Portal 2 Protest: Gamers (sorta?) Pan Portal 2 On Metacritic

[Strixvaliano]

I don't know where these "Portal is 4 hours" comments keep coming from.

I beat Portal 2 while rarely getting stuck at any point and the game lasted 6 hours for me and there's still a coop campaign.

I agree, I'm almost through my first time and I'm about 7 hours in but I also took my time and enjoyed the game and scenery.



I dislike all these people that say it is not worth full price... I paid $50 on Steam and feel my money was well spent... why... because value is absolutely subjective. Portal 2 to me is an absolute solid release, doesn't overstay its welcome, had my sides hurting from laughter and was gorgeous.

I haven't even touched Co-op yet and don't plan to until one of my friends decides to pick up a copy of the game as well. To me the single player alone was worth my money.

I hate to spew such an overused saying but it applies perfectly here... Haters gonna hate.

 

[Glamorgan]

great game, by a developer that has to fund themselves and is essentially indie.

You've got to be trolling? Valve's revenue is over $1 billion a year mostly from Steam. To call them indie is about as laughable as calling Nintendo indie.

I think that he means that they publish their own games, actually...

 

[SL33TBL1ND]

Wait, what is there to complain about? It was really enjoyable, fairly long, has co-op and cosmetic options which don't do anything, but it you have the cash can be a laugh. What the fuck is wrong with these people?

 

[Agayek]

How is that any different from Portal 1? It loaded after every chamber, if memory serves.

The original Portal was usually 3-4 chambers (depending on size/complexity) between load times, at least for the first 2/3 of the game.

Aside from the frequent load times, there was a clear lack of reaction/accuracy-centric puzzles as well. For example, in the original there were several puzzles that required you to drop a portal in a fairly small area while moving at very high speeds (typically it was along the vein of put a portal on a wall, jump into the ground and loop through a few times, then hit an angled platform or somesuch). These were conspicuously absent in Portal 2. I can only assume because the nature of controllers make such puzzles an order of magnitude harder to complete.

I'm by no means saying the game is in any way flawed, just that the design of the game was clearly skewed by the existence of a console version. There's a few other examples I had, but I can't remember them, probably due to lack of sleep. I'll probably contribute a few more if I remember them.

 

[Heathrow]

The load times are tied to how many objects there are per map. The source engine has had a hard cap on the number of uniques objects, around 200 or so iirc although it could have been improved.

What this means from a practical standpoint is that a game with relatively simple assets and design like the original Portal can get away with more level space between load screens. Portal 2 on the other hand has a lot of clutter in the maps themselves hence shorter spaces between load times.

It's likely that each new iteration of the source engine has improved this but I really don't know for certain.

 

[4li3n]

What are you people complaining about, the user score on all version is above 7... that's hardly bad, and it obviously highlights some issues people had with the game better for the developer while still showing them that it was still an enjoyable experience. Look at the score for DA2, now there's a real panning of a game (it's been at 4.3 for a month and a half).

Of course nowadays anything under 9 is bad it seems...

 

[Laser Priest]

Metacritic is a bunch of over-entitled clowns who are angry that the game doesn't include the development staff's indentured servitude.

If you pay for something, you have the right to complain about it and suggest things be done differently.

I'd be more angry that it didn't include HL2:Episode 3. Known in two months as the new Duke Nukem Forever.

Yes, you do. But it doesn't make stupid complaints any less stupid.

 

[Cheesus333]

I read the article, and all I could see was "I didn't get what I deserved!"

You're damn right you didn't, but getting kicked into the Sun is a little too much for your £30-ish purchase.

As far as I can tell from the general consensus, and what I've seen of the game itself, Valve made a damn good game, as we've come to expect of such a consistently-impressive game company. No, it didn't bring down the sky and initiate the Goddamn rapture, but if that disappoints you then it's your bloody fault for believing it would.

 

[z3rostr1fe]

Portal 2 is the only existing game that can make me smile, even if I have already played through it several times. I'm not being biased here, and anyone who has played it can support my statement.

With that, I call the negative Metacritic scores and its user reviews of Portal 2 as one big Mt. Everest of bullsh--!

 

[Titan Buttons]

Angry, self-entitled man-children with nothing else better to do but complain.

Simple really.

I actually think one of their arguments are "This indie game is only 4 hours long" and that's because it is a sequal to an hour long game, I really just don't understand how people can take a pro and make it the main point of their argument against the game.
I mean there is trolling but this is just blatant stupidity

Also a game is about how fun it is not how long, FF XIII is testement to that

 

[BlindChance]

The original Portal was usually 3-4 chambers (depending on size/complexity) between load times, at least for the first 2/3 of the game.

Aside from the frequent load times, there was a clear lack of reaction/accuracy-centric puzzles as well. For example, in the original there were several puzzles that required you to drop a portal in a fairly small area while moving at very high speeds (typically it was along the vein of put a portal on a wall, jump into the ground and loop through a few times, then hit an angled platform or somesuch). These were conspicuously absent in Portal 2. I can only assume because the nature of controllers make such puzzles an order of magnitude harder to complete.

I'm by no means saying the game is in any way flawed, just that the design of the game was clearly skewed by the existence of a console version. There's a few other examples I had, but I can't remember them, probably due to lack of sleep. I'll probably contribute a few more if I remember them.

I don't know. I played Portal on the Xbox 360, and while I found it challenging, there were no really difficult reflex tests that couldn't be handled with a controller. And for what it's worth, I found Portal 2's puzzles far more brain breaking. In one crucial way, it's indisputable that Portal 2's puzzles are more complex. Namely, that they involve more elements; the new lasers and paints. That doesn't mean they're indisputably harder, just more complex. There's more elements going on.

That said, I'd happily call Portal 2 harder than Portal, if only slightly.

 

[D Moness]

The DA2 thing I can kind of understand because they made it feel like a completely different franchise, but Portal 2 is the exact same as Portal. Shit, people really need to get over themselves.

At least it proved my comment in one of the DA2 topics right.

When a studio is trying to be innovative people whine.
When a studio is trying to do the same people whine again.

I won't type what else followed just sad to see people aren't playing anymore to enjoy them.
By the way 20 bucks that the next hate will be duke nukem forever.
It will get 0 points user reviews because it didn't live up to the 14 year long hype(well no shit).

 

[Flamey]

It's already changed to 7,7.

So it's not the same as DA2. DA2 still has a shit score.

 

[matt87_50]

I've got a bigger gripe... so far, I've spent over an hour just trying to get steam to work again...

it takes ages to start up, freezes and crashes. and then when I actually try and run the original portal, it just comes up saying "launching portal..." FOREVER!!!

and this is before I've even tried to start downloading portal 2!!!


FFS VALVE!!! FIX STEAM! IT IS A PIECE OF SHIT!

 

[Hiphophippo]

I'm kinda happy to hear that portal 2 is as short as portal 1

It is 100% not as short. I'm probably sitting somewhere around 6 hours and suspect I'm nearing the end. That's just the single player campaign.

 

[MiracleOfSound]

Does it have splitscreen guys? I really hope it has splitscreen.

 

[Akihiko]

Does it have splitscreen guys? I really hope it has splitscreen.

On consoles it does. I'm sure you could probably enable it in the pc version as well, in a similar fashion to how you enable splitscreen on L4D.