{"id":705,"date":"2011-04-20T08:38:56","date_gmt":"2011-04-20T16:38:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.screencuisine.net\/?p=705"},"modified":"2012-06-11T22:05:37","modified_gmt":"2012-06-12T06:05:37","slug":"bullet-points-portal-2-part-2-spoiler-free","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.screencuisine.net\/screencuisine\/video-games\/bullet-points-portal-2-part-2-spoiler-free\/","title":{"rendered":"Bullet Points: Portal 2, Part 2 (Spoiler-Free)"},"content":{"rendered":"

$\"\"$ <\/a><\/p>\n

Well, I finished Portal 2 last night. To avoid spoilers of any kind, this installment of Bullet Points is going to be pretty short. Even the spoiler-free reviews I read after finishing the game gave away stuff I’m much happier to have found out myself while playing, so don’t read any of them! Don’t even read this one! (Actually, this one is fine to read.)<\/p>\n

While I can see my entire body through a Portal, I can’t look down and see my own legs. This, of course, is not even remotely important for gameplay or enjoyment, but I think we should be out of the era of the “floating gun” style first-person game by now. Everyone should have legs. And shadows.<\/li>\n

Every time I settle in for a long, late-night bout of gaming, my cat strolls in and takes a huge toxic dump in the litter box. Without fail.<\/li>\n

I know there have been complaints about the length of the game. Too short? If anything, I felt it was maybe a bit longer than it needed to be. And yet, over so quickly at the same time. I think they got it about right.<\/li>\n

As the puzzles grow more challenging, I’m regularly hit with the following few thoughts:<\/li>\n

“I have no idea what the game wants me to do here.”<\/li>\n

“I’m an idiot. I can’t figure this out.”<\/li>\n

“Oh, okay. I see what the game wants me to do. I’m smart after all.”<\/li>\n

“Wait. What the game wants me to do is impossible. I know it’s not <\/em>impossible, but seriously, it’s impossible.<\/li>\n

“Once again, I’m an idiot.”<\/li>\n

“Oh. Ohhhh<\/em>. Okay.”<\/li>\n

“Boom, done. I am the smartest human being ever.”<\/li>\n

The Aperture facility is wonderfully realized, fun, amazingly detailed. A living, breathing, dying place.<\/li>\n

Again, Stephen Merchant does an amazing job with the material he is given, and the writers do an amazing job with the material they give to Stephen Merchant. I think this is the best voice performance in a game since… GLaDOS in the original Portal? What other games have such good voice performances? Is this the best voice performance ever?<\/li>\n

Oh, the Mass Effect games. They do a great job, too. Okay, Merchant does the best comedy voice performance, then. In a game. Ever.<\/li>\n

Forgot about the Lucas Arts adventure games. Great comedy voice work in a number of them.<\/li>\n

Look, Merchant is really good, okay?<\/li>\n

I spend a lot of time doing things to try to get Merchant to say more stuff. It’s often worth the extra time.<\/li>\n

One performance hiccup: during an especially noisy and dynamic moment, everything hangs, freezes, and stutters. Doesn’t crash, but a good 5-10 seconds of hanging\/stuttering. WAY TO GO VALVE WHERE’S MY REFUND.<\/li>\n

I will say nothing about the ending other than that I enjoy it.<\/li>\n

This is a great game. Laughed out loud a number of times. Puzzles are very good, often quite challenging. The art direction and level design is fantastic. I’d maybe have trimmed out a few test chambers, as I felt impatient during some of them because I wanted to explore more of the story.<\/li>\n

This didn’t turn out so short, after all.<\/li>\n

That’s it! Play this game.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Well, I finished Portal 2 last night. To avoid spoilers of any kind, this installment of Bullet Points is going to be pretty short. Even the spoiler-free reviews I read after finishing the game gave away stuff I’m much happier to have found out myself while playing, so don’t read any of them! Don’t even […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":706,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[616,627],"class_list":["post-705","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-video-games","tag-bullet-points","tag-portal-2","section-blog","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.screencuisine.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/705","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.screencuisine.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.screencuisine.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.screencuisine.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.screencuisine.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=705"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.screencuisine.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/705\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.screencuisine.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/706"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.screencuisine.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=705"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.screencuisine.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=705"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.screencuisine.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=705"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}