Valve Unveils Portal 2 Box Art

[Falseprophet]

This will make my artist friends cry, but I don't really pay attention to box art. Half the real estate on the cover, if not more, is taken up by the title, the system ID, the ESRB rating, and the studio and publisher logos. If you buy retail there's a price sticker in there somewhere. Then there's usually some review quotes on top of all that. All too busy.

Kind of reminds me of this spoof of Microsoft packaging:


Plus I grew up in the NES era when the majority of game box art was utter crap. (Music was transitioning from vinyl to CDs so music cover art became less interesting around the same time.)

 

[SilverUchiha]

You know what design might have been good?

An orange portal on the front cover with a silhouette of Chell in the middle of it and then, on the back, a blue portal with another Silhouette but from the other side. Again, doesn't give away much and it would probably look a lot cooler.

I get the emphasis on the new Co-Op mode might be the point, but most of us are buying for the fact that the first word in the title is "Portal" and the second thing in the title is the number "2". None of us really are laser-focused on the co-op thing just yet. I'm sure most of us care about what GLaDOS and Chell are going to be doing.

 

[Baresark]

No one cares about the box art of a Valve game. They don't have a single game that has good or attractive box art. This is beating a dead horse, but it's because no one buys the games at a store mostly, it's just an unnecessary step. You can't even play the games offline without having been online at least once with them.

The box fits the graphics from the first game really well though, as it will most likely fit the second game. Over clean sterile looking graphics. I know a bunch of fanboys are gonna jump down my throat on this one, but the graphics weren't anything good or amazing or earth shattering. The game was a fun game for what you get out of it. The truth is, I didn't get it till Steam was giving it away, and thank god for that. I mean, the game is worth maybe $5-$10, so it's worth buying when it's on sale. I beat it in just under 3 hours, that isn't even a single sitting when I'm in the mood to play games.

 

[Spark Ignition]

(is that a Modron?)

someones all about Planescape today!

 

[Skratt]

What is this box you speak of? It has a box?!?!

 

[Liiizard]

Don't care, it's never going to show up on Steam.

Wait... it's not gonna be on Steam?

The BOX ART isn't going to show up on Steam!

Yeah, but then there's console games to consider. This game may very well be the reason why I buy the Playstation move. Can you imagine full 3d motion control immersion in portal?

 

[Nouw]

I agree that the cover is indeed a bit underwhelming, boring and not very well placed out. Just not visually appealing enough for me!

Ah well it's not going to matter that much on Steam but it's still just kinda meh.

 

[Dexiro]

Wow... it's not terrible but damn they could do so much better. The least they have to do is take a screenshot from the game and slap the words "Portal 2" onto it and it'd be a huge improvement.

 

[GeorgW]

It could have been much, much better, but it's not bad. I would like to see some fans' take on it though.

 

[Something Amyss]

If they're going for the console market shouldn't the box cover be Chell, in a ripped 'battle-damaged' jumpsuit and high heeled heel springs, dual wielding portal guns on top of a heap of smashed sentry drones with something big exploding in the background?

They should probably also toss in the name "Call of Duty" somewhere.

Or maybe "Chell of Duty."

OT: Totally not impressed.

 

[UsefulPlayer 1]

That's really disappointing. A top tier game just dropped a little for me.

 

[the lapalminator]

yuck. what a ugly steaming pile. at least steam peoples wont have to see that much

 

[Tom Phoenix]

What awful box art. And this does affect me a bit, since I will be buying the game through retail. =/ I suppose I can always insert a piece of paper or something over the picture.

 

[Ldude893]

Meh, as long as they just give me a good game. Don't judge a game by its box art.

 

[Lem0nade Inlay]

It's alright, a cool image but as you say it doesn't have that much to do with the main, arguably more interesting, storyline.

However maybe it'll turn out that Valve are doing several box arts? Like they did with the original release of Half-Life 2?

That would be good, I think.

 

[Jumpingbean3]

They probably decided to avoid putting Chell on the box since most people probably don't know what she looks like, although why they chose the co-op bots instead of Glados I'll never know. Hopefully the console box art will be less crap.

To be constructive, they could have had a portal at the top and bottom of the image with a weighted companion cube falling infinitely through it and Galdos' eye glowing evilly in the background shadows, waiting to snatch away the cube and break everyones' hearts.

I think they chose the bots because that's the big new innovation and so it'll sell more. Keep in mind that all the things ValVe has done for their fans will never change the fact that they are a business and profit is and always has been their main focus.

 

[The_root_of_all_evil]

Ugh, that's horrid