Board 8 > does Portal 2... umm... get better?

(+) Yeah! (+)

I miss just screwing around with Portals

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xyzzy

get out

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You beat yourself up with your past. Don't blame yourself, blame the world. Blame God. Blame me.

what part are you at?

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Cyclokle
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this topic MIGHT make you a bad person

it gets better when you get the portal gun, i guess? if you had fun just playing with portals in the first and you don't have fun after getting that... maybe you should check your imagination

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You did indeed stab me in the back. However, you are only level one, whilst I am level 50. That means I should remain uninjured.

I knew right after learning that Portal 2 was only a 6-8 hour campaign that it would never beat the original in a contest match.

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I just got to the light bridges. I'm maybe two hours in? the level design is just so limiting. there are so few places to actually use your portal gun and the gimmicks just feel like they're getting in the way. they're clever puzzles but I hate being so restricted in a game that's all about experimentation.

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xyzzy

UH OH GUYS UH OH


well Portal 2 was just a good game anyway. The real fun is in the co-op op but I wouldn't give it any GotY awards!

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Portal 2 is mostly just finding the one wall that you can actually place a portal.

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yep. it's kind of.. linear? not in the sense of there only being one solution, but there's only one way to go. you find one wall, then see what the one thing you can do from there is, then figure out how to get to that one spot using the couple of options available, then you go hunting for another wall to shoot, then you look around to fling yourself in the place possible.. it's just really straightforward.

it's also possible that the magic from the original is gone now that they're trying to expand it to a full game. or I'm just grumpy.

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xyzzy

I'm not sure why people felt Portal 1 oh so less limiting than Portal 2.

You're trapped in a tiny room most of the time. The choices with portals feel just as limited.

Also at least wait until you get to the gels.

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i do have to agree that significantly less wall was portal-able in this one. Valid complaint.

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You did indeed stab me in the back. However, you are only level one, whilst I am level 50. That means I should remain uninjured.

From: transience | Posted: 9/30/2011 8:32:01 PM | #001
I miss just screwing around with Portals

agreed sooooo much

Main complaint I have with Portal 2: way too much "look for a portalable surface far off in the distance" augh


I mean I still liked the game, but it's really not as great as people say.

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I felt the first few hours were a little slow, because they were just puzzle after puzzle. Which was kind of what Portal 1 was about, but it felt more like an expansion pack than a new game. Once you start delving into the depths of Aperture Science the game really picked up for me.

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Them covering up all the walls and making you hunt for portal spots is by far the worst part of the game, but everything else is significantly improved.

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Black Turtle did a pretty good job.

okay, cool. I'll stick with it.

free Portal 2 DLC out next week by the way

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xyzzy

http://www.wouldyoukindly.com/portal-2-dlc-coming-this-summer-valve-talks-original-plans-for-prequel/

As soon as I read this, the way the game was made a lot more sense to me. You know, it was disappointing. This thing I'm linking doesn't have the whole story there, but essentially they wanted Portal 2 to be a prequel with completely different gameplay. They were building the whole thing but test audiences just wanted it to be like the first one. Eventually they gave in to these idiots and changed everything. Of course they still wanted it to be new and exciting, so they brought in a number of new gimmicks, but as it was so rushed, these ended up making everything so linear. The game became looking for that one patch of white to make a portal on. Just think of what could have been.

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Kiwi

okay, bridges are cool because they interact well with portals. liking this a bit more now. the level design helps here - lots more portalable walls.

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xyzzy

Portal 2 is absolutely amazing but it's kind of depressing to hear that valve caved into people b****ing for more of the same...

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The Real Truth posted...
Portal 2 is mostly just finding the one wall that you can actually place a portal.

"Where's Wally With White Walls" is frustrating but it doesn't happen anywhere near as often as what you're saying

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*is XIII_rocks*

I'm not sure which part you're at exactly but the game does get boring halfway through, where it's just "find that portalable wall way back there and shoot it" .... but the last 2 hours of the game are so, so great that it made up for it

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A Fudgesicle is a frozen, ice cream-like snack. OR IS IT

Once you meet a certain man on a painting is when the game is at it's best

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Seriously, thinking it about more just makes me so much more upset. Cave Johnson could have been the main antagonist of this game. The best parts of the game are already exploring that era and having fun with the new stuff (Funnels, Bridges, Gels) they put in.

But no, people just focus on past s*** that won't be as good because they've already done it.

AUGH

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i dunno, that was my least favorite part of the game

SPOILRES



there was really no storyline reason to be there. it gave some interesting backstory to the setting, and maybe the level design was better, but i'm a story progression fiend. i just didn't see why the character would be doing this





EN SPOILERS

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You did indeed stab me in the back. However, you are only level one, whilst I am level 50. That means I should remain uninjured.

Yeah, Portal 2 is definitely worse than the original. Still decent; you might as well finish it.

FFaddict1313 posted...
Seriously, thinking it about more just makes me so much more upset. Cave Johnson could have been the main antagonist of this game. The best parts of the game are already exploring that era and having fun with the new stuff (Funnels, Bridges, Gels) they put in.

But no, people just focus on past s*** that won't be as good because they've already done it.

AUGH

For what it's worth, the Cave Johnson area was the worst part of the game to me. The test chambers were good, but getting between the test chambers was consistently stupid. "Find some tiny wall off in the distance to put a portal on, and jump from a high height into another portal." I got stuck multiple times in that area, and not once was it in a test chamber--always just a really dumb "find the wall to put the exit portal on".

I probably would have enjoyed it quite a bit if it had Portal 1 style elevators between test chambers, though!

As for gels..."Paint the room" puzzles were just boring. "OK, let me spend 10 minutes getting white gel everywhere, and oh, hey, even after I paint this wall white I still can't put a portal on it because the coding is bad. And oh, damn, got another gel in the wrong place, time to repaint that whole area again." I feel like they should have stuck with just the orange and blue gels--those were usually fun.

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Cats land on their feet. Toast lands peanut butter side down. A cat with toast strapped to its back will hover above the ground in a state of quantum indecision

get out

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Portal 2, despite not having as many places to put Portals (Which is the only criticism I can think of, TBQH), is so much better than the first that it's insane, in my opinion. That's not a knock on Portal; that's telling the quality of 2.

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Despite its flaws, Portal 2 is easily better than the first game, yes.

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From: metroid composite | #024
Yeah, Portal 2 is definitely worse than the original. Still decent; you might as well finish it.

I really don't get why people say this. Have you played the original recently?The only thing Portal 1 has on Portal 2 is that the concept is new and GLaDOS' lines are a little funnier. I love both games, but there is just so much more in the second one.

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I really don't get why people say this. Have you played the original recently?The only thing Portal 1 has on Portal 2 is that the concept is new and GLaDOS' lines are a little funnier. I love both games, but there is just so much more in the second one.

I think it depends on how much weight you put on consistency. What's better: a ten-level game that's executed flawlessly, or a 50-level game with ten that are on par with the other game, but ten that are pretty mediocre?

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The middle third was my least favorite part of the game. I liked the standard portal puzzles, and I liked some of the "real world" puzzles, but not when they became "here's one patch, guess how you use it?" Particularly, I think it was chapter 6, was really bad about figuring out where to actually physically go that I got really frustrated.

Glados is doing nothing for me in this game so far. the revival was good but since then? it just feels like more of the same.

I know it gets better

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xyzzy

it does!

well at least i think it does so take that as you will!

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Ryoko
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Portal 2 basically reveals Portal 1 for what it is: a glorified tech demo. A pretty fun tech demo all the same, but yeah.

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Black Turtle did a pretty good job.

From: transience | #021
Glados is doing nothing for me in this game so far. the revival was good but since then? it just feels like more of the same.

I know it gets better

that's because Weathley is 10 times better and funnier

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A Fudgesicle is a frozen, ice cream-like snack. OR IS IT

You don't deserve to like Portal 2. I hope you hate it forever

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You beat yourself up with your past. Don't blame yourself, blame the world. Blame God. Blame me.

You need to go back and play Portal 1 after playing Portal 2. You will immediately find that you're remembering it as being better than it actually was They're both two of the best games I've ever played, but most of the complaints with Portal 2 are honestly just people remembering Portal 1 as being even better than it actually was because they had such low expectations for it in comparison.

The lack of portalable walls is a legitimate complaint, but it's not nearly as frequent as some of you are making it sound.

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I don't know what you guys are saying about "you need to play portal again"


I HAVE played portal again since portal 2


half a dozen times

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I tried to play Portal 1 again a month ago and just couldn't do it. Half an hour in, I realized that I enjoyed Portal 2 so much more that I could no longer derive any entertainment from Portal 1 at all. I doubt I'll ever be able to tolerate playing it again. It was a sad revelation.

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Oranejo posted...
I really don't get why people say this. Have you played the original recently?The only thing Portal 1 has on Portal 2 is that the concept is new and GLaDOS' lines are a little funnier. I love both games, but there is just so much more in the second one.

1. Glados talks during puzzles. Remember the challenge rooms from Portal 1? Great challenges, but I actually didn't play them more than once or twice, because it was radio silence during the puzzle. Seriously, I can't stress how much difference it makes to have a psycho robot talking to you during puzzles. The best moments of Portal 1 are all centered around scenes where Glados is talking constantly (the "This test is impossible; give up now and there will be cake" room, the Companion Cube room).

2. All the content in Portal 1 is good. If you ask me to name bad areas from Portal 2, I can name several. If you ask me to name bad areas from Portal 1, umm...there's one area where you need to blow up a pipe with a redirected missile, and the collision on the pipe is a little funky. And there's one area where I haven't figured out how to get the energy ball into the recepticle, so I just end up bouncing it randomly until it gets in there, but that might just be my own incompetence. That's about it.

3. I'm going to dip into game designer jargon here but...the weighted companion cube scene works well because it removes player Autonomy in such a way as to direct anger at the villain. Usually removal of player autonomy is a game-design no-no, but they do so in such a way that it intensifies the plot emotions. In Portal 2 there are several scenes where they remove player Autonomy for no good reason other than a very blatant "the writers want the plot to go this way" (basically all of the core-swap scenes--more than once the game designers have Chell make a decision just because that's the way they want the plot to go, not because it was a decision I as a player wanted to make). They pretty much admitted that the scene they made was more or less an accident, and it's very evident from Portal 2 that they don't actually understand the psychological principles that they tapped into, because now they're blatantly doing it wrong.

4. In Portal, you do wacky stuff with portals that they just don't expect of you in Portal 2. Like...the end of test chamber 18--I don't remember Portal 2 ever having you doing horizontal height transfers between platforms. For that matter, offhand I'm struggling to remember if Portal 2 does a double-fling. Even though there were more tools in Portal 2, I didn't feel like they ever developed them as fully as they did the portal gun in Portal 1. A friend of mine claimed there was an interview where Valve said they toned down the difficulty of the test chambers because they didn't want to block the story progression, which sounds plausible to me.

5. Simultaneously, Portal 2 makes people fail at things that are not hard. Find the one tiny patch of wall to place an exit portal. White goop doesn't actually work on this wall--it hits the wall behind, but not the prop sitting in front. Portals can actually only be placed at the center of tiles in this one section (even though these tiles form a wall). Dipping into game design jargon again, this breaks competence. Especially combined with the above, where I just can't think of a mind-blowing eureka moment from Portal 2 puzzles. Basically, Portal 2 never makes you feel "holy ****, I'm so smart", but does make you feel "Augh, I'm so dumb, how did I miss that tiny patch of grey in the distance?"

Let's put it this way--Portal won the Game Developer's Choice award for game of the year, and I totally expected it. I'd be shocked if Portal 2 won this year. It's enjoyable, but it's not brilliant.

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Cats land on their feet. Toast lands peanut butter side down. A cat with toast strapped to its back will hover above the ground in a state of quantum indecision

All that matters to me is which game is more fun.

And to me, 2 is clearly more fun.

So....that's it.

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~LtM
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Man, the WCC has got to be the dumbest thing that's popular or cited as a reason for a game being good. I incinerated that thing without a second thought. It's a cube.

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Black Turtle did a pretty good job.

From: KamikazePotato | #041
Man, the WCC has got to be the dumbest thing that's popular or cited as a reason for a game being good. I incinerated that thing without a second thought. It's a cube.

^This. People who thought of the Cube as anything else are kind of pathetic.

Like, you hear about people who sit for 15 minutes trying to find a way to get around getting rid of it. It's pitiful.

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From: metroid composite | #039
the weighted companion cube scene works well because it removes player Autonomy in such a way as to direct anger at the villain.

...Really? We were supposed to be angry at GlaDOS after that?

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...Really? We were supposed to be angry at GlaDOS after that?

Apparently so, Leon, at least judging by the omnipresent meme. I agree with the couple posters above: I incinerated the cube without thinking twice. It was more a comedic scene than anything else in my eyes, but I guess I just "misunderstood it."

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I thought the Weighted Companion Cube bit was brilliant, but not because it made me sad or angry at the villain. To me, this scene as well as peoples' reactions to it are just funny. There's nothing sad or tragic about WCC. It's just funny and the humor is derived from GlaDOS's obvious lack of understanding of how human emotion works, and she's trying to screw with you but in a way that is obviously going to fail. But then it works on people, and that's even funnier.

Anyway, I prefer Portal 2 just slightly over Portal - I kind of agree with people who say that Portal's game design is just tighter than Portal 2's, but while both games' writing are... probably the best and second best in gaming history, Portal 2 just blew me out of the water. Portal's lack of Wheatley really bothers me now. I f***ing love Wheatley. If there's one reason I prefer Portal 2, he's it, and I don't care if that's shallow. Both games succeed in a lot of ways though. Portal 2's design is still totally fine to me, I think people are finding excuses to nitpick where they wouldn't have in Portal 1, while Portal 1's writing is obviously still all-time-great stuff, and I do prefer GlaDOS in 1 over 2.

Paratroopa1 posted...
I f***ing love Wheatley. If there's one reason I prefer Portal 2, he's it, and I don't care if that's shallow.

That's fair. Personally I wasn't much of a fan of him and wanted more GLaDOS.

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Cats land on their feet. Toast lands peanut butter side down. A cat with toast strapped to its back will hover above the ground in a state of quantum indecision

Does it get better?

No, probably not.

If you don't like it now, I can't really see that changing.

If you like it now, I don't see how that's a big problem.

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Connecticut Huskies

I agree entirely with mc and transience and am glad people share my opinion. I had this opinion since the game was released and when everyone else was fawning over the game I was really confused. It was a pretty underwhelming game in my book. The writing was worse in general (new Glados was a lot less amusing), and the game design was definitely worse.

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No amount of planning will ever replace dumb luck.

Portal's lack of Wheatley really bothers me now. I f***ing love Wheatley.

This man knows what's up.

Also, as far as "game design" goes, Portal may be tighter and more consistent, but the laboratory sections are way better in the sequel.

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From: Ness26 | #048
I agree entirely with mc and transience and am glad people share my opinion. I had this opinion since the game was released and when everyone else was fawning over the game I was really confused. It was a pretty underwhelming game in my book. The writing was worse in general (new Glados was a lot less amusing), and the game design was definitely worse.

Are you kidding? Maybe I wasn't looking in the right places, but everyone was saying how terrible P2 was compared to the first. This is the first time I've seen people support it as a game besides reviewers.

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