f13.net

From http://www.bluesnews.com

And the heavens did rejoice.

This morning we find that the lottery winners live in Portal, Georgia.  My boy says that is where they made Portal.

I'm not sure this is a good idea.

Cool

Sweet, three years of development and we can play Portal for another thirty minutes!

I have to agree with this. I dont think they can top the original, and if it doesnt it will only cheapen the experience. I think maybe they need to go in a completely new direction with two.

They never should have made Red Alert either. (Oh wait, I actually hate Red Alert. I retract my non-green greenness).

I thought Red Alert 2 was the best game in the C&C series.  But I'm also in the "please don't ruin this" camp.  Sequels give me things to worry about.

Meh if it sucks, just treat it like Highlander II.

Of course, I'm also in the camp that thought Portal was "alright" and "a bit of fun" rather then the best experience of my life.

Yeah I don't get the Portal 2 cumfest either.  It was "decent."

During the original I got a little tired of the game right around or just before you "broke out" of the test area. From there I played just because of the atmosphere, to see what else the computer would say, and to see the conclusion. The mechanics were simply not very fun, they were interesting in the beginning because they were new and undeniably cool. I spent a couple minutes just shooting the thing in walls and looking/jumping through. Then it got down to just puzzles and they were okay I guess. For a while. Then they repeated and got boring. The game was short, the game got tired long before then. What made portal good was everything around the game. If they try to recreate the portal puzzle game it would be stupid, if they try to recreate the atmosphere and expand on the original gameplay or make new gameplay from scratch then that could be cool.

All I want is new gameplay and more story.

Necro.

Happy Valentines Day from Aperture Science! (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5I3VnCHWsU&)

Portal 2 is now available for pre-order. Let the excitement begin.

Oh hello there!   :heart:

This thread is depressing.  You have "You might ruin what good memories I have so just let it die and leave it alone!" mixed with "I'm going to try to make a decent and fun game seem like a negative thing."

This is why we can't have nice things!

The real depressing part about this thread is it made me realize how long ago Orange Box was released.

Gaming culture hoooooo!

At least we finally know why women love diamonds: for their wide range of industrial applications.

Is that a gun turret at the desk behind the woman? <3 <3

Was this said in a Hard Gay voice? (Hard Gay is a Japanese entertainer)

Finally went back and finished this one today...didn't realize I was so close to the end the first time I played on release.

:drillf:

Isn't it depressing when you die in that furnance (or whatever it was, it's been a whie )in the end ?  :grin:

Well, duh!

Also, I just know any attempts at multuplayer Portal with my husband will result in a messy divorce.

They're doing better than a lot of other games I could mention.

And still no HL2:EP3.

Ep3 is going to b part of the HL2 10th Anniversary package. In 2014.

Hey, we're closer to that than we are to when HL2 was released...
 :awesome_for_real:

Here's hoping Portal 2 has actual enemies and an improved gun to match.  Watching a car become spaghettified as it's sucked through a portal and thrown out onto a group of metro cops with stun sticks would be just about the most awesome thing ever.  Fuck headcrabs, zombies, and monster closets.

For the price they're charging, there'd better be a lot more content.

Actually I hope the complete opposite. The general lack of tangible enemies (bar turrets) made the atmosphere in Portal work. By all means drop the portal gun into Ep3 for all the glory you describe. Portal is best kept as an atmospheric and darkly funny puzzle-platformer in my eyes.

Well, yes.  Portal as portal and HL2ep3 as HL2 + Portal would pretty much fit the bill.

Give me more of the same kind of stuff that was the first Portal and I will be a happy camper.

Make it an FPS with some "cool" mechanic and I won't bother.

Exactly, portal was special because it wasn't an FPS. If there was one game I could probably persuade anyone to enjoy, even my technophobic mother, I suspect Portal could be that game. Keeping it simple keeps it fun.

That said, if episode three doesn't involve going to the North Pole to loot a portal gun from wherever the fuck Dr. Mossman was heading in Ep 2, I will be an unhappy camper. I want to sit and snipe combine with fridges through portals ALL DAY LONG.

Portal was also special because of Chet and Erik.

Yeah the entire point of Portal was that it was a puzzle game, not a real shooter. Adding enemies would probably ruin it.

Portal gun to Episode 3, and keeping Portal a puzzle game.

Every other scenario would be disappointing.

Who?

They used to do Old Man Murray

Hmm, thinking about it, what are the chances that there's going to be a surprise announcement regarding perks tied to the release? Like Portal and TF2 that were tied to the release of episode 2? Would be hilarious shortly before release, "Oh hey, by the way, here's Episode 3, too!"

Or the most hilarious possibility, being a Portal game up to a certain point and then suddenly turning into Episode 3.

DON'T RAISE HOPES!  :oh_i_see:

I would expect that the story of Portal 2 could well set up some of episode three, in the way that the original Portal mirrored a period between HL and HL2 (I guess), and that would be cool. If portal 2 is devoid of references to the rest of the half-life world I will probably worry a bit, but otherwise that is about the limit of what I expect.

From a Kotaku article.

Unless Valve became (bigger) money grubbing dicks, there IS going to be bonus stuff.

HF2 was about 8 hours long. Not seeing the money grubbing dicks here.

6 to 8 hours for $45? Hope it comes with a happy ending.

What single player FPS, that was really good, cost less and lasted longer? Also the co-op campaign is another 6-8 hours of gameplay supposedly, so that puts you at 12-16 hours for 45. What is the magic dollar to hour ratio?

Episode 2 with Portal and TF2 was cheaper than that. I think, anyway.

Orange Box you mean? $20 at Fry's as of a couple years ago.

Orange box was released 4 years ago. I'm sure Portal 2 will also cost $20 in 2 years.

The non-combat puzzle game was quirky and fun.  But if you were to say that it never occurred to you how fucking awesome it would be to kill shit with the Portal gun I'd have to call you on it.

I remember the Orange Box being $40 at release, but that was probably with a preorder discount.

Six to eight hours sounds way the fuck too long IMO.  One of the things I loved most about Portal was that it didn't pad its playtime out with boring shit.  I'm a busy man, god dammit.

Killing shit with the portal gun does not belong in Portal.  It belongs at the end of HL ep 3 as a fun "I win" button, similar to the overcharged gravity gun.

I'm a lover, not a fighter.

And how.  :Love_Letters:

It needs to be somewhere in the compilation of ep3 stuff.  I'm not sure I'd ever tire of having another gruesome industrial accident gun.

I'm hoping I never see those episode 2 mines again.  Or headcrabs, they're just not as good a quality enemy as striders, gunships, and combine soldiers.

I always wanted to use portals in shooters.  Plant a exit behind an unsuspecting guard and snipe him from point blank.  Would be about as fun as planting c4 on the pissing guard in the first metal gear solid.

Isn't there separate single player and coop campaigns? I would think so. If there's some sort of advertise length I would guess you can roughly cut it in half for each part, if you think that it's too long.

I can'r remember, was the existence of Portal known before the release of the Orange Box?

Yes.

Cheers, figured as such

That's why you play a tank!  You're trying to shield mobs from those horrible dps-ers.

I paid 50 bucks for it at Best Buy about a month after Sauced showed it to me when I was in Portland, so that must have been a discount.

Valve releases routinely have a 5-10% preorder discount I've noticed. Just one more way Valve shows it is a superior company to almost all/all other game companies with how it regards its customers.

Well, Valve are also their own online distribution chain, so they can afford it since they're not paying a publisher, retailers, costs of physical media, transport, etc etc...

Valve control 70% of the PC distribution market and made almost US$1 billion in revenue last year. They can afford to be slightly generous (especially on their own titles).  :grin:

I got my Orange Box for $25 at a Black Friday special right near release.  We came back from an all-day Renfest and decided to stop at Best Buy on the way home.  Score!

I believe that is HUZZAH!

I think I read somewhere that buying the console editions offers a DL code for the game from Steam for free.  If that's confirmed, that's awesome.  I wish more games went cross platform.  Can't say how many times I've bought Oblivion across two different platforms... Fallout 3 is looking to do the same.

PS3 version gets the code because it runs on Steamworks. So sorry 360.

So, it's about one month to release and nobody is talking about this?

There are a lot of short gameplay videos teasing us:


Watching these the first thing that stands out is how tight everything looks; the graphics, the gameplay elements and the scripting. The other thing is how the dialogue and humour are looking to be top-notch again. I have a good feeling about this

I'm in wait mode.  Suspect the waiting will end before the game goes on sale.

I'm also in wait mode. Since it's a Valve game, you know it'll hit the $5 point during a sale in the next 2 years.

edit - or $2.50

You've got to be very careful around Sjofn's AE spells. I hear she's... indiscriminate. There's always a sign for new henchmen at the local guildhall.

Fantastic Gameplay clip.

Steven Merchant is an inspired choice as a voice actor.

Also JK Simmons.   :heart:

I'm not looking at those links because Portal worked best as a short-and-sweet-surprise. Hopefully Valve is trying to wrongfoot fans with some of that material, but honestly, I'd prefer to see it fresh.

The PS3 version is $54.99 with $20 credit on Amazon right now

(which comes with the PC version  :grin: and works out cheaper than just the PC version on steam)

So driving around town doing normal weekend errands and stuff, every single city bus I saw had one of those full-coverage ads for Portal 2. And I saw three different billboards of the same. Pretty impressive marketing blitz, I gotta say. I almost never see advertising of that scale or type for games, except when I happen to be in LA maybe.

Left4Dead had a pretty impressive media blitz.

The buses in Seattle were covered in them last week too, thought that was pretty cool.

Same here in Miami. Pretty cool to see them around.

I'm one of those trying to avoid spoilery stuff- trying not to look getting tough with the blitz; whoops popup ad: was that a robot jumping across a chasm while cradling its detached head in its arms? oh kool... dammit. Still though, am skeptical, concerned that the production will be overwrought, a lot of the charm of the original seemed to have a very spontaneous quality, can be hard to recapture/replicate that stuff. I hope P2 is less whimsy/humor/coulton and more mysterious niches/darkness/huge surprises.

So apparently the Valve indie game sale that came out last week is actually an ARG for Portal 2. There's a wiki that is cataloging what the 13 different games are doing here. (http://valvearg.info/wiki/Valve_ARG_Wiki)

Some people have far too much time on their hands.  :ye_gods:

I wouldn't mind seeing a PvP mode in P2 (in addition to the SP and CO-OP) where you get a portal gun and try to dunk the other player(s) into spikes or acid or whatever.

Aperture Investment Opportunity #1: "Panels" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0qcED35LL8I)
Aperture Investment Opportunity #2: "Bot Trust" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZMSAzZ76EU)
Aperture Investment Opportunity #3: "Turrets" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6i-nMWgBUp0)
 :awesome_for_real:

 :heart: :heart: :heart: :heart: :heart:

Last one's out: Aperture Investment Opportunity #4: "Boots" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wX9Sc88qreg).

Extra bonus points for the Mirror's Edge reference.

I am so very ready for this right now

"That's 65% more bullet per bullet." :awesome_for_real:

Where, where?

The crazy moves Chell was doing.

Ah, thought they're just showing off animation upgrades and the redesign for the sequel while at it.

i :heart: all the details they put in these blueprints.

Well, more the hands flailing around when she falls right at the beginning (~20s in).  The stuff with Chell in third person was just cool :drill:.

"So anyway, we're between banks right now, so just make those checks out, 'to cash'"  :awesome_for_real:

I need to finish DA2 before Tuesday.

Those videos are amazing. Stylish, well paced and written, awesome tech but it's not shoved into your face, humor that actually works and geeky as all hell.

 :heart: Valve.

My daughter has taken to signing off 'I'm Cave Johnstone, we're done here.'  No Joke.  It's both cute and a horrendous example of the insidious nature of viral marketing.

J Jonah Jameson.

Pre-loading is up. :drill:

Seems liek we missed this, but Valve are running something fucking cool to coincide with the release. They have built a massive ARG that involves extra content hidden within a set of 13 indie games which they released as a pack on april 1st. There seems to be a lot of speculation going on and by the looks of things GLaDoS has taken over part of the steam forums.

Thread on the steam forums (http://bit.ly/follow_the_ARG)
Thread on reddit (http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/gpb1h/so_the_portal_2_arg_just_got_a_lot_more/)

This does nothing to minimise my excitement; I'm not sure how seriously I buy the idea that they will release early, but looking at the scope of what they set up, who the fuck knows what Valve has planned?

 :awesome_for_real:

Hmm I remember it being mentioned here but I don't remember in exactly what thread. It could be my precog powers manifesting, though.

Here's a link to the Valve ARG Wiki (http://valvearg.com/wiki/Valve_ARG_Wiki)

A lot of folks seem to be speculating that the ARG will lead to Portal 2 being released on the 15th. They also seem to suspect that the announcements from Aperture Science will be matched by a rival announcement from Black Mesa (i.e. HL EP3). So much speculation, and these ARGs always produce a lot more noise than signal. It is all very cool though, and I can only imagine how fun it must be coming up with one of these.

Also, it seems that the main folks who were driving the ARG forward have been kidnapped by GLaDoS, but they are ok, in a safe environment.

Interesting article on Ars about the PS3 version being the way to go if you own a PS3 (and according to comments, Amazon is giving a 20 dollar gift card with it free too) because you can play with all your friends on Mac/PC versions through steam, and you get to download the PC/Mac version free if you bought the PS3 version.

It was mentioned like ... 14 posts before K9.

Why don't you listen to Prospero?!

 :heart:

Whoops, I admit, I had missed that somehow. Sorry.

I'm just overexcited.

It's alright, K9, your squee is part of your charm!  :heart:

I did think it odd that he mentioned that and like ... no one said anything besides Strazos. I didn't say anything because ARGs give me a headache, so I never have anything useful to say about them beyond "it is neat they are doing that" and "Man, nerds are scary when they are fully mobilized behind a problem."

Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit sniffing glue.

Aw, it was posted over a week ago, who reads that far up the page? No one. No one except me.

Huh, interesting. The Borg is trying to expand their reach into PSN now.

The arg is pretty amazing.

Here is info about Steam on the PS3 and the free PC key:
https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=5477-WPJM-9388

Awesome. Was going to wait til this was out and see if people thought PC version (controls etc) was better than PS3, but no need now. PS3 copy pre-ordered.

Talking about this yesterday made my GF find the cake song on YouTube. I know have it stuck in my head. Again.  :mob:

I really am interested on seeing how they handle game updates.  Figuring they (at least used to) updated TF2 on an extremely frequent basis, it will be much harder to keep the PC and PS3 updates in sync due to the certification processes it has to go through.

Pretty sure that part of Gabe Newell's whole coming onto the stage at Sony's press conference was to confirm that Sony is basically handing Valve the keys as far as how frequently they want to update. I'm sure there's some sort of a cert process, but I don't think it will be nearly as restrictive, with how much it was talked up.

From:
http://blog.us.playstation.com/2011/04/14/portal-2-pretty-much-every-ps3-question-answered-and-that-cake-thing-too/

You have done well humans (http://www.aperturescience.com/a/b/c/d/g/h/abcdgh/)

 :awesome_for_real:

^^^

Get that final puzzle done and apparently, they unlock the game early on Steam.

Won't help me if I'm getting the PS3 version.

Counter is done.

http://www.aperturescience.com/glados@home/

needs people to play these games now apparently, the more the faster it unlocks i'd guess.

(http://i.imgur.com/o9LJK.jpg)

Ah well.

Portal 2 could come early, but only if people play indie games from the Potato Pack (http://www.aperturescience.com/glados@home/)

A huge marketing stunt. Well played, Valve, well played. They're going to make a goddamn mint off this.

On side note, the very idea of glados@home is...  :awesome_for_real:

Genius

This is an absolutely incredible amount of support from Valve for these indie games. Good thing I own most of these games anyways.

I fear glados@home.

Play some indie games, people!  I have to work today, but it'd be nice to have portal2 for the weekend ^^

If not, I'm going to have to schedule some vacation time next week.

The steam folks need to be arrested for being marketing evil masterminds. Christ.

I predict that this won't have any significant impact on the release date. If you're lucky, you might get 24 hours out of it. Because I'm sure the publishers are going to be fucking excited, if it's suddenly available several days earlier to everyone and their dog.

How is that CPU determined? Does their have to be X concurrent users playing or just have been played?

No one knows. That's why I think it's certainly orchestrated bullshit, without player influence.

Well it's obviously not actual CPU based (because uh, we'd just fake the SHIT out of that in minutes), but it would be trivial to base it off time played in the last hour. It's not like they don't collect it.

I like how Killing Floor has the most players and its bar budged the least. As I said, fucking bullshit.

There's spectulation that the bar's progress is relative to the total number of copies of each game steam has sold. So if Killing Floor has ten times as many installs as another game, it needs ten times as much playthrough. The people who are keen about this are trying to get people to play through one game at a time.

There isn't really enough time to reduce the game's release by much anyway. Even if they manage to jump through valve's hoops, at best it'll be a Monday rather than a Tuesday release.

I fired up Audiosurf after refreshing the counter page a few times with no changes.  Audiosurf's opening screen showed the counter page - time down by about 3 seconds, 311 more "aux power" at the bottom.  

Refreshed the web browser and the stats changed to match Audiosurf's.   Seems like it's going to take quite a bit to speed it up significantly, but maybe just firing up the games you have at least once will help some.

(and now GlaDos has just redirected me in Audiosurf to a song from the Portal soundtrack, I think, with some Portal-based graphics...  Wowsers.)

quoting a quote from RPS:


so if that's true, the amount of people logged in is only one of the factors.

Hey GlaDOS, if I wanted your 'advice' on tower placement I'd ask you. Me and General Raspberries are doing just fine, thanks.  :awesome_for_real:

GlaDOS drawing power from a bunch of potatoes is awesome. For science!

That's pretty awesome.

Looking at the GLaDoS@home site I see people has made progress, but it hasn't really done much to lower the launch timer. Given that there isn't enough time to significantly reduce the launch date, perhaps the end of the ARG isn't the release of Portal 2, but the announcement of HL2 Ep3? From reading the wiki there have been leads which seem to hint at Black Mesa, the Borealis and that storyline, although maybe that is just wishful thinking.

The banner at the top of Steam says "Help release Portal 2 earlier!" So I'm pretty sure it's to try and release Portal 2 early.

Hey you, listen up, this is Half Life were talking about, conspiracy theories about game releases are totally acceptable!

Filling up WEOTW's bar shaved a  :why_so_serious: FULL 50 MINUTES :why_so_serious: off the launch countdown!

 :awesome_for_real:

Well, I'm off Tuesday so I'll be happy with however much time we can shave off the unlock time. If it can get down to 5PM Monday it would be just perfect.

If 8 more hours gets shaved off it might actually unlock the same time you could walk into a store and buy it!

http://valvearg.com/wiki/GLaDOS@Home

Speculation on how this works:

The on-disc copies will most likely be encrypted and will unlock at the same time as the preloaded copies. AFAIR they already used that mechanism for the orange box.

This would make the fill rate capped and every purchase of Potato Sack would make it go slower (you get 13 games, affecting all proportional fill rates, but you can only play one at a time).

Should everyone be focus firing on one game at a time then?

It would seem so. That would max out the potato bonuses too.

fake edit: I think I shall play the Ball tonight, or Defense Grid.

I did my part and played a couple of hours of Amnesia last night.

1...2...3...KickIt was worth another :drill: 40 MINUTES!!!!  :drillf:

Does that count ?

I'm spending my pre-portal-2 weekend looking into GPU upgrades.  Been meaning to replace the old GTX260 with something fancier for a while now and I figure this is the time.

On the ultra-high-end it looks like AMD is in the lead, but I'm not really looking to drop $500-700 on a GPU.  NVIDIA's GTX560Ti looks to be a nice upgrade (and lower power!) for $250ish...

(http://frotz.net/misc/5xx.png)

There's also the Radeon HD 6950 1 GB at that price point.

No the on disc stuff unlock at midnight.  Steam doesn't unlock games normally till like 10am or something if I recall.   Regardless I've bought several steam only games at midnight and not had such a problem so I doubt it.

The 560Ti is the G92 8800GT of the Fermi cards. You can't do wrong with that one.

Given that this is shifting the timeline by under an hour per game, and given that valve use a worthless -8 timezone to run their lives, isn't all this fuss irrelevant to anyone not on the west coast of north america, as the extra hours will be early morning or middle of the night?

It depends if/when the potato multiplier kicks in (the email from valve linked from the bottom of the theory page implies that some event triggers the use of all those potatoes) and if all the bars hit 100%.  The active theory is unlock happens when timer hits 0 or all bars are at 100%.  Each time an individual bar hits 100% time is knocked off the timer (so there some benefit to "completing" each bar).

If it just continues more of the same then yea it'll be middle of the night.   I wonder if they've thought of how mad people will be if that's how it ends up though.

Well it looks about 40-45% done already, so maybe they will crack it early.

GMT -8 is the center of civilization.  No other timezones matter!

Sadly when it comes to gaming this seems accurate

It makes up for all the East Coast bias in sports reporting.  :grin:

Pre-Portal2-Launch Portal Replay: Complete.

o/~ I'm doing Science and I'm still alive

Well, aside from Europe, where the game was going to unlock at 2PM-4PM Tuesday. Even 8 hours of launch-time-advancement is a benefit here.

I'm rather thrilled as, if people complete another ~2 bars, the game will unlock before my lunch hour instead of during or after it.  :awesome_for_real:

I got my stupid golden potato. I just want this game to be out now!

Assuming that at some point the total number of potatoes will trigger something or at some other trigger they will accelerate something, it can't hurt to join this Steam group and get yourself a free potato (for joining) to help the cause: http://steamcommunity.com/groups/nelipot

Where can I see my personal progress? Also, does that mean playing through Portal will help progress?

It's 2h20 earlier now. rofl

Potatos show up on your profile page, but that's apparently disabled at the moment due to some potato cheat (supposed to be resolved tomorrow (Sunday?) and non-cheaters will get their legitimately earned potatoes credited).

I don't believe Portal has any impact on the ARG / GLaDoS@home stuff.  I just wanted to replay the original before Portal 2 arrives.  It was enjoyable as I remembered.

GMT is the centre of civilisation. That's why all other timezones are measured from us. :smug:

Arbitrary consensus is still arbitrary.

Three hours and some chickenshit.  :why_so_serious:

--edit: Another game bar filled, another 40 minutes. This is so fucking ridiculous.

I don't understand the teeth gnashing. The game is unlocking earlier with no effort from me, this pleases me.

I really don't get the point of time zones. Why don't we just have a single global time? Does it really matter that a person in New York gets up at 7am and works until 5pm rather than getting up at 12 UST and working until 22 UST?

We do (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coordinated_Universal_Time), but there's a few thousand years of inertia in the current system that needs to bleed off.

No teeth gnashing. I just find it fucking hilarious how people got tricked into paying money and playing their asses off for something that's a marginal benefit at best. And thanks to timezones, people needing to go to work and school and do other real life stuff, the marginal benefit gets trashed altogether.

To be honest, when this started, I really hoped that I had maybe the chance to start playing on Sunday, a couple of hours into Friday, I figured that this is just a coordinated thing, shrugged and continued to break Nordschleife records in Shift 2.

Clearly, we need to switch to Swatch Internet Time (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swatch_Internet_Time). Phantasy Star Online for the original Dreamcast had it right all along.

Love the vines overgrowing weathered techno paneling theme of the Aperture Science page.

If people paid $40 and are spending time playing games they don't want to play just so they can play a game they do want to play at most a few days earlier, I think Valve deserves to take their money.

If this got people to play some games they might not have otherwise, that's a good thing!  If they're enjoying them and keep going back to them, even better!  (Not to mention that a few of these games actually got large amounts of new content.)

Fuck all the haters, Potato Sack games are honestly good. I bought it even though I already had Audiosurf, Amnesia and Bit Trip Beat. Gave the extra copies to a friend.

Like 4 of them are good. Audiosurf was good years ago. YEARS.

This whole ARG just makes me want to listen to I Love Bees again and pay attention to Portal 2 on Tuesday.

I'm singing along to I'm Still Alive in Audiosurf so I'm immune to reason.

Looks like Tuesday morning would be an optimistic guess for this.

You mean the day it was supposed to release?

Color me shocked.

Because by definition the time you see on a clock refers to the rising and the setting of the sun, because that shit is useful information for people who aren't cave adapted like I am?

And yes, it does matter.  That New Yorker would be utterly fucked on his sojourn to Tokyo.

Still isn't going to release before the midnight sales.   I kind of wonder why they didn't pick another path to cash-in that didn't involve pissing a lot of people off.

Unless everyone else on the planet also worked 12UST-22UST no matter if that's early part of the day or middle of the night for them, what would that really change? Instead of remembering what time zone that New York person uses you'd instead need to remember what specific UST hours happen to be their work hours and which are their leisure time etc.

Yeeeeah, I think going "oh derp, it's 8pm there, no one will be at their office" is a lot easier to deal with. And I say this as someone who has the luxury of operating on Sjofn Time, all the time.


(Sjofn Time has no bedtime is the main feature.)

Signs point to 1-2am on Tuesday or 9-10pm Monday evening, depending on which estimate you trust.  Either way I was originally expecting Tuesday morning, so earlier is nice.

In the mean time, I checked out one or two indie games (didn't buy the whole pack), and got non-portal stuff done over the weekend.  Can't complain.

Release date is almost irrelevant to me, I've ordered PS3 copy from Amazon, so it'll arrive when it arrives. Probably Monday, just after I go away to visit relatives for a week.  :oh_i_see:

In the mean time I have also been spurred to reinstall Portal and have a nostalgia play through.

The counter on the page itself only shows a 5h30 advantage. Any estimates by third party sites are basically predictions pulled out of their asses.

The two predictions which seem reasonable are based on:

- The time based counter jumping whenever a game hits 100%
- The (reportedly confirmed by a valve employee) belief that when all bars hit 100% the game will release instantly

http://k-4u.nl/portal2/ has some fun graphs of the data collected from scraping glados@home.

Either way, worst case, Tuesday morning (possibly very early!) I'll be able to enjoy some Portal 2.

In the mean time, I continue to enjoy watching the absurd amount of energy being put into analyzing all this silliness.

Just bought a retail copy of Portal 2. The seem to sell them early over here

Can you actually play it though? It should unlock the same time as the digital copies.

I just noticed that the code attribution that used to be at the foot of the hasportal2launchedyet.com site changed.

It used to be "ETA calculations based upon this bookmarklet" with a link to some JS code. Now it's "ETA calculations based upon random guesswork" with no link.

Bitter, the community has become.

Um, the potato multiplier just started counting down.

Either Valve hit their panic button of "oh shit they haven't played enough indie games" or there was never any chance of affecting the time of release.

Watching you chaps pretend that you matter and that you're not just ridiculous consumers running the marketing maze is FUNNY.

Keep it up.

I just live vicariously through other people who play, I've contributed maybe two hours over the course of the weekend.

"THis game cannot be installed since this game is not released yet"

Seriously, at least let me put this thing on my HD

It gave me an excuse to play some Defense Grid, which I had put down before finishing a long time ago and kept meaning to get back to, I am under no illusions that I was really contributing much.

I didn't participate but I doubt anyone who did had any illusions that they weren't participating in a marketing stunt.

Yeah, it's going down at rate of roughly 10/sec. With the current amount it's ~11 hours before it gets all way down to 0.

edit: but interestingly enough, the "active test subjects" on top states now "nine" instead of "zero"

ah, nevermind, it's all covered in the status update text.

I'm not surprised Amnesia is in last place. Which is not to say it isn't a good game, I'm sure it is from other people's reviews, but I bet it is too scary for a lot of people. (The trailer was too scary for me.)

Well, few people are going to replay Amnesia. It's really about story and exploration. It's very cool the first time, but the second time... what's really the point? It doesn't have any mechanics that are satisfying in themselves, unlike all the other games in the potato sack.

Pff, it's all harmless fun. Not that I have any of the games, nor the time to power-play them right now. Indulge us in our mild fantasy.

I don't think any of us are playing these games under any false pretenses - I wanted the gold potato because all those challenges looked fun, so I got that, and then all this other stuff is just games i'm running in the background while idling and doing other things. There ARE people taking it as seriously as you imply, though.

Ironwood? Being a killjoy?
Never.  :awesome_for_real:

(http://forums.f13.net/index.php?action=dlattach;attach=2683;type=avatar)

That's how many games have a blue bar.

I'm mostly amused by everyone going crazy over this.

But it wasn't that many when i posted that :grin: (think it was seven then iirc) Wouldn't have mentioned that if it was this obvious.

I'll only feel let down if I frothed over something unfrothworthy.

I suspect I shall be vindicated!

Internet scuttlebutt is that 9 of the top ARG players were invited to visit Valve and play Portal 2 today, hence the reason this all kicked off at 11 AM PDT.

FU VALVE

I'm sitting there reading a web page and all the sudden it does a popup saying Portal 2 has finished d/ling.   Apparently though it was just some stupid post launch update.

  :argh: :argh: :angryfist:

Plus side is the countdown is headed towards 11pm pacific tonight at the moment.

So in effect, the entire thing was nothing but a troll by Valve to get lots of people to buy some Steam games. Apart from 12(?) people (presumably US residents only who live within driving distance) who got invited to play game a day early. There's every reason to suspect the time of the countdown was *fixed* by Valve to the exact time of their own choosing.

I look forward to another ARG when Half Life 2 Episode 3 is about to come out. In 10 years. Maybe there'll take longer than Duke Nukem Forever.

The "nine" thing jumped to 54 now. Wonder if it changes to 432 next...

edit: nope, 56. with another game done the counter is down to hour and some change, but another game has bar nearly filled, too.

edit2: that other one is done too, and it was worth whole 5 minutes or so off the timer :why_so_serious:

Timer jumped from ~3hr to ~1hr while I was driving home.  Now I have time to eat dinner and then PORTAL. ^^

11 minutes from now....

Decrypting.

It's go for me!

Goddamn is my machine slow at decrypting this game.  Not far now!

You'd think spending all that money on the fancy new i7 Quad and 10k RPM SATA 6 HD would make this thing decrypt faster, good lord.

Maybe it did.

It's probably just GlaDOS@home using that power for... something.

I bet even that 10k is chugging like mad right?  Steam is prolly letting itself be limited to 2gb system memory too.

Woke up to play.

Incomplete installation error.

Got that (code 10 - steam servers unavailable) a few times, but then it finished and I'm off exploring.

The incomplete whatever whatever goes away after a few clicks yeah (although by now it probably has settled down for everyone.)

GODDAMN I am loving both the single and multiplayer. *.*

I had to stop because I was getting a motion sickness headache. Just like when I played the first one!  :why_so_serious:

I :heart: the game so far, though. Ingmar is going to cry when I make him multiplayer with me, but too bad for him.

I can't play until I get off work 6 hours from now... :uhrr:

I think my new graphics card's ability to hold things at what looks like a steady 60fps even with all the effects on has saved me from motion sickness thus far.  Loving the hell out of this -- I was a little worried that it would have trouble holding up to the original, but so far so awesome.

Have played into chapter four of the main game and the first two sets of co-op levels.  Need to grab some sleep.  Not sure if I'm going to take tomorrow off as "Potato Fool's Day (Observed)" or be content to just play in the evenings yet. ^^

I spend a lot of time just gawking at the environments and exploring.  Definitely enjoying savoring the experience and not rushing madly through.

Question: are single player and co-op two completely different things? Like, completely different levels, and eventually, story?

Additional question: do they have two separate endings?

Finished it. Took about 5 hours. Exceptional game. Better than the first. Snagged the title of best puzzle/platformer ever from the cold dead hands of Portal 1.

Deary me.

So. Fucking. Good.

"Smooth Jazz will be deployed in 3...2...1..."

I'm tired. I want to go home and play more portal. Glados is such a huge bitch still <3

Sweeeet, thank you Valve.

Plays just fine so far at 6200x1080 resolution.  :awesome_for_real:

http://i.imgur.com/eTb98.jpg (http://i.imgur.com/eTb98.jpg)

Please tell me the co-op campaign is different from the regular or that's a damn short window to be charging $50 for.

Singleplayer took me 8 hours, and although I haven't tried it yet I'm pretty certain coop will have to be completely different maps since the narrative behind the singleplayer maps won't make any sense at all if you're playing it with those 2 robot guys. (And it is much more story-heavy than Portal 1)

Also, you're supposed to need to cooperate to solve the coop maps, which obviously isn't the case in SP.

Finished it slightly before schild did last night (for the record :awesome_for_real: ) - he's right, it is a better game overall. I'm still kind of on the fence as to whether the massive budget this game received over the original was a good thing or not.

EDIT: I guess I think ultimately it's a good thing, as the amount of variety in the level design this time around is astounding. Their setpieces are unmatched. It just feels less like a perky fun indie game with a sinister twist, which was kind of charming, and now it's more of a serious AAA title.

The metacritic page for this is hilarious. Reviewers love it. Users apparently absolutely hate that it shipped with stupid dlc options.

I am again reminded that I should never read user reviews, because apparently this game is TERRIBLE.

The co-op campaign is completely different that the single player mode.  It is *also* a lot of fun.

Everyone who got a golden potato gets the Valve Champions pack (i.e. every game Valve have released) for free.

(http://i.imgur.com/PTQOa.jpg)
What if you already own every game they've ever released?   :oh_i_see:

http://www.teamfortress.com/post.php?id=5325&p=1


I at least got a laugh.

I totally cackled. I love every single person who writes anything at all for Valve.

I played through 2 sections of the multiplayer coop just now with one of my best friends and it was fucking great. It took us like 5 minutes of feedback before we figured out that it hotmics you by default. Bad valve!

Edit: Also, this still isn't $50 worth of game if you ask me.

The game is fun, it's not significantly longer than the original portal though. At least if you subtract the cutscenes. It's good value if you happen to grab a discounted copy at a steam sale but recommended retail price is Eur 50 for the PC/Mac version and Eur 70 for the PS3 or XBox 360 version which is utterly ridiculous. (That's $70/$100 at the current conversion rate)

Definitely.


Eh? Just on test chambers alone it is probably three times as long. My playthrough has taken over six hours, the first portal was about 1.5. Portal 2 felt a LOT longer than the original.

Anyway, definitely buy this game, it is fantastic.

Just a short note to express my opinion. I love Portal 2, it's awesome, amazing, fantastic, great, technically and artistically outstanding.
It IS, overall, a better game than the first Portal.

BUT


(***PLOT SPOILERS***)

(***PLOT SPOILERS***)

I enjoyed the ride.

Overall: awesome game. I can't wait to try out coop.

 :oh_i_see:  :awesome_for_real:

Yeah agreed, significantly longer. Still not "long" in an overall sense, but a lot longer than Portal 1, which took all of 2 hours-ish.

If you're horrible at puzzle games and fps games, it takes significantly longer.  :awesome_for_real:

Honestly the single player got mighty close to "too long" because I suck at pacing myself. Unless the game makes me car sick, which it did, so I didn't play it in one sitting  :why_so_serious: It's not that I wanted the game to be over, but since it was really clear where the game was heading to its conclusion, I wanted it to stop stalling.

I agree.  Well, I think.  I don't think it's too long, but I definitely think it's appropriate, and more towards the too long side of appropriate than the too short side.  I haven't actually finished it, but I am very, very close (I'm talking single player only here).  I'm at 7 hours... I don't really understand how that's all that short, tbh.  If it was twice as long or something (which it seems like some of the yelling people seem to be wanting) it would be preposterous and bloated, imho.  More really isn't universally better.  Obviously it's awesome when games last for a really long time, but I just don't think gameplay like this would work for a 40 hour epic or something like that.

(And it's absolutely fantastic, imho)

Yeah, we're basically in agreement. Basically if the game had gone on much longer, I think it would've just been pointless padding and annoyed me. This is all single player related, mind you, I haven't played multiplayer yet. I'm letting Ingmar emotionally prepare himself for it first.  :grin:

(I am not very good at jumping, you see. And by "not very good" I mean "comically awful.")

Based on skimming the achievements there were some other fun things I managed to miss even though I was very intentionally trying not to rush ahead needlessly and enjoy all the environments and dialogue.

Guess I'll have to play through again!

Various things that I really enjoyed:

Also, I have decided my favorite moment was:

For me, it's not so much "Portal 2 needs to be fifteen-twenty hours" so much as "a $50 game needs to be fifteen-twenty hours."  The original Portal came in as an extra on the Orange Box, which also included Half Life 2, HL2 Ep.1 and Ep. 2, and Team Fortress 2 for basically the same price as Portal 2 by itself.  One of the concerns I had when P2 was announced was that they would feel the need to add hours of padding to lengthen the play time.  I'm glad they didn't, but I still think the game looks overpriced.  I'll likely grab it if it goes on sale for $10 or $15, but $50 is too much for a game I'd plow through in a day or two.

Maybe we are all just spoiled at how much value the Orange Box actually was.

It might be close to 15 with the co-op. Not sure how much of it there is. It also *seems* like it is set up such that they can add more coop levels later, but we'll see I guess.

This.

I feel that the original Portal was easily worth $40-50 to me, game experience wise.

I never finished HL2 and didn't play much TF2.  Portal, I adored.

Okay, just finished.

In unrelated non-spoiler stuff...


That's fair, and quite reasonable.  I guess I think the complaint "It shouldn't cost 50 bucks" makes a lot more sense than "It should be longer."  I have no issue with the cost myself, but I have a huge game budget and I understand I am not the norm.  And obviously people are entitled to value entertainment however they want.  I definitely understand someone buying a game that will last 100 hours rather than 8 if they can only afford one of them, obviously.  I guess I'm just confused by the outrage about a game that costs 50 dollars lasting 8 hours single-player, since it doesn't strike me as an unusually low playtime for a game these days, and feels completely appropriate to the game itself.  Someone just plain preferring to buy a really long-lasting game instead of a shorter one is a totally different story, of course, I was more speaking of the "OMG VALVE HOW CAN U BE SO GREEDY" outrage that sort of exploded out of the ether on launch day.

That...that was a very good game.

At the end...
I do think Still Alive is a better song though, maybe I need to get used to the new one.

I liked both songs, I'm not sure I could pick between the two. Still Alive had the unexpected treat factor that the new song doesn't have, so I have a hard time being objective.


PS: Ingmar Co-op Deathcount: 1, Sjofn Co-op Deathcount: 0

UPDATES AS EVENTS WARRANT

Regarding cost, I don't mind the price tag; I paid $55 and got it for PS3, which came with a free PC copy. I bought the Orange Box exclusively for Portal; never played Half Life 2, and only played a round or two of TF2, but never felt ripped off.

I enjoyed it, even with the 20 hour pause in the middle caused by my psu exploding. I did like the building in the salt mines being built from the bottom up, thought it gave a nice experience.

That sounds made up.

 :oh_i_see:

Yeah, this. I'm fine with Portal 2's singelplayer being that shot, I just think $50 for it is WAY overpriced. Hell, I only took about 5 hours and 2 sittings to finish the first and it was a perfect little morsel of gaming nirvana. For $50 though, I expect a bit more.

A lot of people aren't counting co-op, which I can understand to a degree, but it was a major, if not the biggest selling point for the game from the point of their advertising.

I do miss the challenge modes though.

Don't worry, you'll probably get the challenge modes as a DLC somewhere down the line.

That said, I too can't decide which ending song I like better.

It's true, (Swedish has the name and noun karl with the same etymology) but that doesn't make it any less forced.

hmmmm.... I smell bullshit.
I did enjoy Portal 1, not to the level of best game EVAR that some here go to, but as a full-price game that's that much (not) longer than the original, I'll be picking it up for $5 sometime in the next 2 years. Or as a freebie with HL2 Ep3.

My copy arrived just after lunch today. It's now 18:30 and I need to stop and pee and eat. This is brilliant. There is more to it than Portal 1, if not in length then certainly in style, story, design and art.

Plus, £30 for PS3 and PC versions together? Yeah this feels worth it.

Only problem so far is that PSN has been down all day (rumours (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/04/21/psn_outage_ddos_rumours/) are that it's a DDoS) so I can't activate my PC copy yet or play any co-op.

Portal 1 ~ 1.5-2 hours
Portal 2 ~ 5-8 hours

Looks like a they were being pretty honest there.

Yeah, was going to reply to that. That's 2.5 to 3 times longer, so they were pretty upfront about the length of the game.

I think P1 took me about 4-5 hours. I think. It was quite awhile ago. Pretty certain it was more than 2 hours, but then I rarely play long sessions of SP FPS without lots of breaks.

I did P1 in one 4 hour session.  I don't remember being all that challenged by it but had a ton of fun.  I remain suspect of the 1.5-2 hour claims.  Not saying it's impossible, but that seems pretty fast, imo.   

If P1 took you that long I don't think you should really have any fears about the length of P2. Portal 1 had what, 19 test chambers plus the ending? Portal 2 has easily twice as many puzzles I am pretty sure. Maybe more. Plus the whole co-op thing on top of it.

Entirely depends on the person. I got through P1 in just under 3 hours. I'm about 3 or so hours into Portal 2 and it seems like I'm only half way.

I think Portal 1 took me three-ish hours? Portal 2 took me a little over twice that, without doing any multiplayer (which I enjoyed, I am not sure how much Ingmar likes it though  :drillf:).

I need to find me a co-op buddy. Time to harass climbjtree or Strazos.

Is there any point an attempting co-op with out some sort of VOIP?

They do provide you some tools - emotes, a 'countdown' thing - but I think it would be pretty difficult to do some of the stuff without talking. Also, potentially more hilarious.

Voice is built into the game, though, so as long as you have a mic you're set.

You can also ping the world to be all HEY DUMBASS PUT A PORTAL HERE, that's the most important thing. And you can look through your partner's eyes, which is a big help.

All you need to know about Portal 2 Co-Op, you can learn from the Yogscast (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6f3I91ZRsGg).


-edit- Why do you fight me Youtube link thing!

Even using in-game voice my friend and I used the hell out of the marking tool, picture-in-picture, and the countdown.

PIP rocks.

Nah.

Come on, Still Alive is so much better.

And for the records, it took me about 5 hours to finish the first Portal, and 12 to finish this one.

The only reason Still Alive was better is because it was unexpected.

Yeah.  They're both great but the Want You Gone is just a much better Song.  You may have an opinion that differs from mine, of course.  Don't worry about it;   It's fine to be wrong every now and again.

You win the Portal Prediction Precognition Prognosticator award.

My time was definitely padded from looking around at all the scenery and especially making sure I heard all of the dialogue before I moved forward. I think I finished at about 8.5 hours. Can't think of even one complaint about any of the game.

There's three reasons why people are saying its only four hours long:
1) They're looking at the "time played" stat in Steam, which is flat-out wrong a lot of the time.
2) They did a blind speed-run just to say they finished it in four hours.
or 3) They're trolling. Most of the 1/10 player ratings on Metacritic? /v/ pissing in the wind.

I finished the Portal 2 single player in 5 hours according to Steam (which I think is about right; I remember playing two and a half hours on launch night, one hour the next, and an hour and a half the next), and I wasn't particularly trying to hurry; I listened to all of the dialogue and spent a decent amount of time poking around for easter eggs.  Some of y'all just suck at puzzles.

I can't say for certain how long Portal 1 took me, but I think it was somewhere in the neighborhood of two hours, maybe a little less.  I remember thinking that it was about the length of a movie.

Both felt like they were good lengths.  I was actually expecting Portal 2 to feel too long, but I was pleasantly surprised by how good the pacing was for most of it.  The one part where I felt like it dragged a little bit was traversing the giant underground space; it felt a bit like the bits of Half-Life 2 that I wasn't crazy about.

There's a "Valve game tie-in/crossover" in Portal 2, other than the one you're thinking of. All the locked doors with the combination keypads?
The "one" button is dirtier and more smudged than the rest of them.
http://youtu.be/ZTj6tauY1JU

 :awesome_for_real:

I'm normally the type of guy that complains about the portion sizes at fancy restaurants but Portal 2 was pretty much perfect, and I haven't touched the co-op yet.

The co-op is awesome. I'm still trying to determine if it would be more fun if you didn't use voice. Either way, I got my moneys worth just on watching Strazos try to launch himself through a portal and slamming into the ceiling for a good 10-15 seconds.

The YOGScast blokes are doing Portal 2 co-op (http://youtu.be/6f3I91ZRsGg). It's about what you'd expect.  :awesome_for_real:

I saw three billboards for Portal 2 today. There were two headed into Chicago, and one on the way out.

I'm not shocked to see video game ads, but I was a bit surprised by the billboard blitzkrieg.

In terms of outdoor advertising (billboards/bus liveries/supergraphics) for games, the big blitzes seem to be for Valve and Rockstar titles.  L4D2 had a big one, anything GTA has a big one, and I'd be shocked if L.A. Noire doesn't already have a massive tarp over Hotel Figueroa (http://www.flickr.com/photos/gamevil/3595873851/).

Outdoor (i.e. billboards, buses, etc) is comparatively cheap advertising. Plus Portal is a major Valve IP and they've got plenty of money to spend, so it makes sense.

Playing co-op with my sister was a definite bonding experience. We both delight in watching the other careen to their death due to their own stupidity. We don't even have to try to murder each other!

I need to finish up chapter 4 and 5 of co-op.  First three were a blast.

I love it later when GLaDOS says she's going to put Wheatley in the Room with the screaming robots for 10 years before she'll kill him.

I thought you where being a little enthusiastic with this comment. But no. I just finished it. Fucking fantastic game. I totally agree.

I wasnt rushing, and I would stop and look around and listen to a bunch of the dialog, took me 7.3 hours to finish single player. I plan to do some multiplayer this week.

Just finished multiplayer.

We saved Science!

How cool is that?

Neat

Random, HL2-plot-related thought. Judging from the level where we find the

How long did it take you? I'm playing through it with a friend currently and am wondering if we should pace ourselves.

Took Strazos and me about 5 hours.

And that was late at night so my thought processes were starting to go.

Unless course 5 is really hard, this isn't going to take five... :sad:

My major complaint with Portal 2, really: it's far too easy. There are a few kinda tricky ones at the end of the single player, but the co-op... have you played the single player first, it's basically a snorefest. They shouldn't have taught the techniques all over again, it's a horrendous waste of content in my opinion.

I was saying the same to Nix - we need some challenge maps or something.

Anyone know if/when the SDK is getting released?

Some people are playing co-op first, though, so that's kind of a problem for them if you don't ease them into things.

Counterpoint: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hYOi-DfqlU#t=7m00s

 :ye_gods:

E: More on the "Maybe Cave Johnson has a point" thing - http://www.thinkwithportals.com/comic/#14
Look at the wall and the table in the big panel of the flashback part of the comic.

Yeah, I get that - I still think it's a waste. The single player campaign is the main attraction. The coop is really a sideshow, requiring you to play the single player first (or be able to learn really fast) isn't too much of a stretch, is it? By not "tiering" the content at all you're basically making a lot of it redundant because regardless of which order you play it in, you're going to cruise through a majority of the puzzles of the second half you play.

I don't know that Valve sees it that way. They built a store for the co-op, after all. I suspect they see the co-op as the way forward for the franchise at this point, someone linked an article to me earlier about Valve being 'likely done with single player games' earlier, haven't read it yet because the site is filtered here at work, but I got the impression that was a quote from Valve.

That made it a lot more fun.

Wow.  I can sort of understand the mechanics being a little confusion to some people at first, but wow, just wow.

Shit's staged.

Why that link was even posted... The obviousness of her faking the inability to follow the floating "Push button" icon makes me rage.

Same with my friend and I.

It's so much fun playing mean local coop: sabotage partners, block paths, aim lasers, steal objects, mark objectives and continually claim credit for solving it, etc.

I only hope when GLaDOS makes comments about one player doing better than the other or hands out points she isn't really using some kind of score or else meanness levels will increase to physically dangerous levels.

Prospero and I finished the co-op in about 4 hours.  We didn't use voice, so we got to have fun figuring out how to use all the in-game communication tools.   :drill:

When you're at the hub the screen will flash the total points. Not sure if it showed individual.

Funny side-effect of me having found RBR: I get to trigger the bug with unmapped axis on a controller (g25 in my case) which causes the orange portal to be fired infinitely.

-250 -785 total points!

Via Reddit (http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/gzq8g/after_seeing_the_fuck_science_portal_2/?limit=500) - Chell in the Rain (http://rain.nxe7.com/). You need to maximalise you're browser window and have both songs playing. I suppose it's a big spoiler for the end of the game, though I suspect it can have a big impact on you whether you've played the game or not. The reddit thread has some pretty big spoilers, so don't read it if you don't want to not cry (and it explained so much I missed too).

Once you've finished Portal II, this will make you cry. Once I read the Reddit thread where it explained the opera song at the end that GladOS sang to Chell it really hit hard.

Amazing how a single picture with a song and some rain can have such a large emotional impact. Hello new Desktop Wallpaper (http://imgur.com/5G4UY).

I'm now in the final stages of Portal 2 and so far it has been an awesome experience. Much, much better than the original in every respect although the puzzles could be a little bit harder for my tastes.

A few things I noticed:

Not spoilering any of this because it's all from Portal 1.


A good number of people (myself included) deduced from that line that Chell is the daughter of someone at Aperture.  I also recall people saying that her full name was "Chell Johnson," but I don't know where they got that from -- might have just been over-eager extrapolation from the "cjohnson" login scribbled on the walls from before we knew who Cave was.

This was pretty cool (and spoilery): http://rain.nxe7.com/

5 posts above yours, sir.

I just finished digging through the Reddit thread and looking up the opera lyrics and all that.   :cry2:

I didn't want to dig through all that to find what was going on.  Can someone summarize or link to the relevant parts, please?

Looks like the first real DLC (i.e. not robot hats) is going to be free (http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/04/29/portal-2-dlc/).  YAY YAY indeed  :heart:

Totally stole that image for my wallpaper. :awesome_for_real:

Amazing game.

I'll be honest with you. We're kinda throwing DLC at the wall and seeing what sticks: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/04/29/portal-2-dlc/
Free? I punch those numbers into my calculator and it makes a happy face. I'm Cave Johnson. We're done here.

I'm all about some challenge modes.

At the very beginning of Portal (the VERY beginning, I'm not going to spoiler it) GLaDOS talks about a "brief detention in the relaxation vault". There's no reason to doubt that Chell has been testing more or less continuously since childhood. Her defining trait is tenacity. She's the one who never gave up.

The containers have CHILD and ADULT checkboxes, too, so they were apparently cool with child subjects, yeah.

Been avoiding this thread up till now. Finished the single player story about an hour ago. Once I hit the start screen after all the credits and final cinematic, I went to find a translation of the GLaDOS/Turret Opera.

That's when my heart broke.

 :cry:

Cave Johnson has the best lines ever.

Portal 1 is almost entirely about Chell, but she's only the protagonist of the sequel. It belongs to Wheatley, GLaDOS, Cave, and even Caroline more than her. As such, in Portal 1 you guide a protagonist through her own story... whereas in Portal 2 you guide a protagonist through everybody else's story. In Portal 1, Chell is consistently fighting for her own life, but by the end of Portal 2 she's fighting for all of Aperature Science. It's more epic, but it's a lot less personal.

FYI, the newspaper boss guy from the Spiderman movies voices Cave Johnson.

(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/82533/Futurama_Fry_Looking_Squint.jpg)

Heh.

"When life gives you lemons, it's Spider-Man's fault! I knew it! Robbie, er, Caroline, get one of that Parker kid's pictures ready, I want the full front page for this!"

"I'll get you some pain pills, Mr Johnson"

Finally finished saving science in the co-op with my sister. It was a good time!

Finished two nights ago (so finally willing to catch up with the thread  :-) ), but this one caused me a lot of vertigo. Think I'm just getting old or something, but the sprawling hugeness of the facilities kept making me want to jump over the railing in spots...

Took me a  bit over 8 hours and I haven't started co-op yet. Well worth the money for sheer enjoyment alone. I've paid more for video games I've played a lot less of :grin:

Loved everything about this game except the elevators. They seemed a lot more frequent than the first one. I understand consoles don't have the same amount of memory to cache as much, but it's not like consoles have upgraded since. Am I imagining it, or were the individual puzzles smaller (even if the chapters were longer)?

Other thoughts/questions:

It's Cave Johnson...

Was driving to work today and they played that song (Exile Vilify by The National) on the radio.  I got a little teary in the car, I could hear the rain in the background.  :cry:

And yet Ebert won't believe games can be 'Art'. It's a lovely song by a band I love, but it's the context of the game that makes it so emotionally resonant, the very fundamental aspect of Art.

Thanks, yea, I saw those posts and looking back I agree.

You say "the story" like there is, or should only be, one.

I'm ok with them making it up as they go. That's a good kind of success, where you have a surprise hit and a world interesting enough to tell more stories in. Just as long they don't retcon the hell out of stuff down the road because they hated the decisions made early on, they've got a nice world of stories they can tell while responding to the playerbase.

It's been well established that Portal and Half-Life take place in the same universe, and stuff from one has appeared in the other and vice versa, with very strong hints that there will be a lot more of that in HL Ep 3, but I suspect they will remain independent stories.  I don't think I'd really want Gordon and Chell in the same game anyway... spending a lot of time with either of them in the third person would just feel weird.

Doug Rattman would make a fantastic addition to the HL universe IMO, but since he wasn't on the Borealis when it vanished I doubt he'll be making any appearances there.

I "the story" like, what the hell is actually happening is almost entirely pieced together and entirely speculation, and then when you are finally going to get a big reveal at the end of Half Life 2 Episode 2 they say FUCK YOU WERE KILLING THE CHARACTER WHO KNEW SHIT.

Very spoiler filled interview with the Portal writers (http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/04/27/valve-on-portal-2-spoiler-interview-part-one/) that's very revealing about how, at one point, neither Chell nor GlaDOS were going to be in the game and why they got included again. From a story point of view, I can't help but wonder if Valve even know how Episode 3 is going to pan out storywise (if it ever materialises).

I do recall that Gabe Newell or someone did say that Chell does interact with a key figure in the HL universe a few years ago. I doubt it'll end up happening though.

Chell meets Gordon:

Gordon: ...
Chell: ...
Gordon: ...
Chell: ...
Gordon: ...

<awkward pause>

Chell: <jumps>

Fantastic.  Five Forum Collaboration Points for Lantyssa.

Bravo

(http://i.imgur.com/uDH2K.jpg)

GLaDoS meets Chell

 :uhrr:

I'm not sure Portal will even continue in any real form.

Portal 2 didn't really leave anything to the imagination or have anything mysterious to delve further into. I kind of felt they burnt out the portal story by the end.

GlaDOS and Chell are definitely done with each other but I think there are a lot more stories that could be told at Aperture Science.

I figure that Portal's story will go forward with robots, if at all. Given the extended period between Portal and Portal 2 it seems completely possible that HL2:Ep3/HL3 could be set in between the two, with Chell returning to aperture at the end.

Chell definitely wouldn't be appearing in HL in that case, since it's been established that she went into stasis almost immediately after being retrieved by the Party Associate at the end of Portal 1.  Not that I think she'd show up in HL anyway.

The beta version of the P2 authoring tools was released: http://www.thinkwithportals.com/blog.php?id=5443&p=1
Also - http://youtu.be/K8UNb-QkpWw

The hip thing to do with Portal 2 is cube throwing tricks. Some of these are ridiculous.

Part 1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_profilepage&v=UjApKHyEGTc)
Part 2 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oNH0s_Dv38Q&feature=player_embedded)

Insane, and with an Xbox controller, too!

I need to learn how to throw, and how to build up the sort of fling speed he did without actually using any elevation to start.

Fling your cube.  Fling it into space.

Here are a couple recent Valve interviews that are pretty decent.

Great interview with Eric Wolpaw at NYU (http://vimeo.com/23534126) It's a long interview, but it provides a pretty nice behind the scenes look at Portal 2 development.

Gabe Newell talking about software development at Valve. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DMgfPU9y3yo)

 :awesome_for_real:

Oh yeah? (http://poptartin.spaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaccee.com/)

Maybe I missed something. I thought the Chell in P2 was a different Chell clone from the one in P1.

Picked this up the other day, maybe an hour or so into it right now.  It's amazing, the only flaw so far is that they should have packaged P1 with it for people that haven't played the first one.  My wife (non-gamer) seems genuinely interesting in trying it, but she has no connection to the story.  Would have been great showing her, but that puts me trying to find an Orange box for PS3...  which I already have for PC. 

At the end of P1 (post-patch) she gets dragged back into the lab by a "Party Associate".  In the Lab Rat comic she's shown being put into stasis immediately afterwards.

Some robotics guy built his own set of personality cores (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=db43pjAhqfA&feature=player_embedded) They light up, but they don't move on their own. I'd still like a light strand of them for my office.

I just finished portal 2 multiplayer, and my gosh that made my regrets about 50 bucks fade away.  I don't want more Chell I want to kill P body in every way possible.  It was hilarious to hear my friend laughing as I closed a door killing him. Not knowing if your co-player is going to kill you at any moment really makes it a ton of fun.

The heck? When did that get patched in, and did they patch it in as part of a promo, or was it something "left out" in the drive to launch?

Last year some time.  Maybe with the announcement of Portal 2?  I forget exactly when.

Yeah, I think it was when they first announced Portal 2.  That was also when they started the whole ARG thing with hidden transmissions scattered throughout the first game, real-life BBSes you could log into with passwords that were written on the walls of the facility, etc.

Portal 2 co-op: solo solutions

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rW6gQu9Q7dE

edit: Yeah, he uses glitches sometimes, and a lot near the end.

Playing co-op with random Internet tards is a great motivator to figure stuff like that out.   :awesome_for_real:  I've been surprised by how many of the tests are solvable by one person who's good at flinging and shooting on the fly.

Anyone have a problem with PS3 trophies gained during the PSN outage not updating Steam?

I realize the reaction this question may get but I am going to ask anyway. :oh_i_see:

Mine updated the first day PSN was back after I linked accounts on the PS3. Went to my Steam profile and it showed 0.7 hours played, which I'm guessing is from when I started online coop as I searched for someone wanting to complete the very last level after my local partner left me for a while. My search was unsuccessful.

Just finished this game last night.  Absolutely great, it was a worthy equal.  I'd also say the story probably hit me more emotionally than the first one.  While the first one had the uniqueness factor, the dark comedy tale of Cave Johnson, Caroline, and GLaDOS (along with Caroline potentially being Chells mother) hit me harder.  Going through those old test chambers were both hilarious and very depressing by the end.  I thought the ending was very touching and appropriate (especially when you learn the lyrics of the song).  Though I hope Chell likes running around in post apocalyptic Michigan.

I need to go back through and get all the hidden shit now, and make sure I stick around for all the dialog.  The British robot never stopped talking half the time, and everything he said was fucking hilarious.

That said, Cave Johnson is amazing.  The fact that he appears to be dead and didn't actually get to live on in a computer deeply depresses me.  If Cave Johnson and Saxton Hale got into a fight, the world might explode.

Though, from what I'm reading, everybody seems to assume Chell was out for centuries.  Why?  I was more under the impression it was a decade or possible two at most t, which would put her into the current HL timeline.  The facility could certainly decay that badly in a decade or two with nobody looking after it.  Why the hell does everybody think its centuries?

On another note, Chell can't be the daughter of Cave and Caroline.  This is what they look like:
(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/41488/Cave_caroline_70s.png)

And as well all know, Chell is Half Japanese and Half Brazilian (http://half-life.wikia.com/wiki/Al%C3%A9sia_Glidewell).  Since neither of them look Japanese, they can't both be the parents.   :awesome_for_real:

Cave's rant about lemons was both extremely funny and hugely depressing for me, yeah.

Part of the "lemon soliloquy" as I now call it, is my email notifier. Cave was made of awesome, even at his ignominious end.

That said, the stuff Valve leaked about the plot before release lets us know Chell was out for 200 years or so.

Chell was adopted, remember?  :awesome_for_real:

In the NYU talk with Eric Wolpaw he says the lyrics to the aria was just something the music guy did on his own and wasn't really intended by the writers.

Download the Portal 2 Soundtrack (http://www.thinkwithportals.com/music.php)

Nice little freebie from Valve.

They also changed Chell's look in Portal2, she does look like the daughter of the 2 in the office portrait

Outside Aperture:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NorZUFfpvC0

Now I want cake.  :heart:

Just finished this in single player; pretty decent game.  I got my money's worth for sure. 

Going to take a bit of time off then maybe go back for the stuff I missed. 

Random stuff I noticed from the beginning that may or may not have been mentioned:

Portal 2 - Midweek Madness 50% off sale on Steam, Offer ends on the 7th

Maybe we should also point out that a wad of new coop maps have dropped in the form of free DLC today. Also includes a time challenge mode.

The new co-op is really good. Samwise and I knocked it out in about an hour and a half, but I think it was a good deal harder than the missions from the last game. GlaDOS was awesome as always. It's definitely a must play if you liked the co-op in the original.

Just bought this for 15 bucks on Steam... I'm just a little behind the curve (and I started this thread!)

About damn time then!

That's what having twins does to ya....

You're just not the same since you chilled out...  :heartbreak:

I still don't have this.

Possibly a weekend purchase.

Do it today, its 50% off (15 bucks instead of 30)

Yeah, I lack the part of me that used to give a shit about MMOs and strange pussy. I am quite boring these days! I can't even muster up any rage about Diku's vrs. Sandbox and open PVP/item loot vrs. battlegrounds... Stick a fork in me, man... I'm done.

I am stuck in the single player. I know where I have to go, I just can't seem to figure out how to get there. There must be some tiny spot of portalable wall somewhere in the room that I have not seen. Sigh.

Until this room I was really enjoying it (and moving along at a decent clip).

Stuck? shot portals everywhere. EVERYWHERE. You get a Portal! You get a portal! Everyone gets a Portal!

I did. It was getting mildly infuriating so I gave up for the time being and will go back to it later.

I see where my exit portal has to be, but there is a glass wall between where it is and where I have to launch myself to get the velocity into the entry portal (which I need a portal to get to), and the two spaces of ground with portallable floor, only one is in a place where I can shoot the exit portal on the fly, but I cannot reach said patch of ground to enter an entry portal from on high. I know I am missing something simple, it just grates on me.

EDIT: I got past it, it was one of those DUH moments.

My god this game is good.

I really like the new stuff (esp the goo). Think I am getting close to being finished.

Would love to try Co-op but I don't have any steam friends.

Send me your Steam name and I'll add you to the f13 group.

If you can find someone who hasn't done the co-op yet it is best, but I'd be happy to play through with you if not. I've redone it a couple of times with first timers and gotten good at keep my mouth shut so people can solve the puzzles themselves.

Having the memory of a goldfish can be good sometimes, I honestly have no recollection of how to solve the co-op puzzles. I played through with my sister, Ingmar still hasn't finished a co-op playthrough, so obviously I am an ideal partner for him.

Although I did sort of kill him accidently a few times the few maps we DID do together.  :heart:

Finished it.

Liked it.

Need to play some co-op, but I have to work tomorrow so I will have to wait a couple days.

I haven't done the coop yet either.  Steam name is not hard to figure out.   :awesome_for_real:

GLaDOSiri (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aTg00wIijNY) - iPhone 4S ad, improved :)

C0-op maps really ramp up in the difficulty in the DLC it seems. Lots of agility type tests between two players.

FINALLY started the coop maps with a friend last night. He had only played about 15 mins of single-player and has never played Portal 1, but it was fine. The level design is just amazing - he wasn't overwhelmed and I wasn't bored, it managed to challenge and amuse both of us despite our wildly different level of familiarity with the game concepts.

I also hadn't appreciated before just how inspired the coop characters animations are. Watching him running about an looking up at platforms and walls while hearing him saying "How about if I.... no... hmm.... Ah! I know, if I put a.... oh wait.... umm..." was just hilarious.

Plus the satisfaction of working a puzzle out and coordinating the solution between the two of you - just awesome.

Yea - then you look at the timer average and go... Man, I'm dumb!

No no, I have a prepared excuse. We'll be drunk, always.  :drill:

Cave Johnson returns in Valve's new trailer (http://www.gametrailers.com/video/exclusive-creation-trailer/729579) highlighting Portal 2's upcoming DLC, the Perpetual Testing Initiative.

 :drill:

8th May. Gives us a week to finish it before D3 hits  :awesome_for_real:

"Look at that poor little octopus"

And Eff D3.

Pause it at 0:57 and check out the stats of the Octopus Earth

 :drill:

They could have just done a press release, but no... bless them.

I liked the guy in the office watching porn :)

A preview of how the level editor works (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UsDur6syUFM)

First impression is that they have probably made the most user friendly level editor I have ever seen. I guess for advanced people you can still make more complex stuff in hammer, but this seems like a great mass-market approach.

Wow that video came down quick.

Ah too bad, well I guess everyone will see it properly soon enough. Looks really great though.

Yeah, I saw a bunch of "what another editor? for people too dumb to use hammer?" reaction to the original announcement... when my thought was "if the couple seconds in the video depicting level creation has any relationship to the new tool they've totally raised the bar in creating content like this!"

Definitely; it reminded me somewhat of the level editors in the Tony Hawk series, which were dead easy to use and fun to play around with, but bitterly limited in what you could actually produce. This on the other hand seems to offer you the resources to make close to the same stuff that Valve offered in the actual game, while not being ball-bustingly complex.

While Hammer is where it is at, Valve has been all about thinking up ways their users can add value to their games.  Making it accessible to people who don't have the patience to learn a tool like Hammer (which is definitely not trivial) is a really huge step in my opinion.  There are a lot of creative people out there who are portal fans, unleashing all that potential with an easy to use tool is a great idea.  Not to mention if people get really into it but feel a little limited, maybe that will prompt them to learn something about Hammer, and that opens up map making for all the source engine games.

Definitely a cool move by Valve.

I'm willing to bet most of the "too dumb to use Hammer?" commenters haven't actually ever used Hammer. It's very powerful but it's also a complete pain in the ass and I don't even think Valve likes using Hammer all that much.

Has it changed much since the era when it was called Worldcraft? Because if it hasn't, then I don't get it, it wasn't that hard to use back then.

It is definitely up a notch in complexity with the source engine stuff, but it is similar.   I didn't find that transition too difficult.  That being said, there are a lot of concepts that you have to understand that definitely aren't trivial and understanding errors in the compiler and such aren't things some average fan of Portal are probably going to be willing to wade through even if they get that far.  My guess is that you take a lot of that knowledge for granted. How many people know what a leak is?  How many people understand using a noclip brush to smooth out movement issues.  How many people understand using a novis brush to help keep frame rates reasonable.  Definitely not trivial stuff.

I totally missed this blog post:
http://www.thinkwithportals.com/blog.php?id=6632&p=1

I can't wait. The "built from prefab components" look of the Portal test chambers really works in favor of this approach.

(http://i.imgur.com/8uzPB.jpg) (http://imgur.com/8uzPB)

Something's coming from Valve shortly, according to the internet.

I'm not sure if it's the map editor or some other implication. The fact that there's natural light is throwing me.

It looks like a TF2 level being made in an Aperture Science facility.  :tinfoil:

Maybe the Pyro will get a portal gun?  :awesome_for_real:

That's the house you drive by when you get the car in Half Life 2.  I'd bet my fucking life on it.

The G-Man was in there.

It's definitely from Half Life. Though it also reminds me of 2Fort in TF2, so who the fuck knows?

Half life was all just a portal room.

"They're waiting for you, Gordon. In the test chamber."

If the big reveal is that Half Life was all a series of testing chambers I'm not sure if I would be pleased or annoyed.

Well we saw how that whole 'bad ending that makes no fucking sense' thing worked out SO well for Mass Effect...  :grin:

Except that in Half Life, the presence of the G-Man kind of hints heavily at that sort of thing, only on a grander scale than the Portal test chambers.

G-Man.
Glados.


We're through the looking glass here, people.  :tinfoil:

Added to your theory. We're onto something!

Hats for DOTA

Made a nice little test chamber. Fun, but still a lot of work to get all the problem spots, dead ends and shortcuts worked out.

Good testing takes much more time than building the chamber. Example: I wanted the player have to drop a cube into the path of a laser and block it, but one out of four times the cube bounced away on landing, so I put a button there instead.

Published here, if you want to take a look: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=68505760

Will give that a try soon

IMO, the tools given are great, I just wish you could subscribe to a map (while in game) and have it download without having to reload the game

Did it.  Had me stumped for a good 10 minutes or so, until...


Of course, if that was not the intended solution, I suppose I get bonus points for "breaking the glass"   :awesome_for_real:

That's how I did it as well. I think that is the right way and it just seems like it's cheating because the level feels like you need to use all panels and the stairs that rise out of the ground. Of course I may be off on that

Also - look up the level called "Ridge to Bridge," it's the most fun level I've found so far (only completed about 5-6 or so I think at this point). Most of these levels just have one trick that make you feel like an idiot after you figure it out

Yeah, that's how it's supposed to work. The stairs were a leftover from another pass, but I left them in because they allow the player to get a better view of the upper part of the level. That they double as a red herring is just a bonus.

Aye, was kinda fooling me at first.  I tried experimenting with using the stairs at a catapult for the cube to shoot it up into the ceiling for a portal that would drop it down onto the laser platform.  More often than not though I'd miss and the cube would bounce over to the fizzler wall.

http://www.blappeture.com/

Cave Johnson is becoming my new favorite infomercial fictional character.

Click the left side of the logo. Here's the whois information for the domain:


Weird. Town doesn't exist and the postal code isn't real.

I'm just going to say, 12 Angry Tests (http://steamcommunity.com/workshop/filedetails/?id=68540935) is simply fantastic. Some brilliant, Valve-quality puzzles in there. If you want a good portal fix, I'd say to give this one a go.

That is basically a bonus chapter imo, really well done.

In the 3rd (maybe 4th?) how did everyone handle the gun?

Wow that was fantastic.  Thank you for recommending it.

He really nailed the Valve-style "aha" moments where things click and you try something that seems a little crazy but it works beautifully and you feel somewhat clever about it.  Nice difficulty balance -- had to think about things a bit at times but never got horribly stuck. 

Yeah, it's a fansite thing. The voice file is legit, though. Also funny when you realise that Black Mesa was doing experiments that made Cave Johnson go "Whoa, okay, let's thing about this one first".  :awesome_for_real:
:tinfoil:

You summed it up better than me. I'm guessing he used hammer, but what impresses me is that if that can come out after only a few days, what we might have after a few weeks or months could be amazing. I do wonder if Valve is using the workshop as a covert hiring tool, since some of this stuff is brilliant.

We'll you've been able to make Portal 2 maps in Hammer for a long time.  There was just no particularly easy way to get them noticed.  Now, I don't know if this guy has been working on those for a while or not, but it is entirely possible.

Yeah, the FAQ shows all the info assumed here. It was made with Hammer and uploaded to some other websites previously. I'm thinking the ones posted on thinkingwithportals.com and portal2maps.com will have some really well done maps, and may be worth looking into.

Spoiler is just showing the FAQ for 12 Angry Tests

Ah, that makes more sense then.