Digital Nightfall on 11/5/2011 at 10:27
There's some interesting contrasts between single player and co-op. It's almost like they were made by different teams.
Single player has higher production values and a great deal more polish. The environments are more lush and detailed, and generally have a greater sense of atmosphere and place. The co-op maps on the other hand feel like abstract video game environments. The writing is immensely better in single player. The writing in multiplayer is clever, but never LOL, and after a while it actually gets rather dull and annoying. Of course, plot is essentially nonexistant in the co-op campaign.
On the other hand, the gameplay in co-op is an order of magnitude superior. There's a sense of ingenuity in the level design here not seen in single player - not just complexity and difficulty. The puzzles somehow seemed more meaty. There was more to do, more ways to experiment, more ways to fail, more ways to go "ah-ha" and in general it actually felt like a puzzle game (as opposed to the single player, which plays more like an adventure game with puzzles.) My ability to describe it is failing me. In spite of it being a multiplayer experience, I felt like these were the puzzles that defined portal gameplay.
Koki on 11/5/2011 at 11:49
From what I've seen in coop the puzzles are slightly more complicated but only because you have four portals available. Nothing particularly ingenious about it, just one more layer.
SubJeff on 11/5/2011 at 13:05
From what you've seen? Play it all before you comment. The puzzles in co-op aren't more complex just because of the extra portals (and some are surprisingly simple) but because they really require co-op. You do this, I do that, at point X you do this so I can get here and do Y so you can get to point B and be able to...
And so on.
I'm hoping the FMs/new DLC will be even more involved.
CCCToad on 11/5/2011 at 13:28
Quote Posted by sNeaksieGarrett
lol
Um you do know the game is set in the future right CCCtoad?
What T-smith said. Parts of the facility were supposed to have built in the 50's, and the rest of it would have been built in the early 2000's
Koki on 11/5/2011 at 13:42
Quote Posted by Subjective Effect
From what you've seen? Play it all before you comment. The puzzles in co-op aren't more complex just because of the extra portals (and some are surprisingly simple) but because they really require co-op.
Holy shit, really? A coop that requires coop?
Sulphur on 11/5/2011 at 19:23
Re: suspension of disbelief. Hello, you're playing a game that lets you carry a hand-held gun that lets you rip a fucking wormhole between two points in space. And you're complaining about the lack of realism in the environments?
The game is entirely fantastical, so if your suspension of disbelief can't handle cavernous environments (in a cavern) but can handle a concept like a portal gun with one nonchalant pull of the trigger, you've got problems bucko. One wonders how you played through Bioshock without popping an aneurysm.
CCCToad on 11/5/2011 at 22:41
I think you're kind of missing the point.
The portrayal of the Aperture Science facility in Portal 2 is jarringly at odds with what is seen in the first Portal, which implied that it was a relatively static facility with the test chambers being reconfigurable. I mean, when you get off the testing track, you can even see the giant pistons used to reconfigure the chambers. There's also a few other things that just don't make sense. For example, why are are the 50's areas of the facility the deepest down in Portal 2?
In other words, the first Portal retained a relatively logical setup for the majority of what it presented. Portal 2 gives me the impression that they just said "aww, fuck it, make it as ridiculous as possible so the audience has some nice set pieces to gasp at!" Whereas the first Portal at least gives the illusion that the labs were a functional facility, in Portal 2 they are clearly designed for no other purpose than for you to travel through them.
Same thing applies to Bioshock. In that game, they developers at least tried to make the levels seem like they were designed logically. As were Thief, Deus Ex, and System Shock. And as Mass Effect and Halo were not.
Yakoob on 12/5/2011 at 01:08
Quote Posted by Sulphur
Re: suspension of disbelief. Hello, you're playing a game that lets you carry a hand-held gun that lets you rip a fucking
wormhole between two points in space. And you're complaining about the lack of realism in the environments?
The game is entirely fantastical, so if your suspension of disbelief can't handle cavernous environments (in a cavern) but can handle a concept like a portal gun with one nonchalant pull of the trigger, you've got problems bucko. One wonders how you played through Bioshock without popping an aneurysm.
Actually, one of the better books on film scriptwriting I've read brought up a good point: only have one thing that breaks your suspension of disbelief at a time. Or in other words, there's only so much suspension the viewer (or in this case, gamer) can do, and if you cross the limit, the illusion of believability just falls apart.
Sulphur on 12/5/2011 at 06:02
Quote:
Same thing applies to Bioshock. In that game, they developers at least tried to make the levels seem like they were designed logically.
Logically? One: architecturally, it's a god-damn above-air metropolis transplanted to the bottom of the ocean. Two: fucktons of GLASS as a construction material at those depths is hardly what I'd call a concession to safety, common sense, or indeed, logic. Three: all of those buildings tower and lurch from the views you get of them, and through the game it's all corridors and rooms and barely any verticality anywhere.
Back to Portal - the portrayal of Aperture Labs in Portal 2 is the way it is precisely because the spartan aesthetic to the original Portal would be far too plain to carry an entire full-length game through on. To that end, it was made larger while expanding the story. That's Valve for you.
I had no issues with this because at no point in either game did I ever feel that Aperture ever felt like a logical R&D facility. Reconfigurable test chambers made from panels is a cute but ultimately out-there idea, and so is putting an R&D facility deep in a freaking salt cave - which can actually stretch on for miles - and so is a mechanic like a portal gun. It's all very reliably out there.
Portal 2 is so out there, as a matter of fact, that it reverses the formula and this time the peek behind the curtain is
Oz. It's ridiculous, and it's meant to be. I could draw parallels to Half Life here, and indeed I should, because Aperture is for all intents and purposes fucking Black Mesa (the funnier, mad scientist-er version), given that according to the game lore they're competitors.
In the grand scheme of things, a complaint like 'suspension of disbelief' for a game like this just sounds like complaining for the sake of it.
june gloom on 12/5/2011 at 07:15
TTLG? Complaining for the sake of complaining?
noooooooooooooo...
