Absolute masterpiece I just finished it and it was incredible. I would have paid 80$ for that single player alone. It's just THAT good I laughed in the first 10 minutes of the game than any 90 minutes comedy. The two new characters (not talking about Atlas and p-body from multiplayer) are great. Amazing. Absolutely amazing bow down. Valve has really gotten incredibly good. I have never seen a game that was as well scripted as this one. The music and the dialogue is in perfect sync with the action, the gameplay is perfect, the graphics look great for such a old game and, in some parts of the game, they just look great, period. You could tell by watching this game that it was made by extremely talented people who had plenty of time to create the game. If the quality of Portal 2 is any indication of what HL3 will be... We are in for something unique
8 hours singleplayer and 4.3 hours co-op. And i guess i missed half of the stuff. I don't get the complainers on the steam forums, or the crazy ones who did the singleplayer in 3 hours (they say).
This! Just finished it and it really surpassed my expectations, the whole thing from start to finish. The dynamic music attached to actions like the orange gel or the bouncepads is a really weird feature, but it works really well; and in fact the music overall was fantastic. Very different from the Portal soundtrack, but extremely listenable and used to excellent effect. I'm currently in the process of ripping the soundtrack from the game's packages for listening. The source engine is looking better than ever; especially with the new lighting system, but there are places where it could really do with higher resolution textures to make the engine really shine at 2011 standards. My thoughts before release: 1. The gameplay could get tired and boring when stretched out for a long campaign. 2. Stephen Merchant could get on my nerves in under a minute. 3. The humour could be stretched thin in a sequel. The reality: 1. The gameplay remained fun right to the end and had more than enough variety and new additions to keep me entertained. 2. Merchant's voicing was endearing and funny and kept me grinning like an idiot. 3. I was laughing all the way through. Haven't tried the co-op yet. That's next.
I just read the last paragraph of my previous post and it was awfully written I guess I was still in shock
3 hours of an immense soundtrack for listening pleasure! It's fascinating to see how the audio tracks for the various levels were constructed, just by looking at the music files. Specific musical themes were assigned to different objects/devices (that much is obvious in-game when you hear the funky beat while being catapulted, etc); but it seems that it's all written so that each level has its own selection of tracks to play which fade in and out depending on what the player is doing or where they are; with beats coinciding so that it all feels cohesive. It's one of those game design decisions where I find myself wondering Why did they decide to do that? What's the point of it? and yet in practice it just adds yet more layers of enjoyment to an already tasty cake of a game.
Played it last night for a about one hour and it is better than the first game, but the stories that the game is short makes me scared of playing more, just want to keep it "new" for as long as possible
I didn't had to stop, but had to send that quote to friend. Oh and multiplayer is briliant. Especially if you and your friend fail many times, and then the light in your head switches on, you get the right idea and boom, stage done. Those moments are really good. And except the very complicated puzzles, you don't need real communication, the built-in commands are more than enough to explain what you want. Even if that's not enough, me and my friend were able to finish the co-op just by using the text messaging. I'm gona replay it again, for the achievements and to listen to everything carefully now. By the way, my favorite thing in the game was the fission reactor BSOD screen .
My favourite line, purely because of the superb delivery, was: [SPOILER WARNING] Spoiler "Oh, hello. How are you holding up? Because I'm a potato." [/SPOILER WARNING]
Finished this yesterday, I've let it stew for a while before depositing my thoughts. Firstly graphics. The source engine might be a creaky old hector now, but that's a good-looking game. Incredibly so in fact, several times (as with HL2:Ep2 in fact) I found myself just staring and soaking up the environment. Story? Excellent, no question that it's a good conclusion to the Portal stream, carefully put together and full of lovely insight into the world of Aperture labs. Voice acting. Frankly I was disappointed and irritated from the moment the game began. It's a personal thing, but I really hate Stephen Merchant. That pompous false-stupidity thing that he feigns just doesn't work for me. I'm sure they tried their hardest to find the right guy for the job, but I'd rather have an unknown. If I'd watched the trailers and read more into it I might've had second thoughts about buying it purely because he's a VA in it. Music was fantastic, as with all the recent Valve games, and will definitely be getting ripped from the gcf's into my music folder.
I really enjoyed it, some quite challenging puzzles and I thought all the characters were really well done. The only thing I was disappointed with was the amount of running involved, as there were some bits just where I didnt need to portal gun, just to run in the right direction. All in all though I really enjoyed it- I had it with AA turned on, something my pc cant usually handle well, and it performed really well. Value, like Blizzard alone, put together a really tight well coded game, which is nice. Now time for the multiplayer puzzles
I think that's just his accent. Besides, he's supposed to sound stupid in this game, so he nailed the part pretty well IMO. But then I've never watched The Office (don't like Ricky Gervais), so I went in with no preconceptions. The other characters (Glados and Cave) were also brilliantly executed I thought.
I know he was supposed to be stupid, it's just him in particular that I hate. Anyone else would've been fine. The other characters were marvellous, Cave is definitely designed around JK Simmons. It reminded me very much of his part in Burn After Reading where he's in an official role placed into a completely absurd context, something which he carries off brilliantly.
Odd you mention the accent, I thought of Bit when I heard him. For people who are more used to a British accent does Valve's choice really have the same punch? My first reaction hearing him (didn't pay attention to the talk of him being a VA and didn't expect it) was that having the accent immediately meant he was an odd-ball character. His lines and nature of speaking certainly already portray that, but the accent underlines it as being something different. And upon further reflection I realized that the player has only heard GLaDOS and the turrents (from P1) and the relaxation chamber system voice so there really wasn't even a reasonable pool of voices to compare against, it only seemed different because I expected them all to have "no accent". And what of people who might find the British and American accents to both be different? Really had me wondering.
Couldn't agree more, just finished a hour or so ago (yeah so I've had work the last two days ) took me about 8 hours in total, and I loved every minute of it. Really, nobody does it better than valve, in terms of writing, characterisation and importantly the animation to go along with that. I liked the extra layers of complexity they added too, it felt more like a Half Life Universe product than a simple side product like the original (which I loved anyway). The engine was given a decent spit and polish too and looked more impressive than Crysis 2 in places to me in terms of mood and just conveying what it was meant to. But that probably says more about Crysis 2 than it does Portal. Its a bit hard to say much more without giving some spoilers and I wouldn't want to ruin anyones discovery of this on their own I'd say if you're a PC gamer, if you've enjoyed other games Valve have made in the Half Life Universe you should love this. Go buy it, and show them our continued support. Its a awesome game. "At some point in their lives one in six children will be abducted by the Dutch!"
Well Merchant has quite a distinct west country accent, which has certain character connotations in the UK and I'm guessing makes most people think 'farmer' or someone from a more simple lifestyle (well, those who aren't more familiar with his role in The Office anyway). That was my reasoning behind him sounding a bit dim anyway, even if it is based on outdated, negative stereotypes
