First one who replies, get's a copy of Portal for free. WON!

[CABAListic]

Agree with you, Portal and Portal 2 are excellent games, but once you figured out what you can do with each of the game mechanics, then the games are relatively short. Of course, it's not an easy job designing good riddles, so in this case it might be preferable they went for quality over quantity

I guess the greates weakness of Portal (2) is that its replayability value is very low. I did play Portal 1 twice, but the second time was just for fun; I still remembered the solutions, so there's little new to be found. I could imagine that this is particularly hurtful for coop play in Portal 2, because once you completed them, there is probably little motivation to play them again.

I wonder if it were possible to create a decent random level generator (perhaps for Portal 3). Not, of course, to replace the excellent manually crafted campaign levels, but just to get a couple of minutes of fun out of the game every now and then. As long as they were "good enough", this could significantly increase the long-term value of the game, particularly in coop.

[betajaen]

The last game I played was Dragons Age II, and I thoroughly enjoyed that. I also play Minecraft frequently, so my palette of games is quite low, but this is almost* game of the year for me. Certainly better than Valve's previous games of L4D2 and L4D, even the Half-Life 2 episode packs, and on almost par with Half-Life 2. Which in all of those games, I have played to death.

The only thing I'm a bit disappointed about is the extra hard levels, and challenges that Portal 1 has. But I suspect like Valve did with Team Fortress 2 is to continue making free extra levels, and possibly include well known community content. They already have a store setup, so it would make sense for them to continue developing the game, after it has been released; possibly with different game modes or even multiplayer games with portals.

I've yet to play co-op+, so I haven't officially finished the game. But I was very satisfied with the story played out in single player. Like in Dragons Age II, games are becoming more well written and movie-like, and I don't think that's a bad thing.

*Skyrim is coming out later this year.
+My sister's copy of Portal 2 is apparently being delivered by a team of slow moving snails.

[mkultra333]

Possibly I've been spoiled by L4D, L4D2 and especially TF2. My expectations for replay value have been set too high. I'm on 700 hours of TF2. 700 hours for a $20 investment isn't bad.

Took me about 20 hours to do Dead Space 2 single player. Cost $70 and I'm halfway through replaying it on more difficult modes, plus I've had a bit of multiplayer fun with it, so I was pretty satisfied.

Portal 2 took me about 10 to 12 hours, and I paid $50, so I was hoping for a little more. I'm not knocking it, it's top quality, original stuff, but perhaps overpriced. One thing that makes additional content tricky is that the pleasure isn't just in the puzzles, it's in the atmosphere, storyline and characters. I'd say it's 50/50 really. So DLC will need to be more than just new puzzles if it's to be up to the standard of the game.

[Kojack]

I haven't finished it yet (don't really have time to play until friday. I'm up to the repulsion gel stuff) but so far I'm finding the test chamber maps a bit too simplistic and I'm more interested in the exploring aspect. Getting to see the "behind the scenes" of aperture science is the coolest bit (plus the great dialog), but I do tend to prefer exploring games rather than rushing to level up or finish them. Unfortunately there's very little real exploring to do, everything is linear and mostly non interactive.
I've spent longer in it than portal 1, so that's cool, but I also haven't seen any levels as hard as some of the later portal 1 bits. Most test chambers only have a few valid portal positions anyway, so it's hard not to know (or just guess) where to spawn them.

I'd love to have a System Shock 2 mod which replaced Shodan's voice with Glados.

Witcher 2 is due in under 4 weeks, that's going to take up a lot of my time.

[CABAListic]

Witcher 2 is due in under 4 weeks, that's going to take up a lot of my time.

Which, I hope, you are getting from gog.com

[lingfors]

I haven't finished it yet (don't really have time to play until friday. I'm up to the repulsion gel stuff) but so far I'm finding the test chamber maps a bit too simplistic and I'm more interested in the exploring aspect. Getting to see the "behind the scenes" of aperture science is the coolest bit (plus the great dialog), but I do tend to prefer exploring games rather than rushing to level up or finish them. Unfortunately there's very little real exploring to do, everything is linear and mostly non interactive.
I've spent longer in it than portal 1, so that's cool, but I also haven't seen any levels as hard as some of the later portal 1 bits. Most test chambers only have a few valid portal positions anyway, so it's hard not to know (or just guess) where to spawn them.

I'd love to have a System Shock 2 mod which replaced Shodan's voice with Glados.

Witcher 2 is due in under 4 weeks, that's going to take up a lot of my time.

Don't worry, some test chambers later in the game is a bit harder to solve...

I also might have a Portal game to give away...

[Kojack]

Which, I hope, you are getting from gog.com

Of course.
Yay for the only online store with no Witcher 2 drm. Also both GOG and Witcher 2 are owned by CD Projekt.

I'm also thinking of looking for the books and tv series. Although I'm prepared for disappointment. I got the book and movie of Stalker, while the Book (Roadside Picnic) is as cool as the game, the movie is incredibly disappointing. They spend half the movie walking through a field throwing a bolt to find anomalies, but never find any! No mutants, nothing! It's like playing Stalker with all AI and scripting turned off.

Although the collectors edition of Witcher 2 is insane. Art book, game dvd, making of dvd, sound track cd, poker dice with bag, set of playing cards (54 piece with in game graphics), stickers, game world map, minecraft looking papercraft plans for 3 characters, collectors box, metal coin, imitation marble head sculpture of Geralt, playing guide book for dice poker, special in game items, exclusive dlc. But it does cost $130us, compared to $44 for the online version. But... Geralt head and dice poker!

[betajaen]

I can't decide to get Witcher 2.

Believe it or not, but I have two copies of Witcher 1. A normal boxed DVD version when it come out, and a copy on steam which I bought when it was on special (I like having my games on steam), but I've never gotten past the first chapter with those dogs. I think it was because I hate clicking on each enemy to hit them, I prefer a more automatic approach myself.

But if I do, it'll be from GOG CABAListic

[CABAListic]

Maybe you need to stop thinking of it as a Diablo or (perhaps better) Dragon Age like gameplay. It's actually more of an action-based gameplay, like Morrowind or Gothic. A click initiates your attack, timed clicks initiate combos But yeah, matter of preference probably.

[betajaen]

Actually, I remember getting to the city (large town?), but then got confused with the multiple quests to do.

As for clicking - Yes, that was it. Clicking on each enemy then clicking again for combos. I couldn't keep up, I prefer the character to attack auomatically for me once I select the enemy. Although I shouldn't say this, I never even started Torchlight after buying it, never got Diablo or similar games. But I did complete Titan Quest - go figure.

Now Skyrim. I am so looking forward to that, well any game by Bethesda really. Especially, any game on that Oblivion engine. I so hope they include the toolset. They would be very silly not to.

Back onto Topic. I played co-op Portal 2 today, split screen with my sister. Now that is a fun way to play Portal. To bad we couldn't get too far, because the PC version wasn't really meant to be played like that.

[Kojack]

Skyrim should be great, once the OOO guy mods it to be a good game.
Oblivion was cool, but the mods made it much better.

The TES toolset is pretty powerful for most things, except scripting (their language sucks) and level editing (bad camera control, difficult to place objects, etc).


The combat in Witcher 2 looks better than Witcher 1, but I won't know until I get my hands on it.

[betajaen]

Skyrim should be great, once the OOO guy mods it to be a good game.

Oscuro? I think he works for Obsidian, in that case his magic was done in New Vegas.

The TES toolset is pretty powerful for most things, except scripting (their language sucks) and level editing (bad camera control, difficult to place objects, etc).

The language isn't too bad. If you have a script extender installed then it gets quite powerful. I agree with objects though, although it has gotten easier over the years.

[Kojack]

Originally they had no iteration of containers (no looping) in oblivion. So there was a command to see if you had a specific item in your inventory (by id number), a command to drop an item (by id number), but nothing to loop through your inventory and drop everything (apparently Morrowind had a while loop or something, but it was removed for oblivion). There was a destroy all inventory command though, but I wanted a drop version. People started implementing loops using hidden ai entities in the world which communicated with each other to form chains, it was a lot of effort which could have been solved by adding Lua to the game. I've heard that the script is extended now, but I haven't checked back since my first look years ago.