[General Battuta]

Also, I have to humbly disagree with Battuta.  This has blown the first game completely out of the water thus far.  And I can't say I've yet been stuck for a minute or two looking for a place to put a portal, and that's usually because of my own inability to look upward than anything else.

With the possible exception of the ending, there was nothing as brilliant and funny as the weighted companion cube, or the cake, or the end fight banter about how you were adopted, or -

It was a good game. It just never took off.

I felt the ending to be extremely exciting and rewarding, not to mention unexpected. How did it not take off?

Read my posts in this thread. I also didn't say anything bad about the ending, in fact I declared it basically the best part of the game. If you somehow contrived to miss that I can only assume you are trisomic on the 21st.

[T-LoW]

So far Portal 2 rocks my house. That's gaming evolution at its finest

If you somehow contrived to miss that I can only assume you are trisomic on the 21st.

Usually it's not funny to make jokes about genetic deficiency, but

[Grizzly]

If you somehow contrived to miss that I can only assume you are trisomic on the 21st.

Usually it's not funny to make jokes about genetic deficiency, but

I thought it was pretty pathetic  .

Then again, its probalby in the sight of the masive 'fanboyism' surrounding Portal 2, with people even saying it's a console port for crying out loud. Next they will be saying the same about the Witcher.

[General Battuta]

Anyone who thinks this game is a ****ty console port has mental encopresis. It is clearly not. And it is a great game with lots of memorable moments. The people ****ing around on Metacritic are worthless human detritus.

[The E]

I have no idea where this "Console port" business is coming from. The handling is exactly the same as it was in Portal 1.

The only thing I started to intensely dislike after a while were the loading screens, which seemed to happen quite often, but I gather that that's more of an issue with the Source engine than with the game itself.

[QuantumDelta]

The loading screen issue IS source.
The only console-related thing that's in the PC version is the fact that your character is guided slightly into portals compared to portal 1.
Other than that it's so not a console port, and even if it was, it's not a bad one, it's certainly good enough that you can't tell if it is.

[Mongoose]

Your character was guided into portals in the original game, too, at least as long as that option was checked.

And I dunno, Battuta...the fact that, where I'm at right now,

Spoiler:

GLaDOS is currently in a potato stuck on my portal gun

pretty much trumps anything that happened in the first game for me personally. And Wheatley's antics were terrific too.

[QuantumDelta]

Spoiler:

Throw the switch!
Wait no if you throw ARGHARKLN!
I know we're in imminent danger and probably about to die but that was totally worth it.

GOLD

[Scourge of Ages]

Say, you tech guys: if, hypothetically, a person attempted to play Portal 2 with a intelgrated graphics card that only goes up to pixel shader 2.0, what do you think the effect in-game would be? (Portal 2 is listed as requiring shader 2.0b)
Because I'm trying to get the game to work on a friends computer, and I suspect that this is the culprit.

Techy

Spoiler:

Nothing renders except the interface. Everything is black, except for the menu, crosshairs, and tips. Also there's a very bright error in the console log that says "trying to set a pixel shader that failed loading"

[pecenipicek]

To be honest, my both most favorite and most frustrating parts were the retrolabs.


And to be honest... the deeper implications of the whole deal thoroughly disturb me.

Spoiler:

also, how the hell did they come up with the portal device in the 50's/60's?!?

[Dark RevenantX]

Too bad I'm literally broke and can't afford to buy games for at least the rest of the entire year.  ****.

[Bobboau]

Spoiler:

also, how the hell did they come up with the portal device in the 50's/60's?!?

if you will notice, there were signs that showed a massive backpack setup in that section.

[Mongoose]

Yep.  It wasn't quite so compact then.

[pecenipicek]

Spoiler:

also, how the hell did they come up with the portal device in the 50's/60's?!?

if you will notice, there were signs that showed a massive backpack setup in that section.

It still doesnt explain how they got to it.

[JGZinv]

"and we make a neat gun for those who are... still alive..."

I think that explains it pretty well.

Also... SciFi movies in the 50/60's could be inspiration.

[The E]

It's Aperture Science. They do what they must because they can.

[Scourge of Ages]

That

Was

Totally

A really good game.

I think my favorite part was when [REDACTED]
Well, maybe not favorite, but I laughed 
Also the animal king takeover.

[pecenipicek]

That

Was

Totally

A really good game.

I think my favorite part was when [REDACTED]
Well, maybe not favorite, but I laughed 
Also the animal king takeover.

you know, [REDACTED] was never really funny, so please start using spoiler tags instead.

[General Battuta]

So here is my spoiler-free review:

The writing was great. Never as fresh as the first game, so rarely as funny, but still packed with great lines and moments and with a good overarching story.

The mechanics were good. There were just a few flaws that dragged it down from being a glorious masterpiece.

1) Bizarre, inexplicable signposting issues, usually in transitions between chambers. Too many moments that require you to spin in circles trying to figure out where to put a portal (for example, through the grate on the floor in one chamber). These wouldn't be an issue except for the fact that the signposting is normally so GOOD, so you just end up befuddled and totally thrown out of the flow. It's as if Mirror's Edge has abruptly stopped highlighting things red for you. This is frustrating because the first game also had these issues in the sequences when you'd escaped the test chambers.

2) Portal conducting surfaces are used too stingily. A comic I read (I think on Nerf Now) really helped bring this into focus for me. The first game tended to be very generous with portal conducting walls. This game generally just has a few of them in very specific places. This makes the puzzles more about looking for the obvious white conducting surfaces and trying to figure out what to do with them than about experimenting with your portal placement and trying to get it right. In the end this makes puzzles less satisfying because the space of possible options you can explore is reduced - it's not so much that you're building a clever portal system that works as you're discovering the solution intended for you. That's less fun.

3) Generally I just felt like it'd been slowed down a little from the first game; they talk a lot in the developer's commentary about how they were worried it would be Too Hard. That was probably a good move in terms of making it more accessible, but they lost a lot of the really kinetic, wild moments, like hurling yourself through a momentum transfer and then firing a new entry portal to get a better angle on your second exit trajectory, or using turret rockets to take out rocket turrets. Also gels were lame.

Those are basically the issues I saw. The ending was great though.

[Scourge of Ages]

you know, [REDACTED] was never really funny, so please start using spoiler tags instead.

Right, sorry, I should have been more specific. I mean

Spoiler:

in the credits song, where that one line is [redacted] instead of typed out. It was a nice little touch that just made the whole thing I had just experienced a little more funny.