Portal 2

[jimtendo]

I felt the

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traverse through the Aperture underground facility was pretty much the Mexico portion (from Red Dead Redemption) it was nice at first, but got a little too long in the tooth towards the end of that particular segment. I always felt like wanting to get back into testing sooner.

Anyway, a marvellous jaunt and eager to cracking on co-op, once PSN is back online.

Oh, and:

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want you gone >>> still alive

[Number45]

Bah, fired up the PS3 and still no PSN. :'(

[Magnakai]

Wow, I just completed this on the PS3. It's utterly brilliant, quite beautiful at times, and frequently hilarious. I barely want to say a single thing. If people are feeling the opening section is a bit too similar to the original - that's fine. Stick with it. It's worth it.

FWIW, it ran absolutely perfectly.

[EightRooks]

The opening section was definitely too slow -

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the visual gag that you're playing through the original levels again

was good, but could have done with being shorter. The

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underground levels

weren't up to the rest of the game, and some set pieces fell a bit flat - I thought the signposting was weak on one or two, and saw some minor bugs, even at the very end.

Other than that, the singleplayer was/is excellent, and a great improvement over the original. The first Portal was never perfect: that was just Valve fans going wild. It's still great to play through, deserves credit for innovation and was astonishing back then, but in retrospect it's 80% shockingly easy filler as prep. for the last few levels. The sequel still starts off slowly, but it's much more detailed, the payoff starts sooner and is much more worthwhile.

The Source engine is showing its age, even with the improvements, but damn, the use of scale and the amount of things actually moving in places is insane. Naughty Dog's work has more fine detail but they arguably don't have as much of each level actually doing things.

[abigsmurf]

I finished it earlier. The

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Old labs

undoubtedly go on for too long and it hurts the game from there on but overall it's great fun.

Like the original, I'm surprised the puzzles never get too devious and towards the end you were spotting the tell tale signs of how to solve a puzzle rather than actively working it out but then I guess there's a risk of making puzzles feel like a chore

[Rep]

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Fatty fatty, no parents...

Less of death trap, more of a death option.

Forget GOTY, best game ever. Stephen Merchant is my new hero.

[EightRooks]

I never felt any of the puzzles were a formality, and genuinely enjoyed solving pretty much all of them. Compare that to Braid, where while I thought the nuts and bolts of the design - how rewinding time worked and the things you could do with it - were works of genius, I just didn't find the game itself flowed at all well and steadily got more and more tired of it to the point I actively hated playing it so much I gave up. If you're spotting how to solve a puzzle, that means the level designers are doing it right, as far as I'm concerned.

And yes, I'm not much of a fan of The Office but I thought Merchant's performance here was fantastic. Really, really fit the Portal world almost perfectly. An absolutely brilliant mix of pure laugh-out-loud material and genuinely emotional stuff, too - (seriously, do not read this spoiler if you haven't beaten the game)

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I guessed what would happen with the twist but I thought he made a really good comic villain. Surely it wasn't just me who got really creeped out by his pathetic box/turret hybrids? And who felt a bit sniffly seeing him in the very last scene?

[rmoxon]

I agree about the design of the puzzels. I think valve have done a brilliant job with creating relativley open enviroments and not making the solutions too hard to see most of the time. This means that you always have to look around for what to do but a solution never feels far out of reach. As long as you can understand the mechanics you can deffinitley work out what to do next.

Its really well designed, you never feel frustrated by it, and the puzzels are still satisfying to complete.

[abigsmurf]

Incidentally, who was it who did the writing for the game? There's so many quality lines throughout it.

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"This is the part where he kills us"
"This is the part where I kill you"
*Chapter 10: The part where he kills you*

[Matt]

Only negative from me to far is the loading. Every level? Did we just jump back in time? The levels are tiny as well [so far].

[C']

Astounding game. Loved it from start to finish and can only echo what people have posted above, the quality of the writing and performance of every VA was superb. So many quotable lines.

One of my very favourite parts was actually the

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Cave Johnson "take your damn lemons" recording with GLaDOS raging along with it.

So well done. In fact, I was actually surprised in the second half of the game how I found myself almost

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sympathetic for GLaDOS

.

[importaku]

Just got the last single player achievement i needed, they were fun to do as a lot of them you get extra lines out of glados & wheatley. Now just got to find someone to do co-op with as theres no way im randomly connecting to a stranger, will have to wait for friends to get the game.

Looks like im one of the few that enjoyed

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exploring the old aperture science labs & the amusing quips of Cave Johnson

[abigsmurf]

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The Cave Johnson bits were funny and it was neat seeing how the company changed over the years, it's just that the puzzles were weak, mostly the bits outside of test chambers. Too much hunting around for portal surfaces in hard to find places. The bit towards the end with 3 gushing gel pipes was the worst bit. Must've spent over an hour on it.

[rmoxon]

Yeah the

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old labs

went on a bit, Im near the end now of this now and so far they are also the only place I have actualy been stuck for a bit on any part of the game.

[importaku]

Just realised this first play has no poll, can a mod get it added please i want to register my score