General Portal 2 Thread/Thoughts [Spoilers]

There’s so many threads about people interpreting parts of Portal 2, yet there doesn’t appear to be any threads about what people thought of the game.
[align=center][COLOR=‘Red’]SPOILER ALERT[/SIZE][/align]

If don’t want to bother reading my experiances playing the game, skip to the red TL;DR.

I thought the game was very well made. At the beginning I wasn’t very impressed and could sort of predict how everything was ending up. But when you first face GLADoS after disabling her turrets and neurotoxin. I was thinking that after Wheatly gained control, GLADoS would find a way of gaining partial control of the facility and you would find yourself in the middle of a way being waged between Wheatly and GLADoS. Yet when Wheatly betrays you, it didn’t come as a surprise, but more as a realization and a “I see what you did there Valve” moment.

What I loved about the game the most is how it takes you through the old testing chambers of Apeture Science. These all help you gain an understanding of the history of Apeture as well, it’s relations to Black Mesa, and how it became what it is today (Before GLADoS’s take over). On a side note it makes me hope Episode 3 adds on to this story and how it looked from Black Mesa’s point of view.

The final test chambers and Boss battle with Wheatly are my honest to god favorite parts of the game. I enjoy the test chambers mostly because of how you can visually see Apeture falling apart into flames and to hear GLADoS’s reactions to it.

The final battle with Wheatly, though, was a bit easier than I would have liked/ Admittedly, though, it took me a while to figure out what to do and got the last personality sphere on with less than 10 seconds left, so that made it a challenge enough for me at the time. But the moon thing kinda blew me away when it happened. Mostly because it was almost 3 am, I just wanted to finally finish Portal 2, when I was on the ground, unable to move, I had no idea what to do. In fact, I kept shooting the portal gun at Wheatly in hopes that it would do something. Finally, I just shot at the moon because I couldn’t think of anything else to shoot at. I literally shat bricks when I saw a twinkle on the moon, suddenly found everything being sucked into the portal on earth. The Apollo stuff was also pretty cool, really liked that. And the ending was really nice, especially with the Companion Cube being shot out. And the thing at the very end with Wheatly and the Space personality sphere made me laugh so loud.

[COLOR=‘Red’]TL;DR
My overall impressions:
Pros: Continued the funny, dark humor that was in Portal 1 to an even greater level. Looks a lot more nicer than original. Story didn’t suck
Cons: Basically made markings showing you where portals had to be made. Also I felt like you were more limited by where you could put portals, and that in some spots it would automatically put it in a certain way. Took away some of the challenge.

Well there’s my two cents. Feel free to criticize and tell yours too.

I agree with everything you posted.

I thought it was a fantastic sequel to Portal, and I’ve played the last bit about four or five times now. There’s not really much else I can say that you haven’t, but I really loved the bit on the moon too. Unlike you, I didn’t shoot everywhere hoping for a lucky shot, but when the roof tore apart and revealed the moon, I thought to myself “This will never work.”, but fired one at the moon anyway.

I think the Co-Op could have gone a bit longer, but then again it is a decent 7+ hours long, and time flies when you’re having fun.

After you get Wheately in control and you get on the elevator I was like “Wow, it’s over all ready?” And then he’s like “Oh no wait a second” and I was like “You’ve gotta be kidding me :lol: !”

And the part with the moon at the end blew me away too. And the ending was perfect.

It took me awhile to figure out what the white goo did though.

I liked the part where you shoot portals and go through them.

I want know the state of the world after Chell gets to the surface. Is the Combine defeated or is mankind gone? Probably as there no aliens anywhere. We only saw a wheat field at the end which is a bit of a shame I think.

the world is governed by a giant turret with leopard skin

I was blown away really, my favorite bits have to be the old abandoned areas of ApSci and the final battle with Wheatly along with the escape from his testing. Like what everyone else has said the end part with the moon was pretty epic and really it was the last thing I expected though when I saw that hole rip open I thought to myself “No way, there’s just no way” then when I saw the sparkle on the moon my jaw dropped and remained open for about 10 minutes after it was finished.

Did anyone see Wheatley going rogue coming? I had no idea!

Anyone else find the hidden area in the abandoned Aperture levels with the Borealis’ berthing area in it? That was an encouraging Ep. 3 reference.

I didn’t know but I certainly hated him from the start.

He had a adorable voice/accent though.

I think the whole content of the game (both storyline and some physical aspects) could have been ripped off from a Disney/Dream works movie. That combined with easy tests makes me think that I would not play trough this more than once (with an exception of getting achievements). Also I do not have much friends, so I’ll probably never finish, neither even play much co-op.

So I may be disappoint, but I’ll wait for the sdk and hope that isn’t any super-simple piece of crap.

As soon as I saw Wheatley being replaced with GLaDoS I knew what was coming. Although I did not expect that it would take him so long to realize his standing.

Earlier in the game when Chell gets hold of the portal gun I noticed that I can’t shoot “portals through portals” as was possible in Portal 1. So I guess that portal beams/rounds (or whatever) travel at the speed of light, which means that you can place a portal on the ground while falling at terminal velocity and fly through it. During the final battle when the roof broke open I knew exactly what to do, but hesitated. I thought “ok, so as soon as I shoot, the portal will immediately open on the moon, but how is that suppose to help?”. Cave Johnson had said that portals stick well to moon rock/dust or something like that. The part where we get to see earth from the moon and the Apollo landing site was cool, but it seemed weird, because the sparkle appeared close to the middle of the visible surface of the moon, from where the earth should have been almost directly above and not so close to the horizon.

Anyway, I liked the whole game. I found the bottom parts of the facility most exciting, because the “chambers” were big and seemed a bit more challenging since it was harder to find the next exit. Overall the game was easy as was stated by the OP, but I think that allowed me to focus on the story a bit more. At one point I saw a poster on the wall, listing 3 things to say to a raging robot, and spent like 5 minutes just standing there. I also couldn’t stop thinking about those 3 things for like an hour the next morning.

Oh and that GLaDoS in a potato thing… totally unexpected. I didn’t even want to try to think about how that could be possible within the game’s context.

Glados is a ULV CPU (ultra low voltage)

I have a ULV intel atom and it needs like 0.8v to run.

I loved the moon bit as well, when the portal gun came up I thought “I need to fire somewhere quickly” and immediately fired at the nearest white surface, then thought, “The moon? This won’t wor-” sparkle.

My favorite bit however was the turret song ^_^.

Gabe Johnson mentions that Black Mesa stole Aperture Science inventions and passed them off as their own. What technology did Black Mesa steal from Aperture Science?

I lol’d at the commentary mode where gabe said his email address. G…A…B…E…N. at valvesoftware :lol: (in ep2 he just said GABEN)

gabe johnson right ?
are you kidding me ?

anyway CAVE johnson has some similarities with andrew ryan from bioshock.
both got rid of the normal science vs. moral controverse and went ahead.
while rapture was a whole society, aperture was for testing and more science.
well i dont want to compare them too much, because similarities are very limited,
but i still want to point out the hate of both guys towards normal morality, either johnsons with his lemons or ryan with his scientists who were not “bound by petty morality”

i really like both characters and their attitude of going their own way, although both and especially cave seems a little mad and irresponsible to me.
that came especially as he answered the question with another question…
you remember the 60$ payment and ironical stuff against hobos :smiley: “youre the best…”

as for wheatley…
damn, the best moment was, when he was plugged in and was talking trash and at some point he said something like “whos boss? whos boss now ?- its meh!”
I kept grinning like 10 minutes :smiley: just like at the “hacks”

well, i dont know any more important characters than wheatley and cave
because glados has the most obvious disney part -.- you know, being honest and nice

wheatley and cave are awesome …

now i want my ep3, valve, no more excuses!

It’s because of the gayben meme. I’ve personally sent him a link to it before, assuming he reads them.

He responded to my one about Magnusson and HL-EP2 canon. :jizz:

I think the co-op could have had a lot more to it. There wasn’t any new gameplay mechanics introduced, and the story was far too basic (they could have at least added a part where Wheatley takes over, maybe even a part where you take turns carrying an unconscious Chell to safety in a collapsing facility).

However, the story and new gameplay in the single-player was mind-blowingly incredible. Most of the plot twists and awesome moments I could never have come up with myself. Plus, I love how Valve built up moments like the GLaDOS potatification (?) and lunacy shot so they seemed surprising but not so horribly implausible as to completely destroy my suspension of disbelief.

I also have a few theories of my own:

1: Cave and the Announcer weren’t really prerecorded messages. Cave Johnson says “I like your style, you make up your own rules” when you make it across a broken catwalk. Why would he say that for people simply walking across an intact catwalk? As for the Announcer, he seems already to have a limited AI (able to detect where people are and manage the essentials of the turret factory). But why would he need to say whether people were on the turret redemption line, or respond to a vague answer during a stalemate?

2: Chell is Caroline’s daughter and by extension, GLaDOS’. The turret opera at the end translates to “Farewell my dear child,” so there’s some room for interpretation there…

3: GLaDOS didn’t really delete Caroline. I mean, she was MADE from Caroline, it’s not like Caroline is in a certain file that can be deleted at any time.

Founded in 2004, Leakfree.org became one of the first online communities dedicated to Valve’s Source engine development. It is more famously known for the formation of Black Mesa: Source under the 'Leakfree Modification Team' handle in September 2004.