Portal 2!!!

I don't think I'm breaking any new ground here, but damn, what a great game, huh?

story, gameplay, humor, atmosphere, GLaDOS!!! it's just so damn original and awesome.

just finished single player. great ending. haven't played multiplayer yet, but will soon.

also, i think where the idea came from is a great indie success story:

Portal is Valve's spiritual successor to the freeware game Narbacular Drop, the 2005 independent game released by students of the DigiPen Institute of Technology; the original Narbacular Drop team is now employed at Valve. Valve had become interested in Narbacular Drop after seeing the game at DigiPen's annual career fair; Robin Walker, one of Valve's developers, saw the game at the fair, and later contacted the team, providing them with advice and offering them to show their game at Valve's offices. After their presentation, Valve's president Gabe Newell quickly offered the entire team jobs at Valve to develop the game further. Newell later commented that he was impressed with the Digipen team as "they had actually carried the concept through", already having included the interaction between portals and physics, completing most of the work that Valve would have had to commit on their own.

The gel mechanic comes from Tag Team's Tag: The Power of Paint, a DigiPen student-developed game that won the 2009 Independent Games Festival Student Competition prize. Valve's vice president of marketing, Doug Lombardi, said that upon viewing the student game "the decision to combine their tech with Portal 2 came naturally".Wolpaw recalled that they had already considered the nature of surfaces in Portal in a binary fashion, whether or not it would allow for a portal to be created on it, and the ability to modify surface properties in the manner that Tag did was an obvious extension of that. Tag Team was subsequently hired by Valve, though initially their work was to "develop Tag in an interesting way" according to Wolpaw, only some time later being brought into the Portal 2 team.

the wikipedia articles for both games are great reads if you're really into portal.

oh yeah, and last thing if you're going to discuss plot or new game mechanics please do it like this:

> do it like this[/color]/code:1f40lshk]
, so it'll look like this:

Yeah, Portal 2 is pretty sweet, I really love the dark atmosphere it has.

The multiplayer is great splitscreen with a friend, and online seems to be as well if you don't get matched with someone who just plays around when you're trying to beat it. That said, finding someone who wants to toy around when you do, is also great

I'm really happy that the students from Digipen were hired, not only did the first group of students bring out Portal, the gels in the sequel add alot of fun to the game. Heh, straight from school to Valve...that'd be awesome

I take it you are over ponies now, then?

I played it for about half an hour or so, but it was basically a boring cutscene that you move around in with some guy talking. And some easy "puzzles" from portal 1.

Portal 2 was a very good game. I've acctualy clocekd it in one overnight playtrough And although i've enjoyed a lot I did not find the story to be very good. It fell to random where story in the first portal was really vissionary, tight and made sense. However gameplay wise it was a great game thought again fell kind of simpler then the first one.

I take it you are over ponies now, then?

<img src="http://th05.deviantart.net/fs70/300W/i/2011/155/4/4/better_living_1_by_penstrokepony-d3i1n48.jpg">

yeah that game was great and i really liked Wheatley but it was too short , easy and it crashed every 5 minutes for no reason on my comp.

Meh...I liked portal 1 but it came in the orange box (I love HALF-LIFE) but I don't know if it's worth 60 bucks for more portal. I'm to busy with mass effect 2 and Fallout New Vegas for ps3.

The game was really fun and made me laugh a couple times. Played through it in two days and really enjoyed it. I'm waiting on my now fried laptop to be fixed to get back and conquor 2P mode. The puzzles were DEFINITELY more simple than Portal 1. I really hope the level making scene takes off and gives us great challenges. There's so many more zany things that can be done.

Funniest part in the whole game (requires sound):

youtube.com/watch

I loved them both. Sequel seemed harder to me... bigger play areas didn''t help. Still enjoyed playing it.

I am a cynical bastard. There's no denying it, and I think that a lot of people here would probably agree with me . I am just very simply not satisfied with most of what popular culture or the entertainment industry has to offer. As such, my list of "perfect" games is very, very short.

This game is on that list.

I really enjoyed Portal 1. When I heard there was a sequel in the works, my cynical nature kicked in. "Why the hell would they need to make a sequel? The first one was perfect, how could you possibly expand on that? This is just an attempt to cash in on the popularity of the first game." Etc. I am very glad to say I couldn't have been more wrong. Not only did it improve on the first game, it DEVASTATED it. If Portal 1 was "great," then Portal 2 moved that bar higher to where Portal 1 is now just merely "good."

Before I played Portal 2 I heard all the hype about it (but thankfully none of the spoilers). I admit that I did let the hype get to me, which is dangerous (especially for a cynic) because things rarely live up to their hype. But not only did it meet up with expectations from the hype... it was actually better than what I had expected. That's never really happened with any other game I've ever played... except Portal 1 . Portal 2 really is just top quality all the way through.

I played it for about half an hour or so, but it was basically a boring cutscene that you move around in with some guy talking. And some easy "puzzles" from portal 1.

There are a couple reasons that you play the first Portal 1 puzzles over again at the start of the game... the first is that those puzzles are already pretty much the perfect way to introduce the idea of portals to people, so for new players that didn't play Portal 1 it's easy to get acquainted. The second reason is all atmosphere for those that did play Portal 1... you get to see a familiar environment from the first game, and how dramatically it has changed since last time you were there. That direct comparison with the old and the new is a pretty powerful tool. It is familiar, yet something is obviously wrong. It was a pretty smart move in my opinion, as it sets up the player with an uneasy feeling right off the bat.

Unless you just find it boring, I guess. Can't help you there, though.

At any rate, new puzzles pop up almost immediately after that. And later on the game diverges rather wildly from the puzzle-room setting, even more so than the first game.

As far as the "some guy talking" thing goes... well, if that really bothers or bores you then I guess you probably shouldn't bother trying to play through the rest of the game because you will have "some guy" or another talking at you all throughout. Portal 2 is VERY heavy on story. If you take the time to pay attention to the atmosphere and the story though I think you will be pleasantly surprised. It is surprisingly deep and engaging for a game such as this.

And remember, this is all coming from a cynical bastard who is never satisfied with anything.

I played it for about half an hour or so, but it was basically a boring cutscene that you move around in with some guy talking. And some easy "puzzles" from portal 1.

The story is brilliant.

But yes, I found the puzzles either lacking in complexity (sometimes I'd literally get stuck -because- I was trying to pull off some crazy stunt like they'd make me do in the first game) or so vague that I almost had to look at walkthroughs to even know what they wanted.

I completed the first 4 chapters in.. less than 3 hours? I'd say 2 and a half. That was the first bad sign for me...

Sadly, I am one of those unlucky ones with Intel GMA 4500MHD chipsets. The game keeps crashing when the level is loaded with a 'Display driver has stopped working' msg. I've tried everything thing nothing seems to be working.

Anyone with the same issue here?