Portal 2 Catch-All

I just finished the single player game. Hat's off to Valve, very well played.

Now im desperate to get my hands on the Developer Commentary but dont have the time to play through the game again... anybody have any tips or links where I can listen...

Gaald wrote:
Thirteenth wrote:
Speedhuntr wrote:
cheeba wrote:
Hyetal wrote:

Which section, if I might ask?

Chapter 8 I believe...

Spoiler:

The 3 turrets behind the wall that you have to hit with the blue gel.

Just got past that section. Not done yet but that was definitely the toughest for me to figure out.

Oh that one. Yeah that one's hard too.

I got stuck there as well, but it wasn't the turrets that stumped me.

Spoiler:

After a few minutes of playing around I figured out how to get rid of the turrets, having remembered the mechanic when I did it to a box in an earlier level. So what stumped me? everything after that. Which as it turns out was a simple portal jump from ceiling. I couldn't believe how easy that solution was, after having come up with the first bit myself. That was the second and final time I over thought myself into being stuck on a level. Doh!

Don't beat yourself up too much haha. That's exactly what happened to me. Darn you, overthinking!

muttonchop wrote:

Edit: Also, hit me up if you want to co-op.

That was fun, thanks!

We went through the first section? of 5 test areas or so, and then it took us back to the hub. Felt like a good sized bit to run through a few maps at a time.

Stele wrote:
muttonchop wrote:

Edit: Also, hit me up if you want to co-op.

That was fun, thanks!

We went through the first section? of 5 test areas or so, and then it took us back to the hub. Felt like a good sized bit to run through a few maps at a time.

Yeah, that was fun. Definitely looking forward to the later levels, I bet things get crazy with two sets of portals.
I love how angry GLaDOS gets when you stand around gesturing at the cameras. And she gave you bonus points for crushing me!

God damn this game is awesome. I was in one of those room where you need to pass the laser through a bunch of those light-up node things. As soon as they light, this awesome music starts. I spent like five minutes just listening to that.

MannishBoy wrote:
MannishBoy wrote:
iaintgotnopants wrote:

Seriously, there isn't any cloud support? I can't leave for another hour or so so I was going to play a bit on my laptop but the 'continue game' option is grayed out.

Key bindings transfer, so something is going on, but save game data doesn't seem to be working.

Seems fixed now.

Yeah, I fired it up when I got home it brought up the warning that my local files didn't match my cloud files. Not wanting to screw anything up I just went with my local files since it only meant backtracking three or four rooms.

Yeah, that three-turret room was tough. I spent quite awhile thinking about that one.

Agreed about the white gel: I wasted a TON of time just screwing around with it, and it actually made solving some rooms significantly harder.

Very minor general-strategy spoiler:

Spoiler:

They have, sadly, carefully constructed the levels so you can't do anything particularly interesting with white gel, so there's not a lot of reason to try to play with it.

Finished single player this evening. FANTASTIC.

I'll be looking to do some co-op on future nights.

About 11 hours later and I'm done through it. Looking forward to playing again with Developer's Commentary. (as an aside, more developers need to just copy how valve handles commentary, it really is the best way).

Game was perfect for me. Exactly what I wanted and more; sad to see it end.

After finishing I had a pretty huge smile on my face. Great game, well worth the price of admission for the single player alone, haven't even touched co-op.

It's inarguably a worthy successor to Portal. However, I can't shake the feeling that it was easier. It's not that the puzzles were too easy, but I never felt like I was moving quickly or required to switch rapidly between portals. It's something that I remember having to do frequently in Portal.

Maybe it's the fact that I'm using a mouse instead of a 360 controller or I'm just more familiar with the game play?

I made it through the first four sections or so of Coop tonight. I thought the single player puzzles were fun, but the coop puzzles are far more satisfying to solve in my opinion. I'm enjoying the heck out of it. The only thing that sucks, is that it's hard to actually join in with GWJ people and random people on my friends list because you don't know if they're in single player or already in a coop game. I ended up just playing with a random person which turned out just fine.

i38warhawk wrote:

After finishing I had a pretty huge smile on my face. Great game, well worth the price of admission for the single player alone, haven't even touched co-op.

It's inarguably a worthy successor to Portal. However, I can't shake the feeling that it was easier. It's not that the puzzles were too easy, but I never felt like I was moving quickly or required to switch rapidly between portals. It's something that I remember having to do frequently in Portal.

Maybe it's the fact that I'm using a mouse instead of a 360 controller or I'm just more familiar with the game play?

I noticed they reduced the "twitch" factor (don't know what else to call it) as well. And actually, it made it more of a thought-provoking puzzle game rather than an action-puzzle game (while still being full of action). Definitely a change for the better, in my opinion, as I've always been terrible at aiming with mouse+keyboard.

It's inarguably a worthy successor to Portal. However, I can't shake the feeling that it was easier. It's not that the puzzles were too easy, but I never felt like I was moving quickly or required to switch rapidly between portals. It's something that I remember having to do frequently in Portal.

Maybe it's the fact that I'm using a mouse instead of a 360 controller or I'm just more familiar with the game play?

Nope you're right. I don't mind either. Those type of rooms had nothing to do with solving a puzzle and everything to do with timing and the ability to not get motion sickness while twisting and turning through portals. I am not to sad to see them go. They were more frustrating than anything.

Gaald wrote:
It's inarguably a worthy successor to Portal. However, I can't shake the feeling that it was easier. It's not that the puzzles were too easy, but I never felt like I was moving quickly or required to switch rapidly between portals. It's something that I remember having to do frequently in Portal.

Maybe it's the fact that I'm using a mouse instead of a 360 controller or I'm just more familiar with the game play?

Nope you're right. I don't mind either. Those type of rooms had nothing to do with solving a puzzle and everything to do with timing and the ability to not get motion sickness while twisting and turning through portals. I am not to sad to see them go. They were more frustrating than anything.

+1

Had my first proper game last night playing co-op with a friend of mine who's day job involves being a developer for one of my clients. Said client has a cantankerous old backend database that causes no end of problems and against which I have to perform frequent, extensive, and onerous load tests.

So I got to tell my boss with no trace of a lie this morning that I was up until midnight last night running tests with our client because of an insane old computer.

o/\o

troubleshot wrote:

Now im desperate to get my hands on the Developer Commentary but dont have the time to play through the game again... anybody have any tips or links where I can listen...

Same boat here, anyone know of a way to listen to the Dev commentary without having to replay the whole game?

I may do some work with Dev Commentary videos and put them up online.

Coop. is. amazing.

Find a friend, and play it. NAO.

ps. Some of these complaints on metacritic... lol they've clearly not come within 10 feet of the actual game.

Speedhuntr wrote:
Gaald wrote:
It's inarguably a worthy successor to Portal. However, I can't shake the feeling that it was easier. It's not that the puzzles were too easy, but I never felt like I was moving quickly or required to switch rapidly between portals. It's something that I remember having to do frequently in Portal.

Maybe it's the fact that I'm using a mouse instead of a 360 controller or I'm just more familiar with the game play?

Nope you're right. I don't mind either. Those type of rooms had nothing to do with solving a puzzle and everything to do with timing and the ability to not get motion sickness while twisting and turning through portals. I am not to sad to see them go. They were more frustrating than anything.

+1

Having started a replay of Portal while I wait for a new month to roll around so I can buy the sequel, I can confirm the timing and orientation type puzzles are still pretty frustrating. That said, the one where you had to put a series of sequential portals in raised platforms in a very tall room is still enormous fun, although it makes my wife dizzy watching me play it.

Mex wrote:
troubleshot wrote:

Now im desperate to get my hands on the Developer Commentary but dont have the time to play through the game again... anybody have any tips or links where I can listen...

Same boat here, anyone know of a way to listen to the Dev commentary without having to replay the whole game?

You could probably extract them out of the .vpk files, although you would lose the context for them.

Pikey26 wrote:

I may do some work with Dev Commentary videos and put them up online.

That'd be awesome, if you do that I hope you make a new thread so it doesn't get lost in all the comments... or at least PM me ; )

So did anyone cheat in any puzzle? I gave up on one, and I kinda felt like a moron after reading the solution. Other than that I managed to figure it all out by myself.

Mex wrote:

So did anyone cheat in any puzzle? I gave up on one, and I kinda felt like a moron after reading the solution. Other than that I managed to figure it all out by myself.

I think the key with games like portal is that the fun comes from working it out yourself. It's boring standing around looking at your surroundings trying to work it out, so you have to keep trying things, there's a few puzzles that reveal their solution only by messing around.

I was extremely proud of myself that I solved every puzzle without any outside help. It may have required many minutes of just standing in one spot and figuring out mechanisms in my head (not too exciting for my roommates who were watching) but I got it done.

I finally found the song I was looking for from the game. I'm not finished, so it's not from the end. I really thought it was Jonathan Coulton but it isn't. It was in Chapter that I encountered it, I believe. "Exile Vilify" by the National: http://stereogum.com/688961/the-nati...

Woo...
Single player done. Sleep now.

I love how they nailed the challenge in the game just like the first one. I guess that's that what their stringent playtesting results in. The puzzles are complicated enough that it throws you for a loop at first, but they are easy enough that you're never standing around for so long that you get frustrated or bored, so then you have the momentum to finish it and then see what's in the next elevator and start losing track of time.

I feel like ever since halfway into Chapter 2, my internal monologue for every section has played out the exact same way:

"Are you kidding me? I have no clue where to even begin. This room is insane"
"Wait a second..."
"Nope, I can't possibly pull that off either. How in the hell am I going to solve this thing?"
"Wait a second..."
"Okay, never mind, I got this. This is actually easy and I'm a freaking genius."

I dont think I ever seen anything like this before:
IMAGE(http://i251.photobucket.com/albums/gg293/tempestblayze/2011-04-19_00003.jpg)

If someone can give me an invite to the Steam group, I'd appreciate it.

http://goo.gl/b2h4e

TempestBlayze wrote:

I dont think I ever seen anything like this before:
IMAGE(http://i251.photobucket.com/albums/gg293/tempestblayze/2011-04-19_00003.jpg)

Obviously faked. Fedora never plays minecraft anymore. He just hangs out in the chat room.

i38warhawk wrote:

However, I can't shake the feeling that it was easier. It's not that the puzzles were too easy, but I never felt like I was moving quickly or required to switch rapidly between portals. It's something that I remember having to do frequently in Portal.

Another anecdote in this regard. I have a coworker that I showed Portal when it came out, who doesn't normally game. He got it, and loved it all the way up to one of those twitch levels that he couldn't get past, and gave up on it. "I really loved the puzzles, but I hate it when I know what I need to do to finish a level, but it relies on me doing it over and over again to get the timing just right to finish it."

As someone who loves games but doesn't necessarily have a lot of spare time to play them, I know the feeling; my twitch reactions are not as well-honed as folks who play TF2 for 4 hours a day.

DanB wrote:

Also when you are flying towards a surface (or floor) and place a portal ahead of you the game locks your path through the portal you just placed. I don't recall that being the case in the first game and it makes the precision required for some things much easier to achieve. I assume it's there to make it easier to play on the consoles.

Nope, definitely isn't the case in the first game, I've missed portals that I've placed plenty of times - very frustrating if you've just done a sequence of long dives and you clip the edge of a portal.

Ranger Rick wrote:
i38warhawk wrote:

However, I can't shake the feeling that it was easier. It's not that the puzzles were too easy, but I never felt like I was moving quickly or required to switch rapidly between portals. It's something that I remember having to do frequently in Portal.

Another anecdote in this regard. I have a coworker that I showed Portal when it came out, who doesn't normally game. He got it, and loved it all the way up to one of those twitch levels that he couldn't get past, and gave up on it. "I really loved the puzzles, but I hate it when I know what I need to do to finish a level, but it relies on me doing it over and over again to get the timing just right to finish it."

Yeah I thought it was largely easier to execute things in 2, less precision portal placement while flying through the air at high speed. I did think while playing last night that they would be just the sort of games my Mum would love (the humour, the puzzles) and my next thought was that she would definitely be able to cope with the Portal 2 yet some of the later test chambers in the first one would have utterly defeated her.

Also when you are flying towards a surface (or floor) and place a portal ahead of you the game locks your path/trajectory through the portal you just placed. I don't recall that being the case in the first game and it makes the precision required for some things much easier to achieve. I assume it's there to make it easier to play on the consoles.