didn't really play it' because this was the 360 version.
What ever, this is nothing. I am so exci ted about play ing Portal 2 with Move be cause that would be awe some.

/sarcastic deadpan voice

;p honestly, my friend got it (for 360) and I will be playing co-op with him in a day's time to see how the sequel measures up
 

duchaked

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Dec 25, 2008
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Xzi said:
Load times virtually non-existent on a decent PC. So you can knock that negative off the list for the smart ones among us. :D
well excuuuse me if I'm dumb cuz I only own a kinda old laptop that cries if I run anything modern lol
 

KarlMonster

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Mar 10, 2009
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Russ Pitts said:
Although the story is full of the same psychotic charm that made the original so much fun, it suffers from having too much game upon which to spread so little. ... But the interaction (or lack thereof) with a succession of disembodied voices wears out its welcome well before the end, leaving the puzzle platforming gameplay and ingenious new touches to carry the weight on their own.
Sir,
While I gather from this that the "soundtrack" became tedious, I otherwise find your review difficult to comprehend.

Paragraph one uses a metaphor, and extends that metaphor successfully. I strongly disagree with your choice of metaphor, but that happens.

Then there is paragraph six. "... too much game to spread so little." What?? What are we spreading? Is it too much game for too little psychotic charm? Or are we spreading fun around on the game? If its too much game and not enough fun, its perfectly acceptable to say that. We won't ridicule you for very long.

You go on to say "... leaving the puzzle platforming gameplay and ingenious new touches to carry the weight on their own." ... wait, what? I've missed something. Did you start a new metaphor? What is the weight in this metaphor? Was there supposed to be something else besides gameplay? If you're trying to say that "puzzle platform gameplay is carrying the weight of gameplay", then sure, I'll probably agree with you. At least until I can sort out whether or not "gameplay" was a metaphor for something else.
 

LGC Pominator

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Feb 11, 2009
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duchaked said:
Xzi said:
Load times virtually non-existent on a decent PC. So you can knock that negative off the list for the smart ones among us. :D
well excuuuse me if I'm dumb cuz I only own a kinda old laptop that cries if I run anything modern lol
TBH I can't really count a healthy financial situation as an indicator of ones personal intelligence, I mean look at America... richest country in the world but one of the biggest gatherings of absolute idiots I have ever seen.
And since having an absolutely kickass gaming pc (which in gamer terms is simply "decent") is DIRECTLY tied to ones personal finance, unless that money was actually earned due to actually being some smart uni graduate in a kickass job earning tons of money to make a purchase of said PC actually viable I deem one who claims smartness for such a thing- unsmart indeed

Anyway regarding the review:

I am definitely interested now, I am glad to see that there has been more length added to the single player campaign, however if this transpires to be simple padding or artificial lengthening then I shall be upset, however I do not expect this from valve, my own personal disagreements with them aside, I know they are brilliant developers and a true industry leader, so I am more likely to give them the benefit of the doubt.

I am looking forward to giving the co-op a spin as it looks like the most fun part of the game, as it appears that we will actually be given characters to play, rather than some random blank slate, which is incidentally my biggest pet peeve with valve games, why are their protagonists silent? it really makes no sense, I have no interest in half life because of this one thing, it ruins the immersion for me. Anyway, I have digressed- yeah the co op looks incredibly entertaining, not just because of the characters (atlas and p-body look hilarious) but also due to the interesting idea of dual portals as you just know that is going to lead to reaction checks where one player has to launch one portal at just the right time mid jump to allow the other player to get further etc, so yeah colour me interested.

I have seen the hats thing and, as always, it seems strange to me, I like the idea behind it, however it just seems a little bit off, given that the player only very rarely sees his avatar in game, and only one other person at a time will see it either, it makes sense in multiplayer games where you have true character customisation, such as in halo: Reach, where you create your own individual identity which makes you identifiable in game, which is important in not only a tactical sense, but also for the simple sake of personalisation, whereas in Tf2 your character customisation is so hamstringed that the primary change is his headwear, and even then you are simply working within the bounds of what you have been given by the game, with very little room to breathe, so personalisation is out, as is the aforementioned tactical identification as noting what the heavy on the enemy team with the most kills has on his head gives little benefit when every heavy looks the same apart from their hat and the hat that is being used was a level 3 achievement so even the low ranking players have it and there could be 3 other heavies on the same team with the same hat, so the system doesn't make any sense to me at all.
But valve ARE geniuses so they probably know something I don't.
 

Dice Warwick

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Nov 29, 2010
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The problem for "Portal 2" is that "Portal 1" did most of what you can do with the portal gun. It's like with "Half-life 2" Gravity gun, every game that came out after that, which had a gravity gun, everyone was already over it. And it's not like the game will be more fun with even harder puzzles, the best we can hope for is that the game has more personality.

I'm picking up my coppie as soon as the game-store opens, and I expect the game to be fun, with some really funny bits to it, the awesome I will save for Duck Nukem.
 

tombman888

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Jul 12, 2009
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9_6 said:
You do not mention the tf2 hats that carry over into portal 2? [http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1847372]
I... what... how... this.... sense.......... HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAATS!!! I'm gonna get em all in Vintage too!
 
Sep 17, 2009
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Sylocat said:
Memo to the fans: Please don't come crying to me when the game doesn't live up to your impossible expectations.
Why would fans come crying to you? Just curious. Are you an authority on the matter?

OT: I expected it to be easier for more widespread accessibility coupled with the elongated distribution. I just hope that the single player is longer, the servers are strong, and the co-op is super fun.
 

Sylocat

Sci-Fi & Shakespeare
Nov 13, 2007
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Nautical Honors Society said:
Why would fans come crying to you? Just curious. Are you an authority on the matter?
It's a paraphrased quote from Reddit's r/gaming.

But I can easily picture the fans bellyaching to anyone who will listen (and plenty of people who won't).
 

John Funk

U.N. Owen Was Him?
Dec 20, 2005
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OutrageousEmu said:
Metcarfre said:
Queue immediate complaints that you 'didn't really play it' because this was the 360 version.
What, thats not a fair complaint?

What if a person haqd based their Orange Box review on the Ps3 version, would that still have been fair?

There's a known difference in quality between the 360 and Ps3 & PC versions of this game, so wouldn't that mean a seperate review would be appropriate?
Zenode said:
I must ask, why review the 360 version of the game when its a primarily PC version, or even the new PS3 version to see how it stacks up?

OT: I expected the loading times thing because it happens with every Valve game
The PC version wouldn't have even unlocked until tonight. Valve sent out the 360 copy for review to get around that. Most reviews (at least, ones that coincide with launch) will be based around that.
 

Hairetos

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Jul 5, 2010
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So can someone explain to me the difference between PC and Xbox version? Cuz I've played Portal on 360 and seen it on PC and notice no difference.
 

John Funk

U.N. Owen Was Him?
Dec 20, 2005
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Canadish said:
Paragon Fury said:
Wait...so Portal 2 gets 4 stars, but DAII got 5 stars?

What the hell happened here?
Money dear boy.
Valve doesn't strike me as the type of company to threaten/bribe a website for a good review.
EA does.

Otherwise, the footage looks nice, might pick this one up.
I'll have a look at a few more reviews first though. Not sure I can trust the Escapist anymore for honest reviews.
Or, in a less paranoid world, how about the two were reviewed by different people who have different opinions on things, and we accept that there is no grand unifying objective scale of game development and what one person loves another person might find tiresome and vice versa.

The Escapist has never sold a review score or review in its half-decade of life. We certainly don't plan to start now.

(And, for the record, I'm loving Portal 2. There's that subjectivity at work).