4PP: Portal 2 Spoilercast

Sweet, I Missed this live so I'll be listening to this tonight.

Coming off of Portal I was rather disappointed to be honest. It's story felt to contrived, most of it being filler that ended up being completely irrelevant to the overarching plot. Often the only time I felt any interest was when they had subtle tie-ins to Half Life, I found myself caring less and less for GlaDOS and more and more for Cave Johnson.(particularly finding the boat Easter egg) I have a feeling Cave was specifically created to tie Aperture's story to Half Life, to the extent that they my use his character in some for on the Borealis in EP3.

My biggest complaint is that the puzzles, while unique, weren't particularly challenging. They had some complicated and interesting ones towards the end, but for all of the new gameplay mechanics they introduced they felt lacking in difficulty. Aeriel Faith Plates, Excursion Funnel, Hard Light Bridges, Lasers, Paint, ect., some of them were used together to create some complicated situations, but they occurred SO close to the end that the sheer amount of them felt lacking. Another less irritating thing that bothered me was they entirely removed the bouncing plasma balls from Portal 1.

Sounds interesting. I'll download right now.......

something that did always irk me about this was along the lines of what brad said: its not so much the puzzles are hard, just you have to have a really good scope of the room..I am not a particular fan of this kind of gameplay, but you guys put on a great show with the different angles and points of view!

WTF!? Just listened to it and you didn't talk about the personality cores at the end lol, "I'm in space..."

Agh, I'll have to wait til I actually buy and finish the game before I listen to this podcast. Really interested in what you guys have to say about it, but I'd hate to have it spoiled for me.

Sweet! I loved Portal and I am interested to know what you guys thought!

I agree with a lot of the points from the show.

A sequel to a game like Portal is always at a disadvantage. The big surprise, the reveal, the initiation into the universe; that is near impossible to recapture. Putting that into consideration, Portal 2 could have gone off in all sorts of wrong directions(the commentary revealed that they were considering not using portals in Portal 2? What the shit?!), so I'm really glad that it ended up being a satisfying game.

While I appreciate all the design and detail that went into Cave Johnson and Aperture's beginnings, it felt too drawn out; that second act of the game will always stand out as the part I wouldn't necessarily want to play again. The entire time I was in Aperture's underbelly, all I was fixated on was getting back to the main storyline. It would have been better served as a quick detour that showed Aperture's twisted past in quick bursts than being completely engulfed in it for hours. For a universe where exposition and background information is often read between the lines and generally sparse, it felt weird for Portal 2 to spill its guts about Aperture's history and it really felt like filler.

Being a full price retail game, I can totally understand why they had their levels play-tested to death and simplified so that it would be accessible to as many people as possible. While the original Portal was a prototype that had a cult following, Portal 2 is a mainstream product. Co-op and DLC should slake the puzzle-masters who weren't satisfied with what the campaign provided.

A great thing that Portal 2 brought to the table that really caught my attention was the sheer immense scale you were able to experience, in both interactive and non-interactive segments. The traditional narrative take was fine but it's always the personalities and dialogue that make the story enjoyable, which this game delivered in spades. Great show!

you know that Valve just announced they wont be a contained single player

so that you can infer that theres going to co op in the next HL
just imagine that now Chell is outside shes going to be the co-op partner with freeman

think about it.

Based on the trailers and gameplays that I have been seeing, I believe that portal 2 game is amazing. Even though this podcast is tempting, im still waiting for my copy first for me to play it then that the time I would listen to this.

Wheatley really made this game epic: his character delivered on everything portal needed :) good show guys!

Really enjoyed the podcast!

Though I do differ in the idea that the whole Cave Johnson section was filler, rather I though it was the Portal Team's chance at really providing a background story of Aperture Science. In Portal 1 we were always only getting glimpses of what Aperture Science was, and now the team was able to put some history and perspective behind who they were, how they did things, and how they've become what we see now.

I instinctively shot the moon immediately. I knew I'd need to be saved by shooting a portal, and I was like "White thing! BAM!"