Kolya on 19/10/2007 at 20:32
I haven't left the labs yet but I bloody well hope this will be soon. Right now it's bland textures, game developer humor, zero immersion. I arrive in the next room, take a look at the puzzle, solve it, elevator, rinse and repeat. The sameish leveldesign manages to make the cool gameplay seem old in no time.
ZylonBane on 19/10/2007 at 21:22
Quote Posted by Kolya
...game developer humor, zero immersion...
It seems you've missed the joke. In Portal, you literally play a
test subject. All the areas seem like exactly what they're supposed to seem like.
Kolya on 19/10/2007 at 21:45
I got it, but the testing environment is dull. I would like to use that gun outside.
Lansing on 19/10/2007 at 22:01
It sounds like you're expecting the game to be more than it is. It's a series of challenges to overcome, rather than a game where you have free reign to use the portal gun as you wish.
Having said that, some of those challenges are particularly clever - particularly if you do the bonus 'least portals' and 'least time' maps.
ZylonBane on 20/10/2007 at 00:26
Quote Posted by Kolya
I got it, but the testing environment is dull. I would like to use that gun outside.
And what would you do outside? Shoot portals in the sides of buildings and fall to your death? Please. A testing environment is the perfect premise to set up all sorts of interesting -- and otherwise completely implausible -- ways to use the portal gun.
Anyway, half the appeal of this game is listening to GLaDOS (the AI running the facility). Maybe you just don't... umm... have a sense of humor?
Kolya on 20/10/2007 at 01:04
I got out of the test environment but that doesn't change the game in any way. Maybe I should say that I played HL2 and Episode1 which already shared a lot of the assets presented here for the third time.
I also played another, more conventional 3-dimensional puzzle game lately, named Tomb Raider Anniversary. Despite it's 3rd person, it felt more like being there. And when I solved a puzzle I got somewhere. For me Portal is too obviously a lesson on the one game mechanic. I heard there's a great finale, that keeps me hanging on.
Okay ZB, you like the game. Can we still talk like grownups or will you keep on turning the fact that I don't enjoy it as much as you do into a shortcoming on my side?
What I seek in games besides a good gameplay is immersion. Portal doesn't offer that. There's no plot to speak of. The humor of the AI doesn't make me laugh, because it makes all the jokes the developers obviously wanted to make forever, including references to system shock and so on. GLaDOS is not a character, it's an out-of-game joke that goes on. And it doesn't even have a use in the game.
ZylonBane on 20/10/2007 at 01:22
Quote Posted by Kolya
The humor of the AI doesn't make me laugh, because it makes all the jokes the developers obviously wanted to make forever
You keep saying that, and I have absolutely no idea what you're talking about.
Maybe the German speech localisation sucks.
Kolya on 20/10/2007 at 01:50
I play it in English. I'll try to transcribe an example from memory:
"Remember when I let the platform slide into the furnace? And I was all like: I'm going to murder you! And you were like: No way! That was fun."
Tell me this is not the devs laughing their ass off about how witty and clever they are. Just makes me roll eyes. What kind of AI would talk like that?
The super-cute turrets, after knocking them over: "I don't blame you!" "I don't hate you!" That's the protocol droid behaviour. And these are the only enemies here.
I smiled when I heard there would be cake the first time. After hearing GLaDOS frizzing out for the 2nd time while promising cake I had understood. But she repeats the same joke including frizzing out at least 3 more times. Okay, understood! Then come the inscriptions on the walls.
All after me now: "The cake is a lie!" (repeat)
If this was something HL2 programmers or modders had done in their spare time it would be cool. But it's really only half of a game.
ZylonBane on 20/10/2007 at 02:50
What kind of AI would talk like that? An insane, murderous AI who thinks of you as nothing more than a lab rat, that's who. Also, I'm going to guess you're not much of a Hitchhiker's Guide fan. The turret speech is, if anything, inspired by the various Sirius Cybernetics products. Calling it an SS2 reference is a bit ridiculous.
As for the story, of course there isn't much of a story. It's a ~4 hour puzzle game. It needs a story about as much as Tetris needs one. But, there *is* some story there. Who are you? How did you get there? Where are all the facility personnel? Who left the messages behind? Most of these questions can be answered if you pay attention to the environment and listen to GLaDOS's babblings.
I bet you incinerated your Weighted Companion Cube faster than any other test subject. It feels pain, you know.
Kolya on 20/10/2007 at 13:25
Quote Posted by ZylonBane
What kind of AI would talk like that? An insane, murderous AI who thinks of you as nothing more than a lab rat, that's who.
And who happens to crack jokes all along. Okay.
In SS2 there was one moment like that: When SHODAN says: "Why do you move so slowly? Do you think this is some kind of game?"
That was good for a laugh. It broke immersion in the same way though. Of course it's a game. Ha ha. Hello developers! Having fun?
Anyway, that was one incident. GLaDOS does it all the time.
Besides SHODAN is a sentient being with a character and a history, that seemingly reacts flexible to changes, whereas GLaDOS seems about as sentient and flexible as a toaster. [Insert test subject hometown].
Quote Posted by ZylonBane
Also, I'm going to guess you're not much of a Hitchhiker's Guide fan. The turret speech is, if anything, inspired by the various Sirius Cybernetics products. Calling it an SS2 reference is a bit ridiculous.
Actually I read all the Hitchhiker books years ago, then read them all again. Then saw the BBC series, then the movie. I think I also played the text-adventure at some point. Doesn't matter.
I didn't call the turrets a reference. I said they have the protocol droid behaviour: Uber-cute with sudden bursts of aggression. Not exactly my favourite type of enemy.
There are other SS2 references of course. I don't have to count them down to you.
Quote Posted by ZylonBane
As for the story, of course there isn't much of a story. It's a ~4 hour puzzle game. It needs a story about as much as Tetris needs one. But, there *is* some story there. Who are you? How did you get there? Where are all the facility personnel? Who left the messages behind? Most of these questions can be answered if you pay attention to the environment and listen to GLaDOS's babblings.
Yeah, Tetris doesn't need a story. But a first person 3D puzzler is kinda expected to have one. See TRA.
The questions you pose aren't questions I ever asked myself because the answers are evident. I'm a test subject in a long row of test subjects who are all dead now. The facility has been abandoned and the messages were written by other test subjects as the AI keeps continuing the tests. That's not a plot, it's a situation.
About the weighted companion cube: It is a gameplay element stripped down to the bare essentials. Much like the whole game is more a gameplay design study than an actual game. People grow affectionate about stupid things in games, so they made fun of that. That's cool. Only you can't do that in a game (all the time) because it's self-referential. Portal points at it self saying: Hey, I'm a game and I make jokes about games. That's just lame.
I go into a game to become part of an illusion, not to laugh with the devs (or become the laughing subject of the devs) about how games work. It's not that I don't get it. It just seems very unimaginative to me.
When I burned the bloody cube and GLaDOS said her thing about me being the fastest...my reaction was: I bet you say that to all the guys. And maybe it even affects some people who never played a real game before.
Same thing with the cake: It's just in the game to make fun of games' reward systems. If this sort of humor continues and people here hinted it does, then there will be some sort of cake at the end. Only that by then I won't care anymore, because the game has exposed itself as being a game way too much already. Portal is the cheap porn movie among video games where the action is hot but you can constantly see the camera guy or microphone. Complete with poor locations and props taken from other movies.
That was of course a gross exaggeration. Ha ha.
