Once again the point of the fat jokes wasn't that it was terrible to be a fat orphan but how petty G La DOS was being. Everything else is up to you but I overall don't agree.
The Crystal Caverns A bird's gotta sing.
Yes it is petty. But just because it is in character doesn't mean it's not still kinda not the best source of humor. Again, my main problem was the change in tone to a story driven game and a lack of difficulty.
I don't know waht OP is talken about, I thought it was difficult in some areas.
So your complaint is it wasn't hard enough? Yeah, tell that to all the people who ragequit the game because they couldn't solve the puzzles. A friend of mine said it gave him a headache. You're probably just too good at puzzle games.
You are quite possibly the first person to ever complain because something actually focused on the story. Congratulations
Personally, I think it's probably just a matter of hype and expectations. The difficulty aspect is an odd one though, because I recall exactly one difficult test chamber in the original Portal: the final one, which was only hard because it was elaborate. I found the sequel to be just as difficult as the first, and the solutions far more interesting.
The Portal games aren't hard puzzle games. The reason so many people like them is for the story and character interaction, and Portal 2's plot and characters are far more complex and interesting.
Just a note too, Rhyme Beat wasn't saying that it was better because it was in character, the point of the jokes is the inherent pettiness and immaturity coming from the A Is.
But the main point: the fact that Valve moved away from the constant puzzle solving and toward the interesting character interaction is one of the reasons why people like it so much. Let's be honest, the original Portal was just a series of physics based puzzles with a dark sense of humor. People enjoyed Portal because of G La DOS, the portal gun was just icing on the cake.
Leave your dignity at the door.
"People enjoyed Portal because of GLaDOS, the portal gun was just icing on the cake."
I think that's a huge generalization. In my experience, some people felt that way, while others enjoyed Portal because of the portal gun, and it was the dark humor that was the icing. (I liked both about equally, and thus liked Portal 2 about as much as Portal 1.)
"Portal 2's plot and characters are far more complex and interesting. "
The retro and behind the scenes parts of Aperture Science were interesting. The early parts with psycho-G La DOS or any of the parts where Wheatley was speaking, were terrible.
Wheatley is a very polarizing character, so he doesn't really count. The point is that the interaction with G La DOS in the original game was mostly good for the dark humor, and you get plenty of that with Cave Johnson and Aperture in general.
And G La DOS was pretty much the same as she was in the original game.
"...dark humor that was the icing."
Actually, that kind of fits what I was saying better. A vast majority bought the game for the portal gun, but enjoyed it for the interaction. It's why Valve was so surprised at the popularity.
Basically, I'm of the opinion that Portal was a great game, but not a fantastic game, while Portal 2 is absolutely sublime. People have an annoying tendency of hating sequels simply because they take a different approach, even if the changes are massive improvements.
Leave your dignity at the door.
You are quite possibly the first person to ever complain because something actually focused on the story.
While I can also enjoy a good story, this is a game. It makes sense for someone to prefer a focus on gameplay rather than non-gameplay-related elements.
For me, a video game is an interactiv story. If it suceeds in making a good story and is fun to play (and this game exceeded my expectations in both cases) then its a good game.
I thought the game was fairly challenging. I'm not that good at puzzle games, though. Still, I thought the gameplay was satisfying enough.
It's just a pity about the replay value. There's little point to replaying the game once you know how to beat all the puzzles; unless you feel like watching the the story unfold again.
I think you're overreacting about the fat people and orphans jokes.
"Single player is challenging only when the maps are too elaborate or confusing."
"Too easy" and "too elaborate" are not complaints that meld well. Also, I feel like adding more to the story as a negative aspect is just limiting games as a medium. This is one of the few games out there to explore the storytelling potential of a video game.
I pretty much agree with Heartbreaker. Much like Mass Effect, people feel the need to deride sequels simply because they're sequels.
But Katana is saying too easy _except_ when too elaborate? So they go together fine as meant?
And that's absolutely fine as a complaint. One of Limbo's best puzzles just involved a rope, a switch and a pit. Good puzzles are simply laid out and tricky to solve. Adding more things to remember and making it hard to see obscures the puzzle and only challenges the boring bits of the brain rather than the cool bits. Like it's more fun to solve 1=x+1/x than 4325643234*2682345246723, one requires a stage up in thinking, whilst the other is just time consuming and doesn't give you much feel of a solution at the end
You don't happen to watch Zero Punctuation, do you? Because you seem to have almost the same opinion as Yahztee
does.
I personally find your review to be rather blocky. I think it makes the review hard to read.
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Let's be critical
The other reviews read much like a overly long love letters; and in my opinion Portal 2 doesn't deserve this. Let's start with the most basic element, the puzzles. They're easy and single player is challenging only when the maps are too elaborate or confusing. Co-op doesn't fare much better; the puzzles are slightly more challenging but the combined abilities of both players more than makes up for it. There are several Co-op puzzles that are fiendishly difficult, but they only show up in the last section and again it seems more like there was some sort of disconnect and we spent most of our time wandering around confused more than anything else. Graphics, sound, and controls are Valve standard and good. However let's pick a few bones with this story, which is the "most compelling part" of the game. It's bland. The jokes are okay and made me chuckle, but there was nothing that made me fall out of my chair laughing. And there are some unfortunate implications in making fun of orphans and fat people. Some jokes are literally nothing more than "Chell you have no parents and this amuses me fatty". The comedy and character interactions are good, but again they're nothing super amazing. What annoys me the most about this is that it feels rushed. Portal 1 was rushed and it was okay; that's because the story elements were essentially dressing on a very tight puzzle game. Portal 2 is a story game with some puzzles in between set pieces. It could have been vastly improved by the addition of another few chapters, where all the elements of the previous parts came together for some serious puzzles instead of glorified tutorials. And I'm not okay with the DLC model; Valve is a master at it sure, but this is content that should have been in the game to begin with, not released 3 or 4 months later. Is Portal 2 good? Yes. Is it fantastic? No. Is it worth $50? Hell no. Should you buy it at some point? Definitely.