My guess as to why nobody is on tonight? Portal 2. The original Portal got a huge following for being such a sort of minimalist game. But it's a serious phenomenon, so I am going to let all y'all talk about it on the general board instead of in the Pop Culture ghetto. FOCUS: Discuss Portal 2. RULE: All spoilers of any kind must be in spoiler tags.
Yeah no shit, I mean I know Ive been in a 3rd world country for a year but Ive never even heard of the fucking game before I saw a trailer for 2 on ign the other day. In other news the new Mortal Kombat dropped today, FINISH HIM!
The first Portal shipped with the Orange Box, ostensibly as a throw in with Half Life 2 Episode 2 / Team Fortress 2.(Manchester United 0) It was about three hours of really clever first person puzzles using a gun that can shoot portals in which you can go in one end and out the other, with some physics abuse and limitations on where these portals can go to actually make it relatively challenging. This was accompanied by some of the funniest dialogue I've heard outside of a Tim Schafer game (Grim Fandango, Psychonauts, etc). It took off critically, and.. well there's not much else to say. I don't think I've seen a negative review of it outside of saying "it's short". I think it's like $5 on Steam and XBLA so it's not that hard to get these days.
I highly recommend anyone buy the original Portal on Steam and give it a shot. It's cheap, it's short, and if you don't like it, no harm done and no spending money on Portal 2. If you do like it, then you have a bunch more hours of gameplay released. Also, slow down and listen to the game. You can fly through the game but you won't get all of the dialog and humor if you do that. The game really only has one primary character but the character has some of the most alternately charming, entertaining, personable and disturbing dialog that I've ever heard. The only disadvantage was it was so good, a couple of the pieces from it (which I won't name because you should really experience the game) got over-quoted and over-used. If you play the original Portal, sit all the way through the credits and listen to the song. It's fantastic.
I posted this yesterday in pop culture forum: Spoiler The final song to Portal 2. It is by Jonathan Coulton, who wrote the original ending song "Still Alive". Here is the song at the end of the original game. FOCUS: The game itself is fun as you have no weapons. It's just puzzles.
I played the original Portal again recently with a bunch of my hardcore-adrenaline-junkie, Call-of-Duty-worshipping buddies. They loved it. It's one of those games that really makes you think for the solution, and it feels awesome when you figure it out. Plus the game encourages you to succeed. It always feels like the developers are on your side. Can't wait to pick this up.
Thread conclusion: Frylock assumes that the rest of the world are as nerdy as someone with a PhD in CS.
Well, Portal 1 was REALLY fucking good. I figured I was SOL since I don't have a gaming-type computer anymore. Little did I know you could play this shit on xbox. Is the xbox version toned down or something? Because if it's not I'm fucking getting my xbox out of the cardboard box it has been sitting in for 11 months and going to the fucking store.
Spoiler The only thing that didn't satisfy me was the lack of mobile enemies -like the robots in co-op- that you would have to defeat using the portal gun. Smash them with crates or using the gel to send them sliding off into space, bouncing them into portals that led into GIANT SMASHY SPIKE-PLATES! Roomie and I beat the single player yesterday, and then started on the co-op this afternoon. This is really the most fun I've ever had in co-op.
I always heard about Portal, but I never bothered playing it. Hearing everyone talk about Portal 2 made me decide to play it last night, I played for a few hours and beat it this morning (my friend told me it's about 3 hours, which seems like a good estimation.) My only question is to anyone who has bought the second one, do you feel that the price is justified? The first one was definitely fun, but like people here and my friend said they bought it for a really low price (he only paid $1 on stream.) First impressions, worth the price? (Quick look on Amazon.ca puts it at around 59.99)
In a vacuum, no, probably not. But considering I (like everyone else) got so much enjoyment out of the first one, and for so cheap, I had no problem shelling out the 50 some odd dollars for the sequel.
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.metacritic.com/game/xbox-360/portal-2" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.metacritic.com/game/xbox-360/portal-2</a> 95/100. I'm gonna say it's pretty good on any system.
Entirely hinged on co-op. The single player is 5-8 hours (took me around 7), and the co-op is a DIFFERENT 6-7 hours. Getting 12-odd hours of unique gameplay out of a full price game is fine in my books.