Tuesday, April 26, 2011
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
GlaDOS's screams will haunt me forever.
Portal 2 is an amazing game.
With this out of the way, I will now elaborate on something I noticed, which is how it manages the puzzles along the game's experience.
In the original: you were thrown into a room, with the goal to leave one way or another, using your portal gun to shazzam your way to victory.
The sequel does more of the same, and adds new pieces to the puzzle, such as the very fun accelerating gel.
However, the white panels where you are able to put your portals are few and far between.
The result is that now most of the puzzles are solved by choosing which one of the 4 or 5 panels available will get which end of the portal gun. Probably only one of them even, as the other is usually occupied on a light bridge / gel faucet / tractor beam.
The biggest challenge for me in the end was typically finding the panel in question. Some are cleverly hidden but it's more often than not, it's a matter of perception rather than logical thinking. Plenty of times I didn't know what to do, so I just ended up just scanning around for lonely panels and based on their location, I found what I needed to do.
Still, I don't think this makes the game worse, I think it just kinda gives it a different feel. Like it's now a treasure hunt for hidden panels instead of a gravity riddle with portals.
On another note, I'm pretty glad they took out the twitch aspect of some jumps. If you finally found out how to solve a puzzle correctly, now it's resolution is smooth and simple - no more flinging portals while breaking the sound barrier in mid-air to project yourself perfectly in a tiny gap.
That said; I'd not object to a few of these kinds of challenges on future custom maps, if they end up being made.
It's a good game, go play it!