Impressions from playing Portal

[OssK]

Some more time like one or two levels with the companion cube would have been perfect to me, like if instead of destroying it, you would pass it from a level to another for some time and then have to destroy it.

Same thing with a lot of mechanics: each level has something to teach, but I felt there were not enough when you are just combining them.

Would you disagree ? Would you say that if there had been for instance all the levels from still alive in it you would have been bored ?

[MrChaz]

I've not actually tried those expansion levels. For me I thought the game did a great job of introducing an element, exploring it and then moving on with repeating. It's personal taste I guess.

[blackboxme]

  brkl said:

Yeah, and I agreed with you before that post...

All those pictures show is that they both used Source. And they had graffiti... I guess... I don't even know what you tried to communicate with the specific pairs.

pair 1: red tint to indicate damage or death (and, not quite captured in the images, the same white streak to indicate bullets)

pair 2: exact same menu screen

maybe these two aren't super strong, but both indicate how broken down the game world is, which makes sense because the two worlds are in the same universe

pair 3: garbage littering the ground (there are better examples in portal I could have gotten like Aperture science branded cans of beans)

pair 4: use of grafiti/posters to communicate with the player

pair 5: the security cameras are a pair

pair 6: the portal gun and the gravity gun are a pair

pair 7: the same strange floaty style of picking things up

And yeah, Portal uses source! It isn't insular because it is in the Source family and it reflects the most up to date systems that source games implement, like commentary and achievements.

[OssK]

Yeah... And both games use pixel, shadows, light, walls floor... And are FPSs... Don't kid me mate

[blackboxme]

  OssK said:

Yeah... And both games use pixel, shadows, light, walls floor... And are FPSs

Now I like the way you are thinking ossk!

[DanJW]

  OssK said:

Some more time like one or two levels with the companion cube would have been perfect to me, like if instead of destroying it, you would pass it from a level to another for some time and then have to destroy it.

Same thing with a lot of mechanics: each level has something to teach, but I felt there were not enough when you are just combining them.

Would you disagree ? Would you say that if there had been for instance all the levels from still alive in it you would have been bored ?

I think it is a sign of success in any form of entertainment to leave people wanting more. Doesn't mean you should actually give it to them.

[brkl]

  blackboxme said:

pair 1: red tint to indicate damage or death (and, not quite captured in the images, the same white streak to indicate bullets)

pair 2: exact same menu screen

maybe these two aren't super strong, but both indicate how broken down the game world is, which makes sense because the two worlds are in the same universe

pair 3: garbage littering the ground (there are better examples in portal I could have gotten like Aperture science branded cans of beans)

pair 4: use of grafiti/posters to communicate with the player

pair 5: the security cameras are a pair

pair 6: the portal gun and the gravity gun are a pair

pair 7: the same strange floaty style of picking things up

And yeah, Portal uses source! It isn't insular because it is in the Source family and it reflects the most up to date systems that source games implement, like commentary and achievements.

Security cameras? Duke Nukem had those, and a thousand other titles. Guns are pretty commonplace too. The floaty style of picking up is the same for any Source game, as is red for damage and the menu screen, unless the developers change them (they usually don't).

[DanJW]

I think you just pwned your own self Brkl, giving all those examples of other FPS titles with shared elements and visual language

I think your impression of it being insular is just a result of the game having incredible internal consistency.

[elmuerte]

  MrChaz said:

Your opinion is wrong!

They're not speaking their mind. And I'm sorry, there are such things as wrong "opinions." It's my opinion that the sun isn't hot......mm-hm.

[brkl]

  DanJW said:

I think you just pwned your own self Brkl, giving all those examples of other FPS titles with shared elements and visual language

I think your impression of it being insular is just a result of the game having incredible internal consistency.

I never had that impression. But I can't see how Portal has some special dialogue with HL2 when almost every HL2 mod and Source-using game shares the same elements simply because they are the default settings of the engine.

How about Glados and Shodan? That's something concrete.

[MonkeyWrench]

  elmuerte said:

They're not speaking their mind. And I'm sorry, there are such things as wrong "opinions." It's my opinion that the sun isn't hot......mm-hm.

Dammit....beat me to it! mm-mh.

[gdf]

Small but perfectly formed.

I'll reiterate, don't fuck with it.

[Jake]

I wish all paintings were painted on a canvas twice as big. I wish all films were at least four hours long, and all TV shows ran for 48 episode seasons. Every CD should be a double album, and plays should last for a week. Why are we measuring creative works by their length?

[gdf]

Because penis.

[DanJW]

Want a bigger Portal? These natural pills we have visible effects within 3 weeks!

[Jayel]

I wonder if I would've enjoyed it more if it was more challenging - if I felt that I really earned the ending, you know. It's a fantastic game, easily my favourite game of 2007, but it really shows that they playtested the hell out of it so that anybody could "get it" and nobody gets stuck and halts the narrative flow.

[thorn]

  Jake said:

I wish all paintings were painted on a canvas twice as big. I wish all films were at least four hours long, and all TV shows ran for 48 episode seasons. Every CD should be a double album, and plays should last for a week. Why are we measuring creative works by their length?

On the other hand, I wish Firefly hadn't been cancelled after 14 episodes. I wish the fifth Harry Potter movie hadn't had so much of the fun-but-not-plot-furthering chapters of the book edited out. I wish I had a third example to make this post flow better.

Seems to me that it's a basic human reaction to want more of something we liked. That said, whilst I completely understand the mindset, I was happy with the length of Portal. As other people have said, its strength was that it left you wanting more, not that it had outstayed its welcome.

EDIT: Rereading this post, I realise that my point might not be clear. I'm saying that we shouldn't be so absurdly snarky towards people who say Portal shouldn't have been longer, even if I don't agree with them.

[OssK]

  Jake said:

I wish all paintings were painted on a canvas twice as big. I wish all films were at least four hours long, and all TV shows ran for 48 episode seasons. Every CD should be a double album, and plays should last for a week. Why are we measuring creative works by their length?

Ok, I'm just a psycho that can't control his needs... I want to play more of the same game, "let me play you again game" "no please leave me alone"...

That's gameraping action live for you, enjoy.

[miffy495]

This thread just made me go back and play through the game from start to finish in a sitting. Total time, about 2 hours. This is the time logged by my Steam account. This period included the time I had it paused while I walked my dog. Actual time: closer to an hour and a half. Not a complaint, actually. It was good to sit down and give it another runthrough, and nice that I didn't have to kill a week doing so. First time I've played it since first beating it in 2007. After a year and a half of calming down from the OMGBRILLIANT!!!!11 reaction, I can still say that this is an incredibly charming, fun little game. I need to replay short-burst games like this more often. Maybe another play of Rez is in order next week or so...

[gdf]

Oh, and if you want more Portal then get the map pack of the levels from Portal 2D re-imagined using the full game.

[blackboxme]

  brkl said:

Security cameras? Duke Nukem had those, and a thousand other titles. Guns are pretty commonplace too. The floaty style of picking up is the same for any Source game, as is red for damage and the menu screen, unless the developers change them (they usually don't).

[/brkl]

1) Security Cameras: both in P and H-L2, the cameras are 1) somewhat sentient, 2) somewhat passive, 3) somewhat menacing. They're more there for atmosphere than anything else. I think that's pretty unique.

2)Guns: I'm particularly talking about the white tracer effect that Half-Life 2 and Portal sharef. I find it distinctive, because it doesn't look very cool, and most games have guns that look cool when they shoot things.

3)Left4dead and Team Fortress 2 don't have the kind of disembodied, transparent control style found in Portal and H-L2. Dark Messiah of Might and Magic doesn't have the disembodied transparent style. Day of defeat didn't have this kind of disembodied transparent controls. Neither does CounterStrike: that game modulates your movement a ton based on jumping, what weapon you have stuff like that. So I have no idea what you're refering to.

4) Finally, I didn't even say that Portal was in special dialog with H-L2, that was just the low hanging fruit to try to disprove insularity. There were connections with H-L2, but a lot of other things came to mind as well.

  brkl said:

I never had that impression. But I can't see how Portal has some special dialogue with HL2 when almost every HL2 mod and Source-using game shares the same elements simply because they are the default settings of the engine.

How about Glados and Shodan? That's something concrete.

If you pay attention, there are actually parallels between GlaDOS and ol' whitebeard from H-L 2.

Edited March 18, 2009 by blackboxme

[blackboxme]

  miffy495 said:

This thread just made me go back and play through the game from start to finish in a sitting. Total time, about 2 hours. This is the time logged by my Steam account. This period included the time I had it paused while I walked my dog. Actual time: closer to an hour and a half. Not a complaint, actually. It was good to sit down and give it another runthrough, and nice that I didn't have to kill a week doing so. First time I've played it since first beating it in 2007. After a year and a half of calming down from the OMGBRILLIANT!!!!11 reaction, I can still say that this is an incredibly charming, fun little game. I need to replay short-burst games like this more often. Maybe another play of Rez is in order next week or so...

Yay! Something positive came out of this clusterfuck of a thread

[blackboxme]

  Jayel said:

I wonder if I would've enjoyed it more if it was more challenging - if I felt that I really earned the ending, you know. It's a fantastic game, easily my favourite game of 2007, but it really shows that they playtested the hell out of it so that anybody could "get it" and nobody gets stuck and halts the narrative flow.

It was never challenging for me, but it was just a mindblowing mechanic. It was like being in a looney toons cartoon. But ah, yeah. I wasn't blown away by the ending either, but I can definitely see what people were enjoying about it.

[modeps]

  OssK said:

pure example: if portal had been twice as long, it would have been definitely perfect.

I feel that Portal was the perfect length and had a bit of replay value in there as well with their challenges. If it was much longer and I would have been like "Ok dude, I fucking get it."

[excuberance]

I remember an interview with the creators of Portal, where they mentioned at a point there was a character called "the rat" or something similar that lived in the rusted up second part of the game. He was the writer of all the "go here" scribblings on the wall.

I don't recall any more details, but that is a distinct example of more content that could have been there.

I think the game could have stood to be a little longer, I thought a few parts of the game felt a little rushed.

For example, the companion cube was really only used for one level, and didn't get the time it would have needed to stick with players.

Also, the latter part of the game could have been really helped by introducing a character to put in even more stark contrast to the earlier part. The latter part got a little repetitive.

That said, it sure was a great game , certainly one of the greatest single-player experiences I have ever had. Up there with CoD4 and Grim Fandango to namedrop a few other.