Reading Portal 2's Negative Reviews (So That You Don't Have To)
Vložit
- čas přidán 18. 05. 2024
- DISCORD: / discord
TWITTER: / htwogamedesign
SECOND CHANNEL: / @evilhtwo966
The review page on steam is generally a bit of a waste of time. All you have to do to know if a game is worth buying is look over *here*. Check that it says "overwhelmingly positive", and it's as easy as that.
Check those genre tags, too, if its in a genre you know you don't like then avoid it, but otherwise, this is all you need. Most of the positive reviews just tell you the game's amazing with no real broader explanation as to why its good. And most negative reviews are just some scorned child who learned about the review system yesterday
But sometimes it can be fun to see if there's anything worth your while to find in these reviews, especially the negative ones. So that's what I'm going to do today, the game of choice is portal 2, because it's a beloved game that i love and it has that all important overwhelmingly positive rating.
so let's have a look shall we... - Hry
30 seconds in, and I'm also pissed. Theo is pog champ
True dat homeslice
What is a theo
He really is that was just disrespect to mah man!
@@3meritetrinel50 yes
no
criticising a game because timing or controls make puzzles hard to solve is understandable, but criticising a game because the puzzles are too intellectually difficult is just embarrassing. especially portal 2 which has fairly simple and clearly explained puzzles all throughout
Yeah if you can’t figure out the campaign puzzles, you’re just not good at problem solving tbh
@@IAmNumber4000 especially when you look at community mods(portal stories mel hard mode and portal reloaded are good examples)
I thought the game is perfect and there is no negative review
@Guy Whose opinions will offend you well, then don't play battle royale games?
not a big fan of them either but it's kinda dumb to still keep throwing shit at them even though you've never liked them in the first place
what happened to the upgraded "Survive the Night" animation?????
you remember that part in the Stanley Parable where the narrators reads the negative reviews? (UNFUNNEH?) I'd like to see the same thing but with GLadOS reading them and actually threatening the reviewers' lives
" This human states thay my puzzles are "too simple". Hmm, you know what? I think he might be right.. I should add more turrets in the chambers. And maybe remove the portal gun. Do you think it would make the tests hard enough? This is a rhetorical question, by the way. In case you didn't realise."
LMAO SHE'D DEFINITELY DO THAT
" and maybe make a chamber where you do get the portal gun but there are no portal surfaces. "
@@kaysrandomchannel4618 nice pfp
Oh no we all remember what happened with the skip button
Honestly, in my opinion, the worst reviews are the negative ones that say something like "why are you reading the negative reviews??? go buy the game!" like bro you are actively contributing to the #1 thing that would make people NOT want to play the game. If you like the game leave a good review, dont leave a bad one that says its good.
Fax bro,ik these people are just trying to joke,but by making negative reviews,no matter what you say in that negative review,it will decrease the game rating.
@@jasekasebase it was a little bit fun at the first time but seeing them thousands of times makes it very annoying
To be fair, even with all those "bad" reviews, Portal 2 is still the most positively rated game on Steam, period, so it really doesn't hurt.
its just like the people who say " x likes and no comments? lemme fix that"
@@Rended_ In before this happens to you
As someone that got simulated sickness with Portal 2, I sadly didnt find a solution. But I still loved the game to bits but I had to play it through chunks of 30 minutes before taking a break, i had a ton of fun on those chunks but it felt discouraging, so I can totally understand the complains about the simulated sickness on Portal 2.
You're a dedicated gentleman sir. O7
Simulated sickness?
Never heard of that
@@dermond1792 he talks about this in the video
There is a trick, you just have to buy one of those speed passes for theme parks and then go to a very intense roallercoaster and just spend all day in that roallercoaster torturing yourself. That is how i cured myself of motion sickness, i just overstimulated it until the point that i need some serious shenanigans to get motion sickness, the downside is that you can never enjoy thrill rides again.
@@diablo.the.cheater Still no clue what simulation sickness is but, can’t you just do the same by spinning on a chair all day? So you don’t have to leave your house lol
I agree with that one about "how" vs "what" part
In Portal 2 there were some times I had no idea where I should go or what the objective was (especially in the areas outside test chambers)
While in the first game the objective was always crystal clear from the start
I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing as it can be seen as another layer to the puzzle, but it can also be annoying to some
Yeah I guess that's one way to interpret it. There's a few sections of having too find where to go for yourself, especially in chapter 6, but i personally enjoyed that
Yeah I interpreted it this way too - and it's a valid complaint if what you're interested in is trying to figure out *how* to get from A to B rather than *where* on earth B is. Definitely a fine thing to have in a game, but if it's not your cup of tea and you were in it for the "how?" rather than the "where to?", it can be a pretty important criticism.
Yeah, was gonna say this. the how vs. what point wasn't really stupid, it's a reasonable point, though I still think that Portal doesn't really suffer from this issue too much. In the end you know that what you have to do is get to the door, so upon entering any level, your first task is always to find the exit, that's your "what", once you did that, then you move directly to the "how" stage. There has been 1 or 2 levels where the exit wasn't obviously visible, that's true, but in those cases you just start scaling the level and looking for strange places where portals can be placed. The game introduces you to that idea as soon as the tutorial levels, but I agree that sometimes you can lose track of that during gameplay
I agree on that too. Especially towards the end of the game, i struggled to figure out where to go. Climbing towers and falling falling into toxic waste over and over again. Some of the puzzles were also pretty confusing, just randomly throwing new physics based mechanics into the mix you've not seen before. Especially in the co-op test chambers there's some puzzles that seem to have a pretty straight forward sollution which just barely doesn't work, with the actual sollution being pretty far fetched.
It still doesn't really take anything out of the game, but having your progress suddenly halted for a good while feels frustrating as the rest of the game flows so well
Came here looking for this. In the old facility, recently after discovering the blue gel, there is a section where I just couldn't for the life of me figure out where I was supposed t be trying to go. A firend had a similar problem and while watching them play I also couldn't help them because I had frgotten even though I had played the game one day prior. That's honestly me only critisism for the game other than the annoying loading screens. I love the game but this section was really disapointing.
I think what "You ask WHAT to do more than HOW to do it" was trying to say, was that *where to start* on a given test was slightly less obvious in the second one. I did find some chambers momentarily overwhelming to start because of it. But I also adore puzzle games, and found that aspect to make figuring it out even more gratifying.
Perhaps I harshly interpreted the comment, but you might be right. I don't really remember feeling overwhelmed by any chambers personally because even if I was completely stuck I at least knew that the solution somehow involved the mechanics that were obviously in the chamber (like a gel dropper means gel is the solution, etc)
@@htwo1 I agree with you there because your always given part of the solution and the challenge is to simply solve the other part to complete the challenge like a jigsaw puzzle. Its not some crazy math equation where you need to know calculus, geometry and differential equations to solve a physics question or something.
@@htwo1 It all depends on who's playing, and that barrier for entry is different for everybody. I watched my mom trying to play Portal and she was taking ages to solve the things I got extremely quickly, yknow? I had a harder time with getting started than you, somebody in these replies had a presumably harder time than me since they had to look up tutorials, and apparently that commenter had a hard time as well. Your personal skill at figuring out where to start, or at least in not getting frustrated, is sorta irrelevant to other people's experience /not mad, just want to point out
I think I've run into the "where to start" thing in Wheatley's chambers... Pretty much every time I replay the game?
They (or, at least, the one with the "hop out of a rising pillar and fall into a portal next to it" one) requires a kind of out of the box thinking that we're not trained to handle/think in by the rest of the game until it's thrown at you by the end. (And no, I don't mean general outside of box thinking ability, I mean "you're not primed by the game to interact with the game space in the way it teaches everything else so generally masterfully and thus I always end up trapped there and end up looking up a guide after ages of running around when I go back to that chamber in particular")
I often have times where I go wait that’s not what I’m supposed to do? Even after playing it multiple times cause of the lack of color coding in the second game compared to the first. In the first you see white and go "oh place a portal there" in the second game you see what looks like a white surface and go "wait that’s not a portable surface oh no wait it is just gotta get the angle right"
7:33 I honestly think this is an important thing to talk about with the portal games. Both these phrases are VERY different, literally being the difference between a good puzzle and a glorified hide and seek game with puzzle elements. And I think portal 2 does have an issue with this in parts, especially in old aperture, where sometimes it's not at all obvious where you're meant to go, so you look around for ages until you find the tiny white wall you're meant to portal to. The puzzles themselves are perfect, and completely on par if not better than those in the first game, but it's the stuff in between that is where this review comes from I reckon. Portal 2 is still in my top 3 favourite games and it's an absolute masterpiece by every metric, but I don't think it's right to disregard this as dumb semantics
Tride? What? I’m a huge fan of your channel, didn’t expect to see you on a portal 2 video
I was like cool... Wait TRIDE
tride dash
completely agree. I hated old aperture because finding that one portable surface isn't fun. The puzzles were great but needing to look for that one tiny surface is what made me use a walkthrough
I thought the same thing. I had a really tough time in old aperture, confused on what to do for the most part. Specifically, in the repulsion gel parts. Not the chambers themselves, but in between the chambers after you complete one, mostly on the catwalks. I probably spent the longest in the part where Johnson talked about asbestos. There were pointless portalable walls and the solution is so hidden. I had no idea where to go and was stuck there for like 30 minutes and had to look up a video only to discover i missed a tiny wall that's high up in the air.
Whoever thinks walking segments in Portal 2 are boring/unnecessary have clearly read the whole wiki about the game, it's enviroment, it's story and then couldn't experience it naturally in game.
Old Aperture is pure wonder and fascination to explore and look around.
And if there's dialog, I could have played a treadmill simulator for hours with that amazing writing.
The "what" argument is abusrd.
You only can ask "what am I supposed to do" when you don't know where's the exit and the points to unlock it.
Funniest thing is: THERE ARE LITERALLY PANELS DISPLAYING ALL PUZZLE PIECES at the start of every chamber!
Don't mind the fact that exit is a big door that's usually visible from the get go, or in case of larger levels, clear indicators where you need to go next, there are also the power dots lines going straight to it.
Pretty much every single P2 puzzle asks "how am I supposed to do it".
@@dr_birb Someone else commented this, but in some of the areas outside test chambers, especially in Old Aperture, yes, it can be hard to know what to do. There are a bunch of sections where the challenge is just finding a portal-able surface, instead of looking at the pieces in front of you and figuring out what to do with them.
Also, a video I've watched that was dedicated to the walking periods and how sometimes you spawn a little far from the objectives in videogames talked about how these sections give you time to rest, gather your focus and ready yourself. So if you look at it that way, it's not even just a spacer to check out the enviroment and the story it represents, it's a performance and mind booster too.
if i had even the remotest chance of being able to explore the old facility down at the bottom of that abandoned salt mine i would kick in the door of the nearest doctor, demand three of every vaccine known to man and beast, and head to the upper peninsula fucking yesterday
It seems people take games as lists of tasks rather than enjoyable experiences.
Portal 2 was far superior to 1 because its atmosphere was simply phenomenal.
I disagree on the replayability conversatiion.
1. Speedrunning is very niche and not many people enjoy it (myself included) it can seem 'purposeless' for many players, especially for a puzzle heavy game
2. Custom levels, as fun as it sounds, don't expand the game too much. A lot of them are really amateur, and having the will to search for good ones is only done by already great fans of the game, not the general audience.
Nonetheless great video. (also the portal thing game is really cool)
You might be right, but it's a whole lot better than a lot of puzzle games out there, where they don't even try and give you the replay value portal has
I'll take replaying Portal 2 perfection everytime over "playing" same online game that achieves "replayability" by addictive mechanics and fake "balancing" patches.
Also if you criticize linear story singleplayer game for being repetetive and with no replay value, that's on you. It's inherit to this type of games. And the "jokes get repetetive"? wow maybe because that's how reality works?
It's just blantantly wrong to criticize a game for something it doesn't want to be, something it doesn't need to be, someting it cannot be. Replayability is a trait, not a universal good thing, it can be useful in determining whether the game is worth the price, it can also be used as a marketing term for addictive.
Me and my friend found a few month ago a map called gelocity. Which is basically turning portal into race game with creative usage of points, portals, bridges and etc. portal have a lot of potential you just have to spend your time to make a good map or to find one and you will find a lot of funny and high-quality content
You are wrong about number 2- Finding good chambers is really easy. Especially with the sorting system and if you aren't a fan of the game, you probably wont even care about the level creator. If I am being honest, the level editor is the only thing that has kept me captivated on this game for so long, and quality of chambers can be much better, even if they are crap, if you look at it from a glass half-full perspective. Instead of looking at a amateur chamber as "this chamber is bad", think of it as "Atleast the creator tried", this can help a lot. Does not apply to troll maps, as most troll maps have 0 effort put into them.
If you want to know how to find better chambers, look to the right of the workshop and press "custom visuals" and "custom story" I believe they're called, this helps a lot in finding better chambers.
number 2 is only really true if you play ingame made levels and not use the external tools given to you to make levels. disregarding the mods such as portal story mell and stuff you get a lot of cool workshop levels that make their own story and sometimes even extend on the current game for example the old into the multiverse workshop levels or the office prank.
every single one of the first few reviews are by the exact same person on different accounts, there is no chance more than 1 person doesnt like portal 2 for the gameplay
There was one review that I left out that literally was just "puzzle games suck" so you'd be surprised
@@htwo1 smartest puzzle game hater makes a review
@@htwo1 you are lying, there is no way someone who doesn't like puzzle games bought a game called portal
@@guphord nah the smartest would just go "p"
A lot of those negative reviews were straight up satire
7:34 That is a completely valid point. There were a couple times where I spent way long than I should have just trying to figure out what I was even supposed to be doing and I had to look up at least two puzzles. It was enough to warrant a negative review, but that point does stand.
For me this applies to non-puzzle sections, especially in dark open areas. Sometimes i spended 30 minutes to find out where i suppose to even go
I find myself replaying portal every 2-3 years. By then i have forgotten the solutions to most puzzles and it helps me enjoy the game a lot more. Mostly returning for the atmosphere and the story progressions (including dialogue)
i do the exact same thing! it’s one of my favourite games of all time and pretty much the only one i can stand replaying.
Me too 👍😅
.
About every 3 years or so
.
.
Ive been wanting portal 3 and halflife 3 for Way too long now !
.
.
But sadly buying endless in game items, to win, became the preferred way to play for the next generation of gamers 🤦♂️
You should try a game with similar premise as Portal and your comment, it is called “The Entropy Centre”
I do agree with the last argument that the steam reviewer said. It wasn't exactly worded right though. A better way to word it is Portal 1 shows you the objective but doesn't tell you how to get there and Portal 2 doesn't even tell you the objective. I was so confused on where I would have to start a puzzle in Portal 2 and was a lot of the time confused on what the objective was. In the first one, it was clear what the objective was, you just had to figure out HOW to reach the objective
Check your darn surroundings and look for where it could the right solution. Really not that difficult you do not need your gand held.
I'm not sure what you're talking about did you actually finish both games? I did countless of times. Portal 1 has 2 main sections: The testing room phase and the escape phase. During the testing room phase it's true that there's always a main goal which is to "proceed into the chamber lock" which gets mentioned a gazillion times by glados. Most of the test chambers were quite linear, though not all of them. If you play for the first time some of the later chambers it's not that clear what the objective is besides "proceeding". Even Portal 1 has a couple of chambers where it takes some time until you figure out the (sub) objectives you have to complete and in which order.
While it's true that you had been guided by glados during the first phase, in the second phase, during the escape phase, the objective is not clear at all and it starts right at the moment when you're "supposed to be baked". From that point on there is no clear objective. You have to figure out your way (through the more or less linear levels) yourself.
Portal 2 is no different in that regard. Yes, it has way larger and slightly more confusing maps, but the maps are still linear. I don't quite see the big semantic difference that you try to spin here. During the testing chamber phase in Portal2 you still have the same goals as in P1, getting to the chamber lock which is always highlighted / marked / indicated. P2 has a lot more story which also helps as a guide what to do next outside the testing chambers. There's much more thought on the whole environment compared to P1. Yes, because it's larger it's much easier to get lost or loosing track where to go next, but it happens in P1 as well. I've seen people playing P1 for the first time and a lot get stuck in the piston room where you have to shoot a portal through the fence at the very top. A lot get stuck there because it's not clear where to go. You have to figure out that yourself. Also just the next section ahead where you jump down onto that pipe. A lot get suck there as well as they think that must be the wrong way as they don't see how they may proceed down there. So the objective is not really that clear besides "to proceed" which is kinda obvious for any game.
@@Bunny99s never played the frist one but i kind of agree with omni here , don't get me wrong the game its amazing and it does a fantastic job on setting atmosphere and telling u the story trough the use of the environment and while i enjoy that, there were parts were i was confused were even to go, and i get it, it makes sense the character felss just as lost and it does set the atmosfere well but i still don't enjoy running back and forward in search of a wall were i can portal.
spoilers
( most of this criticism goes to the part of the game after Glados turns to a potato and we fall)
@@Bunny99s I've finished both games multiple times and I can outright tell you that there are multiple points in the game where the first step of the puzzle takes forever to figure out/remember because you can't even tell where the way forward is, or it seems impossible to reach.
Most of these are in Old Aperture.
@@pleasegoawaydude Isn't that kind of the point, part of the environmental storytelling? You're no longer in a controlled environment where the right path has already been mapped out in advance. You've gone off the rails and have to think for yourself. The idea that you might be lost forever is part of the experience.
I agree with the "what i am supposed to do instead of the how im supposed to do it" review, if you got too used to the sterile, intuitive and formal test chambers, going into the messy,colossal and dark test tracks/maintenance rooms can make you feel lost.
I think when it comes to replayability, its the characters and story that make me wanna replay it.
Because I adore the characters in portal 2, I replay the games just to see the characters, to hear their lines, the hear GLaDOS' beautifully sad speech at the end, cave johnsons lemon rant being both hilarious and sad if you really look into it.
The characters and the story they bring you through is what really makes me want to replay the game over and over.
I agree with you. Waking up in this peacful-like cage, suddenly being burst into chaos, meeting a little goofball - and pretty soon a quite terryfying, almost godly being. THe momeny when Glados wakes up still makes me a little bit nervous.
Exactly. And I try to play it a few years apart so I don't exactly remember how every level is done. I obviously do the puzzles faster but at least there are still some moments where I have to stop and think what to do
Portal 2 is my most frequently replayed game for these exact reasons.
I love Portal 2, The atmosphere in the game is amazing, The long fall or tube travel shows you how insanely big this place is and the cutscenes brings more depth to the story behind it. Even if this is a puzzle game I regularly comes back to play it just to experience the atmosphere of the game and to open up the huge seals and to enter forbidden closed areas without a second thought. it´s a masterpiece
One thing that makes puzzle games more replay able is that you forget most of the solutions after a couple of years
3:00 Nobody knows? Everyone knows.
Inside your eardrums are some fluid that helps you orient your body movements. That's how you usually know if you're moving.
So, seeing you "move" without you actually moving causes discomfort and confusion
I didn't know. Cool!
Ah, so that's why Portal 2 is especially good at causing motion sickness: emancipation grids can emancipate the "ear tubes inside your head", which would certainly mess up your sense of balance.
The "what am I supposed to do" is fair, in my opinion. In some chambers, especially Old Aperture, you really have to be observant to find out where the chamber's exit is; which definitely isn't a super engaging sort of gameplay, if you don't happen to stumble across it quickly.
I didn't mind it, really made me appreaciate the "sealed mineshaft" vibe
7:39 Probably referring to the occasional moments in the game where your goal is ambiguous. Portal 1 was almost entirely "get through the door" whereas Portal 2 tries to guide the player more subtly through environments with less straightforward destinations. I was certainly stuck a few times on my first play though of Portal 2, and while I wouldn't say that warrants a negative review I can see where they are coming from.
5:02 this level is the embodiment of this statement. I love this game(s) so much, yet this level was so hard for me on my first play through. Destroying that turret is *so* satisfying...
*_“I hate it because I forced myself to play a game that doesn’t cater to my preferred playstyle and you all shouldn’t play it either.”_*
In a nutshell, I guess.
I agree. Stephen merchant is a national treasure!
2:30
Likely this is because of the motion blur in Portal 2. You had to lower shader settings or add something to the launch options to disable it, which is not what somebody would normally think of. I've read that motion blur causes motion sickness. In Portal 1 you had a seperate option to disable it. The review also mentioned he didn't have motion sickness in Portal 1, and this is probably why.
:O oh that's interesting! I personally has less motion sickness in Portal 2 than Portal 1. So we can enable motion blur in Portal 1?
@@mafirasyaharani7836 Had more motion sickness in 1 than 2 as well, which I believe is due to the rotation being reset more quickly in Portal 2 (when you're flung upside down, it takes a long while for your rotation to become "feet down head up" again in the 1st game, whereas that transition is extremely rapid in the 2nd game, which makes rooms where you jump out of portals on the ground repeatedly kind of a mess in the first game)
7:27 I think that makes perfect sense, there were quite a few spots in portal where I spent 10 minutes trying to figure out what goal even was, in contrast there were levels I really enjoyed when I had a clear goal but had to figure out how to get there, here are example of both
The first situation pops up in the sections shortly after Wheatley’s betrayal, in the lower ruined areas of aperture. There are times where you get up a platform and there’s no indication of where to go next, alternatively, there are so many areas that might be important but you have no way to tell, I’ve spent an embarrassing amount of time trying to time the perfect jump to get to a section of railing only to find out that it goes nowhere.
The second situation happen more often in the testing chambers, you walk in, There’s a big room, some turrets, buttons, cubes, and at the very top right corner, the exit. You know where you need to go, but how you get there is left for you to figure out
I’d argue that the second scenario is more enjoyable, as the nature of a puzzle game is to solve a puzzle, rather than to find out what the puzzle Is before you can even start to think about coming up with a solution
I get the "what am I supposed to do" a bit. Recently been replaying portal 2 on my switch and I know there was at least one or two test chambers right before wheatley reunites with you where the room feels way too big and so at first you are wandering around trying to figure out what mechanics you have to use and where you need to go as the room is just a bit too big.
7:29 - I actually slightly agree with the review here. In portal 1, the objective of each room is clear, you just have to figure out what to do to accomplish that objective; which is great on a game design standpoint (a simple example of this would be both the first laser and energy pellet rooms having a clear platform infront of the door. That is the what you are supposed to do, while you must figure out the how you do it, or the pellets, in order to achieve what you are supposed to do). Portal 2, however, is much more difficult to figure out the end objective of the room, and therefore makes you question the area you have to go to, the setups you must make, etc. in order to escape the room. Although more time is spent figuring out what the objective is, the puzzles required to make the setups or go where you are supposed to go are easier (in some areas) than portal 1. I can see where this guy is coming from, and although do not fully agree with the review, agree with it slightly enough to understand it.
Hm a lot of people seem to agree to that. But isn't that for the better? In portal 2, test chambers are easy, but yes old aperture can be tough to figure out. But that's exactly the point! We're no longer in a testing chamber that is designed specifically to have a logical solution. No, we're in an abandoned underground facility which we don't know how to exit or where to go. Isn't it more immersive that way? You truly feel lost, and puzzles are more fun when you add that additional question "where am I even supposed to go?". I just don't see why people would like all of the puzzles to be as simple as those in portal 1, especially when these "harder" ones add to the story and the atmosphere.
@@stefanmladenovic5583 I've never completed portal 2 and these fake "wandering sections" are a big part of that. There's always only one solution that very convinently exists in like 10 rooms in a row, so the the main feeling i got was being extremely railroaded, because there always was only one solution that was relatively obvious, so it felt like i was given puzzles for children and was expected to feel excited by long jumps barely reaching to the next door, but since solution was obvious it was also obvious that every jump was enginered for me to barely make it. Maybe if there was more variety to the fake 'margin of error' or these levels were more interspersed throughout whole playthrough it would be exciting, but as it was and with no dialogue (why is all the banter and plot is only in the enjoyable parts and not the boring ones?) it really exhausted me. The fact that outside of testing chambers was really ugly with no variety in enviroment didn't help.
And then began the hardest part of the game so far, still with no dialogue, even though i felt that i deserved at least a little bit of it for walking through the BORING part. Also it was really hard -- I got stuck on the part where i think you were supposed to accelerate and then fly up the elevator shaft -- and I didn't understand what i need to do even with the walkthrough. By that point I was so exhausted by the boring levels that i wasn't excited for the hard ones and just wanted to see the conclusion to the story. Also it still was really ugly, so it felt like I tried to get out of the bottom for nothing
It probably also didn't help that first time playing i continued not mine playthrough, so i begun in that boring section.
Sorry for mistakes, english is not my first language
8:20 so he is actually saying it's annoying to find the exit of a puzzle, where he has to go or what features do I have to use in this certain area. He'd rather have these things to be clear from the start and then figure out how and in which combination he applies those features. In my mind it's actually a very valid complaint.
If you don't know where to go, then you're just unable to begin the puzzle in the first place so to say.
I know what he is talking about, I myself had that feeling little bit with portal 2. I actually kinda liked that at some areas but I totally see how one would be annoyed by it. I guess he is talking about the areas outside of the testing rooms
regarding 8:24 the old apperture levels have a habit of of being less clear on where you are supposed to go. In portal 1, the chambers each have a door that requires certain things to unlock, people complained about the "spot the white wall" for a reason.
To add onto the replay value bit: Portal 2 also has a boatload of easter eggs and secrets, new dialogue, entire rooms to discover with new bits of lore, or just trapping yourself in certain test chambers. I've played the game since it came out and I'm still finding new secrets to this day I haven't discovered. So that is one huge aspect that can give replayability.
Ngl, I kinda get the "what am I supposed to do". But I would rephrase it to "where am I supposed to go". The old facility is by far the worst part of the game because the amount of time someone can take just to figure out where the objective is, which detracts the satisfaction of figuring out how to get there.
I would have to unfortunately agree with this
The first time i played the old facility and got to that part where you have use the repulsion gel to bounce on the walls to the other side
I didn't know what I was suppoused to do and thought j had to go down and use it on the pillars
I only got stuck on one puzzle in all of portal 1 and 2. That was the one where Wheatly starts the level by listening to baroque music which he calls "classical". I died too many times on that level, and my old computer was very slow, so each death took an excruciating time to reload. Idk, that was the only one
Portal is one of my favourite games franchises. It's familiar, and I play it when I'm bored. Co-op mode is fun also a fun and overlooked feature.
4:11 Why are looking at the negative reviews? This is a negative review telling you to buy the game.
Oh god i agree sooo much on the "very dark" critisism. Turned the brightness to the max in the options and it was still hard for me to see stuff. Had to implement a command console and write up the code every time i booted up the game. Stuff was finally visible for me, but for that, shadows were lacking. :[
autoexec:
It does give the game a cool atmosphere, but also hard to see stuff.
I wished more than a hand full of people had found my portal 2 chambers on the community page, but I think the game was already strongly declining when I bought it.
Or I had just bad luck with my visibility. Or maybe it's because I couldn't talk english yet back then and no one could read my stuff and got instantly uninterested. Who knows.
portal 2 workshop has always been oversaturated, most maps are ignored, dont take it personally
For me, it does still have replay value.
Because there are a lot of puzzles and it takes a while to beat, It's a game I don't revisit too often (similar to a lot of long games) but when I do revisit it, I forget the puzzle solutions and just have a blast playing the game again.
The writing and the atmosphere is also another reason I love revisiting the game.
2:49: "It mimicks a perspective that a person might actually have"
Ah yes "might", I sure do love living in 3rd person
??? You don't see in 3rd person?
Am I the weird one???
@@wta1518 you don't, the joke is that he said "might" as if there was any other option but first person irl
@@absolutelynot.3739 Yes, I was joking.
@@wta1518 oh my bad
10:23
When I woke up I didn’t expect to see Darth Maul spinning in TF2
You've clearly not been playing enough 2022 tf2 jump maps!!!
6:46
I can find this partially understandable as the family computer in the living room has a screen that reflects a lot, making it hard to see in darker parts of the game, but I think I do recall brightness being a setting in the PC version
I think what's actually happening is the overdark bug. It affects both Portal 2 and Black Mesa (and probably other Source games, but I didn't notice it). You can solve it by typing "mat_tonemapping_occlusion_use_stencil 1" (without the quotes) into the console.
7:41 that was my biggest concern with the game. Maybe it's not worded very well, but I spent a lot of time just looking for the portal-able surfaces in Portal 2. It wasn't a problem-solving feeling it was "where's waldo." It wasn't: "how do I use the interesting game mechanics?" it was: "Where tf does my portal go?" with no thinking beyond that.
This problem was brought up in the dev commentary as a concern they had both in portal 1 and 2. The devs talk about it as a lack of visual clarity. This was an intentional risk they took when they made the portal 2 more story driven and more cluttered. I think it paid off, I want more story in games and portal 2 came through on that, but I think it's a very reasonable concern about the game, and if you were looking for a pure puzzle game portal 1 does a much better job.
With the "what/how am I supposed to do" complaint I kind of understand what they mean. For example with the older areas you might walk into a section and see what you have at your disposal, but you can't immediately see the exit/goal. If you can't tell where you're supposed to go, you don't wonder things like "how am I supposed to get the gel over there" (how am I supposed to do that), you wonder "where the hell am I going" (what am I supposed to do)
4:55 Isn't... Isn't that the whole point??? To get you thinking "How do i solve this" and "What should i do" so you have a difficult puzzle experience that you can use walkthroughs if you really get stuck
some people really dislike any obstacles and will actively hate on anything that makes them think. i recommended one of my favorite games of all time to a friend, and they got mad at me, started criticizing every part of it and called me stupid for liking it because it was too hard for them.
That's not what they were saying, and they actually had a very valid point. Their comparison was to Portal 1, which up until the very final moments of the game gave you a good idea of where you need to go, but let the player figure out how to get there. By the time things became more ambiguous they had already taught you everything you needed to handle the less structured ending.
Portal 2 sometimes fails in that regard, as not only are the less structured areas much bigger and more difficult to navigate, they're still in the stage of the game where they're teaching the player.
The puzzles aren't too hard, the game just stops giving you proper goals as early as halfway through the game, in a much longer game than its predecessor. It leaves you to figure out where you're supposed to go before you even get a chance to engage with the real puzzle of how to get there.
I have similar complaints, and feel that the first Portal is superior in its design. That's not to say Portal 2 is bad, but it wasn't designed as well as I expect Valve's games to be. They're masters of the craft, and I highly recommend replaying their games with developer commentary on to better understand. (There's commentary track options for all their games starting with HL2 iirc, and they give great insight into their thoughts on game design.)
Also you should never need a walkthrough to figure out what you're supposed to do. If your game is so unclear that players need to look elsewhere to find where they're even supposed to go, you've screwed up. Valve knows that AND knows how to avoid it without dumbing down their games. Portal 2 is a fantastic game, but it's not flawless.
2:10 It's so nice to see that Paulie got back on his feet after being fired from Dunkey.
So, what is he, a janitor now?
I tend to replay both Portal games every year or two, they are some of my favourite games. I like adding twists every once in a while, like playing Portal with dev commentary and finding out they knew about a speedrun strategy during developpement and using said strategy the next year. I love the atmosphere and story and how they managed to give enough time between dialog triggers to let a normal player hear everything, not feel like you have to wait that every bit of dialog must stop you from moving.
But yeah, that under Aperture part of Portal 2 is always something I dread, keep looking for the next place to portal to to advance the masterpiece story, it gets old quick, not something I enjoy much.
I’ve replayed both Portal games multiple times because I enjoy the story and characters, but also because I like trying to remember the solutions. Plus, I was trying to speed run 2 for a while there, but only for my own enjoyment, not competitively.
i actually personally kinda agree with the "what" over "how" in about half of the game, specially in the co-op campaign. while some levels are fun to explore mechanically or have some clever solutions, a lot of the times where you're stuck on a level for 10 to 30 minutes, it's all because you overlook a somewhat hidden element that you're supposed to use to progress. a roof slope somewhere on the top of a wall you're not likely to see, or a portalable wall that blends in with the background where it feels like you're unlikely to see. but while that isn't the majority of the game, it has its moments where enough in a row shows up to be noticeable.
8:00 I actually agree tho, on my first playtrough I would get stuck so much cause I didn't even know where to go because sometimes the exits were like extremely hidden.
Just wanted to say, I've watched a couple of these videos from you now, and I really appreciate how you actually dig into criticisms that *are* valid. Lots of similar videos from other creators call ALL the negative reviews stupid, even when they do make valid points.
I do understand what they mean by the what/how issue. I do recall on several occasions important to having to look around and work out what the next step was supposed to be, where I was supposed to go, particularly outside the test Chambers. Never had that confusion in the original portal it was always clear where the next goal was.
Legit very informative about various aspects of game design. I'm compelled to sub
did you do it
did you sub
Everyone who dislikes this game has a lack of parents.
soft disagree with the "what to do/how to do" assessment. there were interstitial sections in the mines that were outside of normal puzzle rooms that occasionally didn't communicate very effectively what was needed to progress. but otherwise yeah saying the puzzles themselves were too hard isn't the type of criticism folks may think it is
Agreed. In a select few moments, the sections you needed to aim for were so well-hidden that you had to look really closely to even spot them.
"nobody knows why (motion sickness) happens"
Yes it's a sort of mystery of the 21st century
There were a few times where I had a lot of trouble finding out the solution to a puzzle on my own, but these examples are very few, and when I looked up a walkthrough, I ended up figuring it out without even watching the whole puzzle, something as simple as where the other person aims the camera or places a portal can be the action that flips the switch in my mind.
2:41
The first time I played Half-Life, it made me so ill it took me an hour of rest in the dark with my eyes squeezed shut. Worst headache ever.
Weirdly enough, my eyes learnt to adapt and kinda block out the information when I'm spinning around, even for a split second. I don't get it, but it does it.
Motion sickness is real with the portal series. I noticed it would only happen to me in two scenarios. When I was repeating the same part of a puzzle multiple times and when I was running around in circles not knowing the solution. Otherwise when there is progression, the motion sickness subsides.
The "what am I supposed to do" vs "how am I supposed to do it" is actually a good distinction, one that is also made in my intro to game design course. In my course, they are called scavenger hunts and planning problems respectively. Almost all of Portal 1's puzzles are entirely planning problems, whereas a lot of Portal 2's puzzles have some small scavanger hunt aspects, like not being able to see the portion of a puzzle that is behind a wall, or not knowing exactly what a certain floor or interactable button will do. It's why some puzzle game players enjoy Zelda puzzles and other people don't: Zelda puzzles are usually scavenger hunts, and some people just don't like scavenger hunt puzzles.
Hey Htwo, the "what am I supposed to do" instead of "how am I supposed to do" does have some validity. The cave johnson part of the game is a lot less clear with directions and I've seen many youtubers even getting lost. They know the mechanics, sure, but what are you supposed to do with them when you can't find the end goal? Of course, it's not that bad an issue but I do feel like you only interpreted that what from the question in one way, that way being correlated with the mechanics of the game and not the environment itself.
1:06 dying of laughter
Good vid! Love your editing style and structure, thought I got a couple of things to say which might mirror what some other people have been saying.
For one I agree that if someone doesn't enjoy their games to be story driven, then that's indeed fair enough, though you went on to say how it's more of a question of "Whether you like more story driven games, or whether you don't." and that it's "Not really about the walking sections."
I don't entirely agree with this. While I personally love Valve's brand of storytelling and think their execution of it is done very well, I imagine that's not for everyone, even for people who enjoy story driven games.
I imagine there's people out there that enjoy getting the break of a proper cutscene, being able to take their hands of their keyboard or controller for a bit before continuing the game, getting a bit more of a movie experience mixed in between gameplay.
Kind of like how many people dislike Quentin Tarantino's style of storytelling (Including myself), it probably just doesn't click for some people, but I don't think that means it becomes a question of if they like things story driven or not, they may just not care for walking through a level being expected to just listen to a character talk or look at the scenery, in which case I think it still is about the walking sections.
Haha, and yeah, I have no idea what the person meant by "What am I supposed to do?" vs "How am I supposed to do it?", those pretty much mean the same thing.
And as Poupou already pointed out (more efficiently than I probably would've xD) I don't think a Speedrunning community and Custom levels are replacements for pure replayability, since speedrunning communities exist for basically every game nowadays, including other puzzle games, so Portal 2 isn't exactly unique in that avenue of replay-value (However it is nice they included tools within the game itself for those who wish to do so).
And for custom levels, I believe user created content can do wonders for replay-value, however I don't think it's fair to rate the game off things that the audience made, for a couple of reasons.
1: User-created content can vary wildly in quality, some games have terrible user-created content, while others have extremely dedicated modders behind them, and while this has brought us games that are almost defined by their mods (Minecraft, FNF and Fallout: NV to name a few), I still don't think those games should be rated based on the mods others have created for them. (Though I completely understand accounting whether or not the game is a good base for modding as a plus.)
2: Some people may just not have access to the modding scene.
While yes in this specific instance, the reviewer was talking about the PC version, which many mods and custom levels come from the workshop, players on console don't have any of this.
Also, some users may have bad or temporary access to the internet, meaning downloading maps may be difficult.
But I still enjoyed the video! 👍
I do not own Portal 2 but I tried to play the co-op campaign with a friend of mine using the steam link where he streams the game and I play on controller but it didn’t let me look around idk if anyone else encountered this issue if they have a fix can you please tell me
Great video, I really like your editing style! I've spoken with others and it seems to me that all the source games have the motion sickness issue in general. I've heard some people say that playing in a well lit room helps with it a lot as well.
Yeah, Valve's games (and many other first-person perspective games) have a nasty case of too-low default FoV, which can be a problem for people with motion sickness. It's easy, or at least not super hard, to change the FoV in most PC games, but not everyone knows that can help with motion sickness, or doesn't know what value they should set it to that will help (90 FoV is a good place to start, then adjust from there til it's most comfortable). I don't even get motion sick, but playing at anything less than 80 feels claustrophobic.
(Disabling some post-processing effects can help a lot as well, particularly motion blur.)
I do remember, every time I played Portal 2, having issues with how dark everything seemed. This turned out to be more of an issue with the lighting in the room, not the game itself.
7:31 i had that question in the first game too, i spent multiple minutes observing the test results without my imput aka where boxes would fly and what buttons would do
and then i'd start altering the area with portals but it also gave me the feeling of actual input (and an occasional walkthrough in some areas but dont judge me!)
What I will say is that a fair lot of time in my first playthrough was finding out where to go. I would wander around sometimes wondering what to do with the moondust gel from the vent, and I didn't stop to think of doing an amogus.
with the replay thing i would like to add an addition. you can aswell use the hammer editor to add more indept custom levels aswell as use things from older portal games given you have the textures aswell as anything else the hammer editor has to give.
I replayed this game dozens of times but I can't get bored. I think it's like my confort game? I just play it even though I always know exaclty what to do and get happy nevertheless.
About the motion sickness: I think I've heard at some point that the main reason you're getting sick is because your brain receives information that doesn't match up. Your eyes are telling you you're moving around and turning in all kinds of directions, while your sense of balance is telling you that you aren't in movement. I get motion sick with certain vr games and simulators, and most of the time just backing up from the screen to see more of the real world, to get rid of that contrast in information, helps a lot. Also making the screen smaller if you can't really back up more. Uninformed opinion as well, but to me that adds up.
The older aperture levels with the gel sometimes towards the end make me feel like how math makes me feel, like I've already proven I can do this I don't need to do it more than a few times
This is not what I expected, but it's interesting. Wasn't expecting you to actually engage with the reviews!
0:32 thank you
7:40 Ouch. Those "Semantics" are the core philosophies behind 2 entirely different schools of puzzle design that tickle entirely different sets of fancies, not everyone fancies both. Your favoritest game ever Celeste is very much in the former category, your goal is explained and the path forward is always visible, it's all about your execution. Almost all of Portal 1 (ignoring the tutorial chambers), half of Portal 2, and Super Meat Boy also fall into this category (it's a rarely served niche). Games like Myst, Talon Principle, the entire point-n-click genre, all jigsaw puzzles, and the other half of Portal 2 occupies the latter, where figuring out the path forward is the primary focus, and execution is effortless (this niche is almost over-served). When Wheatly is directing the story, Portal 2 shifts into the latter category, where finding your route forward is itself the puzzle, not your ability to execute on the route, which is probably what actually annoyed them.
3:45 you explained why this worked in your first suggestion. You can see more so stuff moves less when you look around
As someone who played the multiplayer mode before getting into halfway into the game. I would say portal 2 is huge, really funny, and fun to see how to do puzzles. But after playing portal 1 over and over, I have needed to wonder where to go and where I need to be looking and was pretty much carried by my friend in the later half of the levels.
I love how the last reviewer felt the need to censor "woman". As if it's a swear word or... ohh, that's totally what they think, isn't it.
The Risk of Rain music at the end is beautiful
7:36 I agree here, they are saying they can't see the goal, so they are not sure what to do to get to it
The unnecessary censorships on British and Woman though...
1:46 why did they censor british?
Bri*ish 🤮
He's a child
Great video! If there’s anyone out there who hasn’t tried out Portal Stories: Mel, it’s basically the closest thing we’re going to get to Portal 3. It’s a free mod for Portal 2 on Steam, and it follows the originally cut character from the game, Mel. The puzzles, (especially in the advanced chambers version, which I recommend), I believe are harder than Portal 2, and it makes each chamber very satisfying to complete. Very well made mod with some amazing music to go along with it.
I kinda have to agree bc sometimes in portal it's hard to figure out where to go or shoot a portal, and I had to look up a walkthrough many times through out the game
The comment about "how an I supposed to do it" and what am I supposed to do" I actually get. In portal 1, in every room you pretty much know exactly what needs to happen, you just need to figure it out. But portal 2, even in some of the earlier maps but especially the later maps, you almost have no clue what's even supposed to happen in order for the puzzle to be solved let alone figuring out how to do it. I personally don't think puzzles should be like that. I don't want to sit there and try to figure out what is even happening for 20 minutes and then figuring out how to do it. Not that it's necessarily a bad thing, some people prefer this. But I understand that reviewers side completely. When I first played the game, I spent multiple sittings on 1 test chamber a couple times through out the playthrough.
I actually see the "How am I supposed to do it" thing. There where rooms wich took me hours of trying with no success. I had no idea what to do and was just annoyed at some point. It of course is statisfying if you find the solution, but some rooms are just so confusing that you just give up at some point and Google the solution.
I stuck at some points with gels for a few days. But when i finally got it i felt like an idiot for not seeing it instantly. Also i finished coop before main.
just started your video and let me just say, you are the last person i expected to swear and i'm all here for it
I would argue for a third reason Portal 2 is more replayable than a lot of puzzle games- the story. Even though I vaguely remember a lot of puzzle solutions, I still enjoy replaying Portal 2 in the same way I enjoy rewatching my favorite movies.
I don’t get motion sickness from games but I do get the feeling of freefall in my stomach whenever I fall from great heights so I absolutely can understand how much it’s affecting these people
me too i feel that
What's the music used at the beginning of the video? I've been trying to figure it out and its killing me!
A Hat In Time Rift Music :)
@@htwo1 Thank you so much! I knew I heard it from a game but couldnt remember where!
6:45 i had this problem because i was playing in the middle of the day without curtains so the sun keeps reflecting the screen and i just see myself
I wonder what Glados would write if she wrote a review for this game.
She would probably say that it needs more deadly tests.
"Overwhelmingly Positive" is sadly not a perfect indicator either.
Look at "No Time" to see a great example of that.
Another game that used to be good is pony island. The game is not good at all compared to modern meta games.
i experienced motion sickness during in the first game where i was playing it in a laptop, sitting in front of it so closely for like 4 hours straight. i took a couple weeks break then i tried playing the sequel on a tv with a controller, sitting on my bed and few meters away from the screen, i experienced no issues. so glad i made that decision, it improved the gameplay for me :P
3:34 I think it has to do with how when the camera is more zoomed in, smaller rotations look larger. As you zoom out, the angles get smaller, and move slower. The more zoomed in the camera is, the more disorienting movement is.
I always at least check the negative reviews. Gh positive ones mostly just repeat what the last person said but the negative ones at least lets you know what's plagueing the game.
they should have listened to wheatley when he said to "kill yourself"
I have very minor motion sickness, which leads to me being okay with games like Portal 2, but I find that any game, no matter what genre, can make me sick if it has built-in motion blur. To add to the list of tips for making games more palatable for someone with motion sickness, try turning off motion blur! I genuinely don't remember if Portal 2 has it on by default or not (or if it even has it to begin with) since it's the first thing I turn off in any game I play, but I figured it was worth mentioning.
What is the song used in the beginning? I feel like i should know where it's from but i dont!
Rift music from A Hat in Time
@@htwo1 thanks!!!
Portal 2 was an amazing game i got so sad when wheatley became evil