Zero Punctuation: Portal 2

[thedevilscousin]

Great review there, been waiting ages for this to come up. And I do agree with you on how Portal 1 is better, don't get me wrong i like Portal 2(A lot!) But Portal 1 was just. so. fucking. good! Although i love the co-op mode and thought this was a more laugh out loud game than the first.

 

[Luke5515]

Kinda what I was thinking, but I think it was a little more balanced and puzzley than Yhatzee gives it credit for.
Also, I'm going to make one comment on the "memetic" value:
space
that is all.

 

[ZingFreelancer]

Actually Coop on Portal 2 have great replay value.
Get a friend who havent completed Coop maps yet, load it up and let him solve it for you. Refuse to do anything until he tells you to do something. On some levels it get REALLY hilarious.

 

[Steve the Pocket]

I'm surprised you didn't mention the frequent and annoying loading screens.

You know if you play this game on a PC like you should that cuts loading times a lot, never had an issue with them.

Honestly, as a PC user, the loading screens were even more annoying to me because I'm used to playing a lot of games that don't have them. Many developers have figured out how to pre-cache upcoming areas so they don't have to stop to swap out levels the way one would swap out disks in the DOS era. Sometimes even on those consoles that everyone says have too little memory.

Even just having the elevator ride be a single track and setting it to load the next test chamber while you're in it, and going back to loading screens in places like the backstage areas where there are no elevators, would have been an improvement (Arkham Asylum had a mix of loading screens and pre-caching too, if I recall correctly). They were practically designed to be used this way, but then they didn't.

Regarding lemons and space: I find it telling that the only references I've seen to these events outside the game itself have been through posts by people trying to convince me that they're popular.

This is the definition of a forced meme.

All memes are forced. Always. This should be one of those "Rules of the Internet", honestly.

Anyone else hear a donkey braying for about 5 minutes? Yeah, thats all I heard too.

Wow, what a useful comment! No, don't bother to tell us what you disliked about the video or anything, or even whether you thought he was being too nice or too critical of the game; just throw out a comment about as original and useful as "It sucks."

 

[Bags159]

Actually Coop on Portal 2 have great replay value.
Get a friend who havent completed Coop maps yet, load it up and let him solve it for you. Refuse to do anything until he tells you to do something. On some levels it get REALLY hilarious.

Yeah, I was kind of confused by this. If you can't wait for your friend to figure it out you're either massively impatient or they're a complete moron.

I really got the vibe that Yahtzee was just bagging on Portal 2 simply because he didn't want people to think he was biased because he loved Portal 1. I'm not sure how you can love the first one and not be completely in love with Portal 2. I do not know anyone who is not completely in love with it.

 

[PROTOTYPical]

Well,I've been looking forward to this episode for 2 weeks, so my feelings about it is much like your feelings toward Portal 2. I pretty much expected everything you said, so I was very disappointed. Maybe I just know you too well. For the record, I think it holds up very nicely and I'll look back on both the Portal games as the best there ever was.

.
All I can really say is.... "Yeah, what he said." So thanks for leaving me without any original thought, my friend.

 

[Zechnophobe]

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

Really Well?

 

[ImperialSunlight]

Seppuku is pronounced seppuk actually. Because Japanese people are weird that way.

 

[Zechnophobe]

When I first sat down to play Portal 2, I made the comment to myself right before hand "It may be awesome, but it will be less dense than portal 1."

The first portal was so short, that quite literally every moment of it was packed full of intrigue, humor, and narration. They only HAD a very small amount of dialogue, so it was polished to an incredible shine.

Portal 2 is a much longer game (though not exactly 40 hour territory here) and simply cannot keep that same density of awesome to time. Not all of it is awesome. Not all of the humor is incredible. You've taken the same amount of talent, but spread it a bit thinner.

Not too thin, though. It is still an amazing game!

 

[Spudgun Man]

don't know why but Portal 2 came across slightly self aware at moments, POSSIBLE SPOILER ALERT!

Such as when your facing down Wheatly and he comments on the fact that there aren't any portalable (portalable?) surfaces and that he won't leave all the killing work down to a rocket turret.

And there was one teeny refrence to that damn forest gateau that by now must be dryer than the surface of the sahara, when you fall into the room with a door labelled "GLaDOS control room and Cake Dispenser'

Anyone else find themselves forgetting they had a gun that shoots holes with them? halfthe time it felt like I was playing "Apeture Science's bag of uninvested products", then again that could have been what they were aiming at, the portal gun is all Apeture can really hold on to.

 

[Tharwen]

I noticed that every room seemed to be clearly defined as either a story room or a puzzle room. The story rooms were just linear progressions through a series of white-painted walls, and, though the constant dialogue and epic set pieces meant they weren't boring, they were a little... bad? I can't think of an adjective that works there.

 

[The Artificially Prolonged]

Nice review, kinda expecting the critisms of the game which are fair points. For me I hold both Portal and Portal 2 as equal in quality.

 

[Elijah Ball]

Here is a good complain about the first Portal

To damn easy

well when you play it 40 times anything is easy.

 

[Doctor_Who22]

good review I actually wasn't looking forward to this review as much from the fact that it is a decent game

it is much more entertaining to see his creative ways of completely picking apart and destorying bad games.

 

[SovietSecrets]

Anyone else hear a donkey braying for about 5 minutes? Yeah, thats all I heard too.

Wow, what a useful comment! No, don't bother to tell us what you disliked about the video or anything, or even whether you thought he was being too nice or too critical of the game; just throw out a comment about as original and useful as "It sucks."

It sucks sums it up quite nicely. No need to even go further.

 

[Gaute Eiterjord]

I can't help to agree to most of your points.

Out of the blue: I think Yahtzee should check out Mount and Blade, an incredibly underestimated indiegame.

 

[mocruz1200]

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

can i get your adress? i want to choke you.

 

[ewhac]

I would have bet money that Yahtzee's Portal 2 review would have made a reference to his eyes remaining fork-free.

 

[ctlee93]

ferror rocher?..... greatest part ever

 

[Tontomanzz]

He's right on about the hints. There's so many rooms where there is just one white panel, or a glass wall with a single hole etc. I played most of it on automatic. It was quicker to solve rooms by firing a portal at the one option you had, see what happens and go 'oh yeah, that makes sense' than it was to sit back and work it out. You seriously just had to do the obvious and it was designed that what happens automatically showed you the next step.

They even had turrets you had to kill with repulsion gel in suprise suprise the same spot you needed repulsion gel for a jump. I guess some tester got stuck on where to put it so they MADE you put it there before you realized you needed it there. Made for the odd situation that while the puzzles were more extensive and larger than Portal, they were easier due to the design, hints and lack of alternatives (you couldn't go down a wrong solution path if you tried). Heck, on some rooms with large white portal wall area, they had special panel textures to tell you where to stick the portals, like WTF?

But not a bad game by any stretch, just not much of a puzzle game. As stated, it's more of a puzzle game in a story than a story in a puzzle game. Sums it up well.