Portal 2

apparently spoilerism is running rampant on this game so please abstain
who got it?

I'll be picking it up Thursday.

Waiting for me at home thanks to release-day Amazon shipping. AVOID AVOID AVOID the PC Gamer review, though; there's a screenshot that's a massive spoiler (or confirms one I was hoping was a hoax, at least).

same here.

have to say i can't see caring about story spoilers for this game, unless the spoilers are solutions to puzzles?

i'm skeptical about this. the first one was so perfect, i was actually disappointed when they announced a sequel

i feel exactly the same way as you, ade. but the demo sequences and advertising have kinda won me over.

last week i remember walking over a huge printed Portal 2 advert on some floor, can't for the life of me recall where it was!

i'm sort of w/ tam tam but more because i wanted more gordon freeman in my life instead of this. i'm betting there will be some sketchy but well-placed details hinting more about black mesa and aperture throughout...

but really valve are sort of like rockstar in that i will just give them my money

9.0 Gamespot
10/10 Eurogamer

All the reviews on metacritic are super-high, as you'd expect- except for the user reviews, which are slamming it for being "four hours long" (every review says the SP alone is 7-10), "a poor console port" (based solely on a "please don't turn off your console" message when saving), having "day 1 DLC" (customizable junk for the co-op bots like the TF2 store) and for the potato ARG, which... yeah, I can fault them for that. The extra content was often brilliant (see Amnesia, The Ball and Defense Grid), the Potato Sack got me to take a chance on stuff I wouldn't have looked twice at but ended up enjoying immensely (like Rush, Cogs) and the ARG itself was fun to follow until the trolling and fakes got out of hand, but the "early release" was pretty lame.

i'm down with a seven hour game if all seven hours are great

the vast majority of games are way too long imo - games that don't overstay their welcome, like the first Portal, feel like little miracles

^^^ a 7 hour game that rocks the house from start to finish is better than a 27 hour game where the first 7 hours might rock, but the last 20 hours are tedium incarnate.

i'm even more excited about a four hour game than i am a seven hour game! that way i can enjoy it and get back to work sooner.

also means it'll show up used faster :)

fine i'll fucking buy this since you made me

hate u all so much

really wish i had the money for this, my wife and daughter are going to be out of town for the next week.

the vast majority of games are way too long imo - games that don't overstay their welcome, like the first Portal, feel like little miracles

just bought this. stoked.

goole you can come over and watch me have a great time playing it any time you like

lol

I am watching the intro cutscene over mr spacecadet's shoulder right now! (no liveblog)

i'm down with a seven hour game if all seven hours are great

Prefer this too... a worry with this is that they would feel the need to pad it out to justify the AAA price tag. Picked up my copy earlier, gonna play tonight =)

okay the first two hours or so are great fun but it's really just PORTAL like more of the same not there's anything wrong with that
load times kind of inexcusable imo
i'm ps3 btw

uhoh

so far this is very funny, but also really fucking boring.

huh

Just wait for it. You're in the regular test chambers with Glados being bitchy, yes? Things pick up. Very much so.

yeah, that's where I'm at. Will be patient.

voice acting and script is v v v v good btw

Ok, yeah. Think of the part you're in as an extension of the first one's ending. Things get properly nuts once the plot starts, you get to play with the new mechanic, etc.

okay, looking forward to messing around with this more tomorrow.
one thing i do immediately like: the hostile, self-hating, more interactive environment

yikes i don't think i could play this on a console, irc on Portal 1 a lot of the time you had to turn around quickly with almost pinpoint accuracy firing those portals.

I just don't think I could bare that not using a mouse

I've only used a mouse and a computer for years for FPS since Quake, barring Halo and Portal. Never owned a console later than the NES, and I found Portal was okay with a controller.

OK so my housemates "this time she's a potato" comment wasnt a joke? He's been in his room non stop for the last 2 days thanks to this thing.

I cant get my head around this game fwiw. I get so dizzy.

I had a gang of Amazon trade credit and the get-a-free-$20-gift-card-w/-purchase was still going on last night so I said FUQ IT; should be arriving on Friday. anyone have any coop impressions yet? all I know is what I read in the Eurogamer review.

actually gonna try the split-screen co-op with a friend this weekend, seems like it could be really fun (to kill each other).

ok played until pretty late last night, still rolling through the test chambers, game need to get a fucking move on imo - trusting u dudes, but man this really feels like the worlds longest and most unneeded tutorial. wondering if that is thx to this being the first time ps3 types could play portal so

idk, its kind of frustrating and not all that fun so far

wondering if that is thx to this being the first time ps3 types could play portal so

?

portal is on orange box on the ps3

oh yeah duh what the hell am i thinking of

To be fair, the ps3 Orange Box was a pretty shoddy conversion, sold poorly, and Portal was never available as a separate dl like for pc and xbox players.

I agree a bit about the pacing of that section- I get that it's supposed to be GLaDOS just outright tormenting you without even the thin veneer of "professionalism" she had up to the end of the first game (the oxyhen stuff, "a special medical procedure," etc, all very I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream)- but there's really no sense of rising stakes or of anything really *happening* until toward the end of that part. Short version: just because it's supposed to be tedious and oppressive doesn't mean it has to feel that way to the player.

Ignore me, I'm rambling. It gets oh so much better, though.

oh lord

http://store.valvesoftware.com/product_images/main_images/CP201main2.png

probly never going to play this so been watching youtube walkthrough instead. it does look a treat must admit. some of the new gameplay elements also look amazing.

also, i was quite surprised at how funny i found the voice of Merchant, whereas in the trailer it really put me off.

Really enjoying this. Put about an hour in, which means I've seen 20 minutes of loading screens.

rite? loading is really inexcusably long

only like an hour in but it is great so far. is there an ilx group on steam?

i have no friends so you guys are my only hope for co-op

is it longer than half life 2/portal 1 loading times?

haha i got a text off a mate, who i barely ever hear from, telling me this was then quid this weekend

80% of the reason I bought a new computer is to play this.

it was 95% of the reason my husband bought me mine :)

the new portal stuff is co-op only

nooooooooooo

Challenge maps are kinda fun I
Guess

what a delightful and thought-provoking game!

isnt it though?

This game rules

now i want to play it all over again

still have never played co-op

me either

Not good for couples. Xpost

the coop campaign has some REALLY good stuff, better chambers than the main game, IMO. downside - you can't play it with someone who's already done it

co-op is fun for couples imo though we burnt out by the dlc part.

the sequence through the 'historical' section of the complex (the j/k simmons bit) is just amazing. valve are so good at storytelling.

have been playing this co-op w bestie (pc-to-mac); have been putting off the single player and thus the story. the levels alone are joy.

the light bridge stuff!

i find myself talking out loud about what i have to do. "ok so i need to get that block, but this other thing is... and these turrets can't go... [20 mins pass] OH MY GOD DUHHHH OF COURSE"

co-op is fun for couples imo though we burnt out by the dlc part.

Well the other part of my couple isn't very good with any game that requires jumping/timing. I think the coop levels almost cause us to get divorced.

shades of Penny Arcade calling the New Super Mario Bros. Wii co-op Divorce Mode (which at least in that case was very on point, it was almost impossible NOT to kill your partner in that game)

Yeah, NSMB was insane.

Me and GF have had to improve our communication on co-op games. Most comes to the fore playing Lego:

Me: Go over there!
Her: Where?
Me: Over there! (waves hand at telly)
Her: !?!?!

Portal's co-op has a handy "No, THIS is where I mean!" feature, which I'm sure was added after playtester manslaughter.

that absolutely was an essential feature

played this with my girlfriend at the time and i ended up crying literal tears of frustration and was in a mood for the entirety of the day after.

the sequence through the 'historical' section of the complex (the j/k simmons bit) is just amazing. valve are so good at storytelling.

― goole, Thursday, May 9, 2013 12:31 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah that whole section of the game is really special, to the point where the later stuff back in the normal complex is kind of disappointing

jk simmons is amazing

narratively and atmopsherically it was great, but in terms of the puzzles it was a little weaker than the other parts for the sheer fact that the number of portal-able surfaces were so limited

yeah, but the puzzles were interesting in their sheer size, i thought. like, few portal-able surfaces, but they were sometimes hard to find, just a tiny lil white spot across a huge room or something

^i totally said "portalable" all the time while playing

i came up with the mental neologism of 'whitewall' for what i needed

FUCK NO WHITEWALL THERE WHAT DO I DO FUCK

played this with my girlfriend at the time and i ended up crying literal tears of frustration and was in a mood for the entirety of the day after.

― the Shearer of simulated snowsex etc. (Dwight Yorke), Friday, May 10, 2013 12:58 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

haha its a healthy exercise in being patient! you forget how unnatural using 2 sticks to move and turn your view is for people not used to fps games. she ran in circles a lot instead of just turning her view >_<

you forget how unnatural using 2 sticks to move and turn your view is for people not used to fps games. people who play fps games with a mouse and keyboard, as god intended

omg you use a two button LOL

two button mouse* #fail

the frustration was at how bad I was - she is far better at games than me. we were playing it with her housemates watching us and she was berating me for being shit and it all got a bit too much for me tbh.

aw

mh otm about control schemes; gamepads for fpses are an abomination before the lord

I played some doom in my day but came of age in the realm of shooting people in quake with a sweet Logitech mouseman.

Lol olds

i am a clinger. here's a picture i took five minutes ago (i did have to retrieve the disc from a drawer)

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v87/Inuxx/0a124241-7687-47e6-9f1f-73ba7a09903e_zpsd160bc76.jpg

that stuff on the mouse is noob blood

mousepad also obv from like 1995

Doom was the last shooter I was any good at

doom actually when i replayed it last year i discovered that because there's no Z-axis you can get total precision just using the keyboard: left hand on WASD to move forward/backward and strafe left/right; right hand on the left and right arrow keys to turn. (the left pinky and thumb rest on CTRL and SPACE for shoot and use respectively.) as a kid i was totally unaware of this approach; what i did was play mouse-only, as in i pushed the mouse forward across the pad to walk forward, which now seems INSANE. i kind of want to write a book about FPSes that's why this post is okay.

(that was also the excuse i used when downloading eric harris' custom doom levels)

(but wait: aiming with the arrow keys is the same as aiming with a stick only not analog and thus less precise. i guess what this means is i wouldn't mind the sticks in modern shooters if you weren't allowed to look up or down. actually that single technical limitation gives doom a HUGE elegance boost imo.)

except when you're shooting point blank at a wall and the invisible bullets magically careen upward in a parabolic arc to nail the zombie sergeant on the ledge above

ha i had never thought that that would happen point-blank! but of course you are right it would. the doom-quake axis of shooters is so abstract compared to the new ones: nobody least of all john carmack really thinks you're a space marine. you're a floating node.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWjP77TztTQ

5 years after everybody else in the world I have just finished this.

And then immediately replayed the whole thing.

Would like there to be a 3rd person replay view - some of the flying jumps are impressive but you don't really get a sense of distance with 1st person.

still probably my favorite game ever