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Portal is Awesome!
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 Re: Portal is Awesome!
Posted by Yak_Fighter on Mon Oct 22nd at 6:19am 2007

Yes, the one thing the entire game is based upon and has a bunch of different uses is a gimmick. Shooting guns in Doom is a gimmick too.



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 Re: Portal is Awesome!
Posted by Pvt.Scythe on Mon Oct 22nd at 1:03pm 2007

I just played through Ep1 and Ep2 and some way through Portal and I must say that Orange Box gives content for the money. Only thing I've found disappointing so far was the length of Ep1. I got only a bit over 4 hours of fun out of it and that was with playing Urban Flight twice because my saves from that chapter got corrupted for some odd reason. Ep2 on the other hand was very satisfying experience, I just hope we'll get Ep3 before 2012... Episodic content isn't quite working with Valve and their release-when-it's-ready-and-then-a-bit-later-way, I hope they'll get back to making singleplayer games that actually last more than 6 hours.

I have no problem with waiting for a game for a long long time, if it delivers "enough" game time, but waiting a long time for a short sprint in storyline you're aching to complete isn't my idea of fun.

I always buy my games from retail, since it gives me something concrete to own, so I wasn't aware of this extra tax thing with games bought from Steam... And knowing the eagerness of my government to tax people I'm prone to think that it might actually cost me more to buy games from Steam than from retail. <img src=" SRC="images/smiles/icon_biggrin.gif">



''Everyone wades in s**t until they're competent enough to walk on it. Jesus style.''
Dystopia - Empires



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 Re: Portal is Awesome!
Posted by G.Ballblue on Mon Oct 22nd at 4:06pm 2007

Ep1 was a considerable improvement over Half-Life 2. Running around City 17 with alyx made the game considerably more interesting that playing by yourself, and some of the scripted sequences were just brutal. I got snagged on a few puzzles in the car park area, however. Trying to turn those orange wheels while being pounded by Ant Lions ain't easy. (I have since come to the conclusion that I was supposed to block the Ant Lion spawns up with cars, something that had not occured to me while I was in the various car parks.)

Episode 2 was even better -- the stuff involving the car was fantastic, the improved HUD was nice, (it was nice not having the flash light drain your auxiliary power) and ultimately left me wanting episode three. image

Portal was worth its money, the only problem I had with it was its length. Personally, I think they could have made the game a bit harder -- the advanced maps are a much more noteworthy challenge over the default ones, and the game is ultimately something that I see myself playing a lot more of in the future. Let's just hope valve gets around to hooking up Hammer to work with Portal :/


Breaking the laws of mapping since 2003 and doing a damn fine job at it



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 Re: Portal is Awesome!
Posted by Naklajat on Tue Oct 23rd at 1:49am 2007

Overall, I think Ep2 is the best yet in the series, the antlion chapter was totally frickin awesome, the hunters are a blast to fight, and the car chapters are delicious to the fun center of my brain (despite the car being so overpowered).

From my viewpoint though, it seems like the pacing of Ep2 was slowed down a bit, or at least more punctuated than the previous chapters. I think it's due largely to the extended dialog sequences where you can do little but stand around while the characters flap their gums, and the fact that you have to wait for them to finish before they'll open the door and you can get back to killing things. This might just be me being a fidgety impatient twitch gamer, but in Ep1 there was very little of that, there was a sense that there's no time to stop and chat. Ep2 conveys this sense too, what with the Combine hunting you down relentlessly for the transmission packet, and the looming superportal that promises to crush any hope of resistance, but the long-winded characters don't really reflect it.

I also find flirty game characters slightly disconcerting, at least in this context, it would make better sense for a shooter in the vein of Duke Nukem, or a dating sim game, but I play shooters to shoot things, not make googly eyes with the facial animation system and eyeball shader.

When the NPCs weren't wasting good shooting time, the gameplay was a lot of fun and I can't recall a single area in the game that didn't have an outstanding level of polish. As always there's a good sense of great distance travelled, and a feeling of grander scale to the world just beyond what you can see. It's further proof that the designers and artists at Valve are some of the best in the industry.

Can't wait to get the SDK update <img src=" SRC="images/smiles/icon_biggrin.gif">

Has anyone played the 360 version of Orange Box?


=o



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 Re: Portal is Awesome!
Posted by Yak_Fighter on Tue Oct 23rd at 5:30am 2007

I just gotta say, Valve's singleplayer level design is unparalleled. I think that's both impressive and a sad commentary on current gaming industry, considering the last 'new' fps I've played, Resistance Fall of Man, is mainly just big empty areas with a truckload of identical props dumped in the way...the equivalent of a newbie HL1 mapper just discovering prefabs, and this is a professional company who's game is considered one of the 'best' on the PS3. If it wasn't for Valve we would have completely reverted to near-Quake1 levels of complexity by now :/



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 Re: Portal is Awesome!
Posted by Crono on Tue Oct 23rd at 8:01am 2007

Infinity Ward is damn close, if not better. But, both have varied design tactics.


Blame it on Microsoft, God does.



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 Re: Portal is Awesome!
Posted by DrGlass on Tue Oct 23rd at 3:02pm 2007

I feel that Valve designed the pacing of the game for people like me. Fun gun fights with nice cool down periods and the voice acting is top notch. The whole series is very involved and pulls me in. As a mapper I find that that 90% of games I play break apart and become WAY to easy and predictable.

I'm also impressed with the graphics. It seems like every next-gen game that comes out looks like someone rubbed petroleum jelly all over every surface while the character animation and faces look like rubbish. I blame the gamer web sites that call these games as "best ever" even when they have glaring problems.

Like "Gears of War" that game was half ass, I felt like a bunch of large forheaded jocks circle jerked that one out. Who puts an auto save right before a long cinematic that you can't skip?!

uuhhhgg... I just hope that the cost of creating great games drops so independent designers can make some content that is worth while.



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 Re: Portal is Awesome!
Posted by FatStrings on Wed Oct 24th at 2:41pm 2007

i am currently purchasing the orange box by way of steam, excited to see what it can do



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 Re: Portal is Awesome!
Posted by Naklajat on Thu Oct 25th at 3:36am 2007

Enter "meatloaf" in console (without quotes) and it will cook you dinner.


=o



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 Re: Portal is Awesome!
Posted by hl_world on Sat Oct 27th at 12:01pm 2007

I want to buy Portal from Steam. How much will I have to download?



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 Re: Portal is Awesome!
Posted by Naklajat on Sun Oct 28th at 3:08am 2007

A little over 1.1GB at the least, possibly more if you need engine updates.


=o



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 Re: Portal is Awesome!
Posted by hl_world on Sun Oct 28th at 2:15pm 2007

Thanks BvS. I installed and I got the "Partygoer" achievement. So far in my opinion: AWESOME!!. I liked how the turrets could shoot you through the portal systems and how the lasers could pass through too. I'm impressed.



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 Re: Portal is Awesome!
Posted by rs6 on Sun Oct 28th at 3:45pm 2007

I like the cake.



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 Re: Portal is Awesome!
Posted by Gaara on Mon Nov 12th at 2:47pm 2007

I bought Orange Box on 360. Identical from what I can tell to the computer, except quciekr to start playing since its a console put you have to use a controller to aim <img src=" SRC="images/smiles/sad.gif">. Goddam 360 is burning a hole the size of Canberra in my pocket.



Reckless disregard for childrens well being, women and nothing but utter contempt for other cultures.




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