Just finished portal 2. Good game. Really good game. For fifty bucks, though, I'm debating whether or not it was worth the price of admission. Don't get me wrong. Portal 2 was great. But let's use a quick metaphor real quick with a cup of coffee.
The games industry has been churning out coffee since the 70s and 80s and has gone through good cups and baaaaaaaad cups. Cups that are essentially powder with barely enough water to consider it a liquid, and cups that have barely any java in them, mostly water. We see it all through unskippable cut scenes, endless dialogue, repetitive combat, and slap-dash stories.
Then in 2007 when valve was porting their latest best-selling roast to consoles, they made a very small cup that came with their single-player sequel and multi-player sequel. That cup was called portal. It was the best tasting cup of coffee we, the java community had seen in a long time. The problem? It was a very tiny cup. What's astonishing about it is there was no sugar (combat) no cream (cut scenes) it was a hazelnut roast (puzzle game) and had some of the fullest flavor we've ever had in a cup (dark and comedic story told really well and compacted into a quick 2 hour game) but... It was VERY VERY TINY. We wanted more.
So, Valve not being idiots started to create a sequel. Another full-bodied roast that had so much flavor it didn't require cream, sugar, or any other flavorings besides itself. Last month, we got it. Playing through it, we got exactly what we hoped. A smooth and delicious flavor that we could also drink with a friend (co-op mode) the cup we enjoyed by ourselves had a completely different flavor to that which we shared with a friend, and both were amazing.
The problem? The cup cost 50 bucks.
Now don't get me wrong! It was a really really REALLY good cup of coffee. It's just that... For a 50 dollar cup, I thought I would get... A little more. Once again, on its own, no sugar, no cream, and still being tasty is incredible. But, the cup was only about 3 times bigger than the original, and the co-op was about the same.
Compared to other games like World of Warcraft, Half-Life 1, Fallout 3, which I've been playing recently, it seems less... Substantial. Granted, WoW's coffee gets really repetitive really quick, Half-Life 1's coffee is pretty old, and the random flavors I keep finding (mods) rarely add something else, and Fallout 3, while being a giant cup with tons of room for flavors, can seem pretty lifeless cup after cup.
But still... These are coffees that keep bringing me back. And once you've enjoyed the two delicious cups of coffee portal 2 has, what else is there? Unfortunately, the coffee can't be enjoyed more than once. (No replay value.)
All in all, it's a good 10(ish) hours of fun, but for a 50 dollar price tag, we're talking 5 bucks an hour to enjoy it. Half-Life (with it's expansions) World of Warcraft, and Fallout 3 (there are others, I'm just using these as an example) each gave me less than a dollar per hour I enjoyed it.
TL
R: Portal was fun, but the 50 dollar price tag seems too high for the amount of time I spent playing it.
Thoughts? Reactions?
The games industry has been churning out coffee since the 70s and 80s and has gone through good cups and baaaaaaaad cups. Cups that are essentially powder with barely enough water to consider it a liquid, and cups that have barely any java in them, mostly water. We see it all through unskippable cut scenes, endless dialogue, repetitive combat, and slap-dash stories.
Then in 2007 when valve was porting their latest best-selling roast to consoles, they made a very small cup that came with their single-player sequel and multi-player sequel. That cup was called portal. It was the best tasting cup of coffee we, the java community had seen in a long time. The problem? It was a very tiny cup. What's astonishing about it is there was no sugar (combat) no cream (cut scenes) it was a hazelnut roast (puzzle game) and had some of the fullest flavor we've ever had in a cup (dark and comedic story told really well and compacted into a quick 2 hour game) but... It was VERY VERY TINY. We wanted more.
So, Valve not being idiots started to create a sequel. Another full-bodied roast that had so much flavor it didn't require cream, sugar, or any other flavorings besides itself. Last month, we got it. Playing through it, we got exactly what we hoped. A smooth and delicious flavor that we could also drink with a friend (co-op mode) the cup we enjoyed by ourselves had a completely different flavor to that which we shared with a friend, and both were amazing.
The problem? The cup cost 50 bucks.
Now don't get me wrong! It was a really really REALLY good cup of coffee. It's just that... For a 50 dollar cup, I thought I would get... A little more. Once again, on its own, no sugar, no cream, and still being tasty is incredible. But, the cup was only about 3 times bigger than the original, and the co-op was about the same.
Compared to other games like World of Warcraft, Half-Life 1, Fallout 3, which I've been playing recently, it seems less... Substantial. Granted, WoW's coffee gets really repetitive really quick, Half-Life 1's coffee is pretty old, and the random flavors I keep finding (mods) rarely add something else, and Fallout 3, while being a giant cup with tons of room for flavors, can seem pretty lifeless cup after cup.
But still... These are coffees that keep bringing me back. And once you've enjoyed the two delicious cups of coffee portal 2 has, what else is there? Unfortunately, the coffee can't be enjoyed more than once. (No replay value.)
All in all, it's a good 10(ish) hours of fun, but for a 50 dollar price tag, we're talking 5 bucks an hour to enjoy it. Half-Life (with it's expansions) World of Warcraft, and Fallout 3 (there are others, I'm just using these as an example) each gave me less than a dollar per hour I enjoyed it.
TL
R: Portal was fun, but the 50 dollar price tag seems too high for the amount of time I spent playing it.Thoughts? Reactions?
