Zero Punctuation: Portal 2

[ikoian]

Portal 2 may or may not be better then the first, but it is what every sequel should be, different.
Maybe it's because I didn't play it until the global fan base plateaued and I've herd everyone ramble about every meme it generated at least 50 times, but the first Portal came out to me as just a very good game.
Portal 2 on the other hand I got fresh out of the release date (or I should say would if it weren't for some problems with Amazon and my debt card) so playing it and expecting absolutely nothing about it greatly improved the experience for me.
Also, can't argue that the boss fight was better in the second one, I thought the first one got a little repetitive.

 

[Shjade]

Portal has the worst fans...really? Really? ... With only 2 hours of experience to draw on, it got beaten to death by fans who were slightly overzealous about what Yahtzee himself described as the coming messiah. This is annoying, yes. But you cannot even begin to compare an ironic abundance of cake jokes with a racist kid on Live, and OCD weirdo playing Counterstrike every night for the last decade, a tea bagging douchbag on Halo...

Actually, yes, the Portal fans are worse than your three proceeding examples. Why?

Because Portal fans are everywhere and constantly in your face with the cake and the obnoxious. I only know what you're talking about with those other three because I recall having once watched Youtube clips about them. Aside from that I've had zero contact with any of them - I don't play those games, I don't hang out in their communities, they don't bother me.

Portal references are everywhere. You can't avoid them. That's far more annoying than extreme/hostile-but-easily-avoidable behavior.

 

[DarthFennec]

God I have got to play this fucking game >.<

 

[Allan Foe]

.

Deary me, somebody is "HULK SMASH!" angry in this thread, ho ho!

Today I feel charitable and and emphatic, as such allow me to relate invaluable intelligence:
Yahtzee does not read the entirety of forum comments for his videos, hoverer he does get a remarkably low amount of hate-mail (said so in the reddit interview), thus chances of engendering any kind of response from your opposition will be higher on the email frontier.

I could not bring myself ingest your hateful tired in it's entirety, my nerves and leisure have grown much to scarce of late, yet that post scriptum deserves at least a passing remark:

Hyakunin Isshu, I wish that at the end of your life's journey you may grow to carry at least a fifth of the respect and admiration that Benjamin Croshaw carries with gamers, developers, entertainment industry employees and casual consumers all over the world. May your works also be translated into several foreign languages (&#1074;&#1082;&#1083;&#1102;&#1095;&#1072;&#1103; &#1088;&#1091;&#1089;&#1089;&#1082;&#1080;&#1081 and bring mirth to many a generation.

Pah, I do hope the British git won't lay eyes on that paragraph, his ego is almost ready to burst as it is.

 

[Gabriela D.]

They do seem to lay the humour on a bit thick in Portal 2. Yes, we get it, Aperture Science is run by mad men with no regard for safety! Now tell me how the hell they keep hiring people!

They didn't really. In the game you can see the fall from grace of Aperture. When they had money they tested athletes and olympians, had marble floors and wood panels.
A decade later they took hobos from the streets and working conditions were not as luxurious. And in the 80's they made testing mandatory for employees because they couldn't find test subjects. Cheap plastics were everywhere. GLaDOS was the last real project they had before bankruptcy.

And if you were a scientist working at a facility were they hire olympians, astronauts and war heroes and tested them to death, would you keep working there? Would you keep working there after it becomes quite clear that your boss could cause the destruction of the entire facility? Would you keep working there after the previously mentioned boss died and then go on to build an AI that tries (and suceeds) to kill everyone?

Well I suppose the logical conclusion is that the scientists are just as mad as Cave Johnson. But thanks for repeating the plot of a game I've already played to me in the most plainly simple way possible, herp-a-derp.

You're welcome, trollop. I pride myself on my mad explaining skillz. As for the employees..I dunno. Maybe they had excellent health care. I heard they took out tumors AND improved you with science.

 

[Jegsimmons]

im kind of surprised, i either thought youd praise the hell out of it like portal one, or rip the thing to shreds. but then you sort of slide in the middle to punch me in the face while my dukes were still up.

this was probably the fairest review ive seen on a game while praising it for being an awesome game, you also pointed out flaws for the creators to take notice in future games that no one else really saw.

bravo Ben, bravo.

 

[jak1165]

Portal 1 is easily the most overrated game of this generation

Sorry people, a 3 hour, piece-of...dare I say it...cake..game isn't the highpoint of anything.

 

[funkzillabot]

I disagree. I thought Portal 2 was better than Portal 1. I've re-played it several times on "Single Player", because I can't stand playing with other people. But that's the thing about opinions isn't it? Everybody has one and everybody thinks everyone else's opinions stinks.

 

[GonzoGamer]

So this is why the site is so slow this afternoon: the ZP Portal 2 review. Good reason.
I would have to agree that the replay value of this game is pretty low.
It would?ve been nice to have a test chamber building tool on the consoles like with Little Big Planet or Echocrome but I also wont be surprised if they update the game with something like that.
The only reason I can see them NOT doing something like that is maybe because (even with the additions) there are limited options and they don?t want the fans to exhaust the options before they have a chance to sell us another sequel.
If they keep sending us free gameplay dlc, I wont care either way.

 

[ionveau]

I agree i hate the parts where you need to find a tiny spot on a wall to get to the next puzzle, less game play more view/story

 

[JoaoJatoba]

Heresy, Yahtzee, Heresy!!!!!!! Just kidding... =)

The truth is I loved Portal 2 more for the story than for it's gameplay. The gels freshed up the puzzles, but they are soooooooo easy and quick-to-solve on this games that it is laughable...

But I wonder the hole time what connections with HL 3 was going to appear around the conner, and how tragic was the history of Cave Johnson (who change the concept of 'art for the sake art' to 'science for the sake of science') and Carolyn and Glados... The mysterious origin of Chell and so much more.

I can say I am satisfy with the overall product. No mind blowned... Just satisfy.

I would give a score 9.999 out of 10.000 because I hate loading screens.

 

[Xariat]

i have to say that portal 1 was better, the "wow-factor" was so imense, and the puzzles was new and creative, it was something that had never been done before, so you really had to wrap your head around to get it. portal 2 on the other hand, even though it had sevral new and creative additions, didnt have the same inpact. and was infact made easier so that more people could join the Hype of this AAA title.

if you've listened to some of the devolelpers commantaries, you'd know that they had to chance some chambers, because they were "too hard" but thats just stupid, a puzzle game can't be too hard, if there is a clear sulution, thats the puzzle part of the game.

also i miss "advanced chambers" it was fun to play the chambers you knew again, exept they were much harder the second time.

 

[sarttan]

also i miss "advanced chambers" it was fun to play the chambers you knew again, exept they were much harder the second time.

Valve actually knew that would be the first thing to be missed, so they are releasing an update sometime this summer to give more Co-op puzzles and put back in challenge mode, which includes the time trials, advanced chambers, etc. (Possibly more but Valve wasn't very specific.)

 

[tigermilk]

When it comes to decent sequels, Portal 2...
Takes the Cake!
YYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

ba dum tish,

Do I win if I am the hundrefth person to quote this

 

[Ghostrick Dorklord]

Yeah...Portal 2 had the problem of having to overdo everything in hopes of pleasing a fanbase that is possible crazier than any other fanbase out there.

I don't know about that one. The Sonic fanbase seems a lot worst considering we complain about green eyes and trying to support some one shot character who's too cliche. Not to mention we getting Sonic Generations as Sega's excuse to pander to the crowd. >.<


Anywho this review was pretty good as expected of Yahtzee. It makes want to pick up Portal 2 now but I still can't because I really don't have money. D: I've heard its a good sequel and if Yahtzee himself said so then that's something.

 

[SniperMacFox]

If Portal 3 takes place in space, how would momentum work?

Awesomely. With Lazers.

Oh wait, Portal 2 had lazers already. Hmm... well, they'd find a way, I'm sure.

Also good review, Yahtzee.

 

[Cuppa Tetleys]

I respect Yahtzee all the more for this review; he knew by saying it wasn't as good as the first would send some people batshit as it's the sequel to one of the most critically acclaimed titles of all time, but he's upright and honest about it. I personally disagree and think the second one is much better in nearly every way, but then each to their own.

This was probably one of the more anticipated ZP's, though now we can all look forward to the Duke Nukem Forever review!

 

[mrhateful]

I question the statement that just because a game is more impacting, that it makes the game inherently better. I mean yes portal 1 had a very large impact however I would argue portal 2 was a better game overall.

 

[mokmoof]

I really don't buy the cherries-and-sawdust analogy. It's more like Portal 1 was three nice, plump cherries, and Portal 2 is five nice, plump cherries and four juicy strawberries, even though Yahtzee (and lots of other people, apparently) didn't want any damn strawberries, thank you very much.

No, it wasn't eight hours of the first game's Spartan minimalism, but who said that it had to be? The fans whom Yahtzee hates? It's something different and, I think, something consistently surprising and delightful.

I'll agree that a few too many rough edges seem to have been sanded off in the name of playtesting and accessibility, and everyone agrees that robot hats are silly, but as for the rest... eh. This isn't Assassin's Creed 2; the idea wasn't to make the first game again, but better. The idea was to make something bigger, weirder, and more ambitious.

When the Portal 2 DLC comes out this summer, "Are these new levels as good as the core ones?" will be a valid and useful question. But I just don't think that "Is Portal 2 as good as Portal 1?" is all that interesting a thing to ask. You're not comparing two different cuts of the same meat here. If you boot up Portal 2 in expecting Portal 1 again, then you will be disappointed, and more to the point, you would have been disappointed with whatever Valve had released.

 

[KilloZapit]

Portal sort of reminds me of Ico actually. I thought Portal 1 was a bit overrated exactly because it was more or less just a puzzle game, and I also feel similarly about Ico. And both Portal and Ico both are extremely good games, but the thing is, the thing that I think makes both the games good is the way the world and characters take the focus. The actual gameplay is mostly just filler even if a lot of it is very interesting, the "story" is very minimal outside of the character interaction, and so on. So if Portal 2 wants to have less focus on puzzle solving and more on said character interaction, I don't see the problem with this.

I mean yeah, puzzles are fun and all, but a linear sequence of puzzles no matter how well designed is still a linear sequence of puzzles. Personally I would rather it start as a linear sequence of puzzles, and suddenly about a quarter of the way in shift to more of a open exploration based game with a bit more action, and maybe some more weapons, while still keeping puzzle elements that pop up from time to time. But that's just me and many others would think that would "ruin" the game. Still from what I have seen Portal 2, does a good job of mixing things up without ever going so far as to suddenly shift it's core gameplay in that way. But I think it's getting a bit silly at this point. If there is a Portal 3 I think it will probably have to expand beyond simple puzzle solving eventually.

Really though I would like to see the technology used in the Portal games used for different things, like possibly cross-dimension portals which introduce an Eversion-like mechanic. Or use of world portals to construct really strange levels. I think there are a lot more uses for the basic technology then puzzle solving.