Portal 2 SOOO MUCH LOADING

[Soviet Heavy]

This is the one problem I have with the game. You load after every bloody level, even if that level was only a minute or so long.

Compared to Portal 1, it seems immersion braking. Sure, in Portal 1, you still loading, but you at least stayed in the elevator, making it seem like a more natural progression.

In fact, it is quite similar to the change between Mass Effect 1 and 2. In ME1, levels would load during elevators, or while you were in the airlock, to give the sense of seamless progression. It was done away with in ME 2, replacing the transition with loading screens.

This is pretty much the same thing that has happened in Portal 2. It just doesn't flow as well if each level is divided by a black loading screen instead of just the elevator. It breaks the immersion a bit, since the long elevator rides in ME1 and Portal 1 not only masked the loading, but it also gave the worlds a larger sense of scale. The amount of time spent in the elevator in Portal helped give the impression that this really was a vast facility. That is still present in Portal 2 with the big open areas, but it is more in your face and less subtle.

Anyways, I don't like the constant loading and would like it if they loaded during the elevator rides. What else is new?

 

[Singularly Datarific]

It gets old, I mostly wish it wasn't so frequent, or if they put on a looping clip for the elevator, like in Metroid Prime.

 

[KeyMaster45]

The loading screen really aren't that bad, and early in the game they actually serve a purpose to the story. When you're running tests under Glados' command she makes a small off comment to how she's using chemicals and constant light to distort your perception of time, and to top it off she completely rebuilds the facility in the span of those few test chambers. Now I don't know about you but Aperture is a fricking huge place by my reckoning so I doubt it took less than two hours to rebuild from the state it was in at the start.

More evidence is how Wheatly's gradual scruffier state is shown each time he pops up in the test chambers, and how he gets onto a nano bot rebuilding team. A fair amount of time is implied to have past in that first set of test chambers, long enough for Glados to completely rebuild the Aperture facilities.

Yeah the loading screen may be a bit of a nuisance, but at least the dev team took the time to at least imply they were being used to skip vast chunks of time. Unfortunately that explanation doesn't really hold up in later parts of the game but it's really only a about 15 seconds at most between levels; time enough for you to detox from the last puzzle, crack your knuckles, and hunker down to solve the next one.

 

[AlmostLikeLife]

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Couldn't have said it better, myself.


The loading screens are indeed frequent, but the load times are short. Portal 2 was such a great game so the loading screens were the last thing on my mind.

 

[Soviet Heavy]

snip

Couldn't have said it better, myself.


The loading screens are indeed frequent, but the load times are short. Portal 2 was such a great game so the loading screens were the last thing on my mind.

Its opposite for me. The game is so brilliant that the little niggly things stand out more.

 

[Helios_(DEL)]

I noticed it but it never bothered me, it seriously wasnt a problem.

 

[CupboardNinja]

The way I think about it is, if Valve couldn't optimize it so there were less loading screens, then it can't be done.

 

[Stabinbac]

The loading was rather annoying, but it's one of the sacrifices they made for consoles.

It's still one of the best games ever, but it could have been so much more if they had let themselves actually design the game to push PC hardware. Not trying to be an anti-console troll, but if you actually look at the level design the choices made are obvious.

Larger levels, and more involved puzzles would have made the game longer, more satisfying, and reduced the loading annoyance.

Still an amazing game.

 

[Avatar Roku]

snip

Couldn't have said it better, myself.


The loading screens are indeed frequent, but the load times are short. Portal 2 was such a great game so the loading screens were the last thing on my mind.

Its opposite for me. The game is so brilliant that the little niggly things stand out more.

That's what I was thinking. The load times are annoying, but if that's the worst we can come up with...

 

[Bags159]

If loading screens are the biggest complaint you have then VALVe has done one hell of a good job.

I noticed them but they weren't annoying.

The loading was rather annoying, but it's one of the sacrifices they made for consoles.

It's still one of the best games ever, but it could have been so much more if they had let themselves actually design the game to push PC hardware. Not trying to be an anti-console troll, but if you actually look at the level design the choices made are obvious.

Larger levels, and more involved puzzles would have made the game longer, more satisfying, and reduced the loading annoyance.

Still an amazing game.

Portal 1 levels weren't much bigger on average if they were at all. People can make as big of levels as they want when they use the SDK.

 

[Anarchemitis]

Portal 2 is contained in Valve's new VPK library system, the successor to the GCF. Its architecture is more streamlined to make loading faster, but it's nowhere close to the asset dynamic cache loading of Half Life. Then again, things have changed a lot since then.
While levels load in more frequent intervals in this Source Engine iteration, the loading times are less. In defense of the levels themselves, they are all very asset intensive, entity dense and choreographically expensive.

 

[darkfire613]

The only thing is instead of freezing the frame with the subtle "loading" message in the middle they used for Portal 1 as well as the Half Life 2 games, they kick you to the other loading screen. However, this kicking to a different screen instead of the subtle word I found to be disconcerting, so yeah, I guess it is kind of annoying, especially when we have other games coming out where all the loading is seamlessly done behind the scenes as you play.

 

[Theron Julius]

Didn't phase me in the slightest. Then again loading screens have never bothered me in any game.

 

[Skorpyo]

snip

Couldn't have said it better, myself.


The loading screens are indeed frequent, but the load times are short. Portal 2 was such a great game so the loading screens were the last thing on my mind.

Its opposite for me. The game is so brilliant that the little niggly things stand out more.

Think of it this way:

If the levels were larger and the loading screens less frequent, your computer would most likely take a shit from the sheer amount of things that would need to be processed at any one time.

 

[Zhukov]

Eh, I can handle a ten second load between levels.

Loading screens have never bothered me, just so long as they don't take too long.

 

[badgersprite]

I noticed it more in Portal when I went back and played that today after playing Portal 2. It's weird, but Portal feels SO MUCH SLOWER in comparison. Mind you, I'm on the 360, which might have something to do with it. In Portal, I just kept waiting for the elevator to move and getting annoyed, sort of telling it to hurry up. In Portal 2 I didn't do that as much if at all, even though there was probably way more loading.

That could also be because I was generally listening to GLaDOS or some pre-recorded message saying something funny as I got into the elevator which kept me amused and put me in a better mood for the loading, whereas in Portal those messages were usually done by the time I was in the elevator.

 

[Roxor]

I actually thought the loading screens in Portal 2 worked. Especially showing how the Aperture logo has changed over time.

 

[Soviet Heavy]

I actually thought the loading screens in Portal 2 worked. Especially showing how the Aperture logo has changed over time.

Yeah, I can see that. I guess that I just prefer the Portal 1 loading since it was a holdover from Half Life, where the loading would still give a seamless transition from one level to the next.

 

[crimsonshrouds]

This has got to be the stupidest complaint i have ever seen for a game.

 

[lulztaco]

It's funny how you have to ***** about the loading screen... I mean you have to criticize about something in the game right? so the fact that its the loading screen shows how awesome the game really is.