Portal 2 with demo Videos

eddhorse

From 1up.com

http://www.1up.com/do/previewPage?cId=3179911

We scratch heads with Valve's Erik Wolpaw in Portal 2's co-op campaign
By Thierry Nguyen 06/16/2010

It sounds a bit like a pitch for a new television show: "one's a personality core, and the other is a turret. And they use portals together." Yet, that is exactly what goes on in Portal 2's co-op campaign: six-to-seven hours of robots helping each other through test chambers. Valve didn't let me play any of the single-player mode, but I did get to play seven test chambers along with Portal 2 writer Erik Wolpaw. Well, "play" in the sense that Wolpaw told me what to do. Sure, I didn't get to experience some of the "magic" of discovering puzzles with a buddy together, but I can still see how crazy and portal-rific these puzzles can get.

The learning curve was pretty gentle. Each player still creates two portals (with a distinct color signature; for this demo, the color scheme has one player creating blue and orange portals while the other creates green and purple portals), and you can overwrite each other's portals with your own. That latter point becomes useful for timed sequences where one player establishes a pair of portals to open an area, and the second player overwrites the first's so that the first player can then create more portals elsewhere to finish the sequence. Additionally, there's now a context-sensitive marker system, where players can place icons to indicate points of interest -- such as buttons to be pressed and walls to create portals on. This system was created because players would tell each other, "make a portal there" without actually showing where "there" is. Finally, players can simply hit a button to turn on temporary splitscreen (assuming you're playing online) to see what your partner is seeing -- useful for lining up crazy portal jumps.

Besides the ability to have multiple portals and arrange them for test-chamber-spanning journeys, Portal 2 introduces a lot of little items that add wrinkles and flair to the puzzle solving; stuff along the lines of how you had to use portals to guide a missile back to its launcher in the original game. One simple example is a laser beam that often needs to be aimed at a laser receptacle (which in itself usually activates doors or platforms or somesuch). One early laser-centric puzzle calls for creating four portals across opposite sides of some obtrusive walls, which then gives the laser a clean path to the receptacle. On top of that, you also have reflection cubes that will redirect a laser around corners and so forth upon contact.

Another portal wrinkle is the energy bridge; these provide a spot to walk in-between two portals, and early on, it's mostly about making sure both player's portals line up in a way to make the bridge gets you from point A to B. But then they get a little more complicated, where one player creates a bridge, gets on it, and then jumps off while the other player quickly redirects the bridge for the first one to land on. This gets even crazier when you introduce the catapult (as the name suggests, it's a way to get yourself flung forward/upward without using an actual portal) and the fizzler (the static-y field that, when you cross it, will disintegrate any objects you're carrying plus "fizzle out" any portals you created). One puzzle involved us creating a bridge to access a way-too-high button, and then having Wolpaw push a button to activate a ball dropper. That's where it gets tricky: the ceiling has a giant fizzler, so using the catapult while holding the sphere (which I need for a switch -- certain switches now need actual items instead of simple weight for activation) would undo all of my work. So what happens is that I position the bridge to lie just below the fizzler field, and then use the catapult to fling myself upward (while bonking my head on the bridge instead of the fizzler) while Wolpaw then quickly creates a bridge to catch me after I bonk my head. Oh man.

I haven't even gotten into the asymmetrical puzzles (where one player stays in one spot and uses portals and gizmos to help the other one cross a series of obstacles) or the timed puzzles. The former includes stuff like Wolpaw staying up high and activating giant crushers (an odd Portal version of Mario's Thwomps) and having me traverse seesawing platforms; the latter calls for us to activate four switches (scattered far-and-wide) within seconds of each other. Wolpaw even comments that the team is looking into creative methods of replayability; they recognize that a puzzle game has one main solution by nature, and the traditional replayability metric is challenging the player with speed runs. While such speed run challenges will exist, Wolpaw promises that there will be other ways to encourage going through this co-op campaign again.

At the moment, Portal 2 co-op sounds like, well, more Portal, but with two legitimate players. Which is absolutely fine by me; I welcome the chance to play even more devious and refined portal headscratchers, but with a buddy. Though, my favorite feature is how GLaDOS attempts to incite dissension between the two players. See, she's not really happy about how you're a pair of robots who find friendship in each other; she will go so far as to whisper contradictory statements to each player (obviously, she won't do this if you're playing splitscreen on the couch).

Video Trailer :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tax4e4hBBZc

Demo Part 1 :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5THiN8szSKM

Demo Part 2 :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bq2mZoKkqMw

Demo Part 3 :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGlyQmmvj0w

Varik

2smiggy

cannot wait for this game. looks class. loved the first one, just played through it again recently

eddhorse

The Orange Box is easily one of the best valued titles on the PS3, Love Portal and cant wait for the next one...

p.s. Nice one Varik :rolleyes:

aperture_nuig

cannot wait for this...

...still crossing fingers and toes that hl2 episode 3 makes an appearance soon..

johnny_ultimate

I am trying to avoid all contact with videos or anything potentially spoilery until this game comes out (I'm doing the same with Inception at the moment). Here's hoping I can go in somewhat blind!

Varik

johnny_ultimate wrote: »

I am trying to avoid all contact with videos or anything potentially spoilery until this game comes out (I'm doing the same with Inception at the moment). Here's hoping I can go in somewhat blind!

How can this game have spoilers, and the plot is so full of hole to begin with you won't be loosing out on anything.

Bonavox

Adored the first one, this one looks even better. Might even go as far as saying Portal 1 was the best game of the last decade.

eddhorse

Varik wrote: »

How can this game have spoilers, and the plot is so full of hole to begin with you won't be loosing out on anything.

Hehe i get jokes