Portal 2

[fragger]

Finished a second playthrough. Much quicker on the second go-around, it makes quite a difference to the game duration once you know how to solve the puzzles and negotiate some of the tricky bits. Still loads of fun and lots to look at :-X

I also picked up on a bit more of the dialogue. There are so many quips and one-liners that I didn't get them all at first. I like this one from GLaDOS when she's trying to cripple Wheatly with a paradox while avoiding it herself:

"This... statement... is... FALSE (don't think about it don't think about it don't think about it don't think about it...)"

[JRD]

How long did your first playtrough take, fragger?

[Art Blade]

I may have to do something else to earn that kudo you so kindly gave me... Here, have some cake... :-()

;D :-X

[mmosu]

"This... statement... is... FALSE (don't think about it don't think about it don't think about it don't think about it...)"

Then his response: "Umm, true.  Yes, definately true"

GLaDOS:  "It's a paradox you moron, there IS no right answer!"

[fragger]

 ^+-+ :-X

Then she asks him something like "Don't you realise this whole facility is about to blow up?"

Wheatly: "Ahh... I'll say false..." :-()

@JRD: At a rough guess, the first time through took me about 20 hours total. There was one spot that took me at least a couple of hours to figure out, only because the answer was staring me in the face and I just didn't look hard enough. I tried all kinds of nutso moves until it clicked...  :D Second 'thru took about half that time. Still, it's quite a bit bigger than P1, which I can do in just a couple of hours now.

[Art Blade]

just finished my SP playthrough. I'd say it took me probably 20 to 25 hours, and I too had one puzzle that delayed me significantly. Another puzzle sported a glitch of sorts which took me a lot of time to realise.

The solution was annoying to figure out: Already using a velocity jump (fall deep down into one portal and come shooting up out of the second one), "all" I had to do was turn around at the peek of the jump, look through some sort of grid wall (which was preventing me from continuing) and then, that was the solution, spot a white surface on the floor behind that wall and shoot a portal into it.  :D I had been trying to get into there "somehow" and of course couldn't find a way in.

The glitch in a different puzzle was that despite seeing a tilted surface I thought suitable for a velocity jump to where I wanted to go, it didn't register with my portal gun from that perspective.  Later I found a different location where I could see that surface again, this time it was clearly white and immediately showed my portal I shot into it.  >:((

However, I liked playing it  :) Some nice elements of surprise in that game  :-X

[fragger]

Congrats on completing the game Art :-X Glad you liked it, and good on you for having a go :)

I think I know where that place was where you got stuck. I got stuck there too for a bit, but then really got stuck for those couple of hours a little further on (upwards) shortly afterwards. It's where there's some white gel splashing down behind a smallish box-like structure and there's a kind of vent above it with a portal-wall just visible through it. I missed spotting that bit of wall time and time again :D

[Art Blade]

Cheers :)

There were a couple of really cool puzzles, well thought out, and usually you were able to see everything needed. So yes, a few were real bastards  :-D I'll show one in the screenshot spoilers :)

[Binnatics]

I may have to do something else to earn that kudo you so kindly gave me... Here, have some cake... :-()

Ahhh, the cake... it looks delicious  :) You definitely earned it now ;)

[Art Blade]

Just one thing regarding my time I spent on the SP bit of the game: I "wasted" quite some time just horsing around and playing with the elements. Not always solution-orientated but for the sheer fun of it. And I wasted time away from my keyboard, leaving the game on.

Particularly entertaining and time-consuming was the chamber when I saw the white stuff for the first time. The area was all dark and I couldn't see a way out and there didn't seem to be a way out using portals. Without knowing whether or not it was a good idea, I jumped down into one place all walled up and it had a pipeline that ended there and white stuff came out splotching the ground below it. I had no idea what it was good for, I took a shower beneath the opening and then it dawned on me. Hehe, I kept shooting portals into it and painted the entire map snow white as far as I could reach.

That alone may have taken me around an hour or so, just having fun trying to reach the last dark spots in it and smother it in white paint  :)

You can read more about my experiences here:

[smg id=3279 type=link align=center width=400 caption="Portal2 SP 005"]

[fragger]

I wasn't too sure what the story was with that stuff either at first. Then when I found out, I still didn't know where to direct it and so like you I squirted it all over the place :-()

@ Binnatics: ^+-+

[Dweller_Benthos]

 :'( Here's my sob story, that sort of has a happy (though expensive) ending.

Bought Portal 2 at Best Buy Sunday, for the intro price of $30 - woohoo!

Got home, installed it. Of course, it won't run until it updates and of course, it can't update on my slow connection at home. Back to minecraft I guess.

Monday, I lug the computer into w@&k and hook it up to the internet there and let it update. 200 MB later it says it's ready to play. Great. I lug the computer home and after supper, fire it up and load Portal 2.

Cool, I look at the videos, though I've seen most of them, then set my controls the way I like them, glance at video & audio settings and then decide to try the Super 8 demo mini-game whatever it is.

After 10 seconds, screen goes black and sound starts to loop. Uh Oh! I let it sit for a few minutes, then hit the reset button after trying the usual ALT+TAB, CTRL+SHIFT+ESC and CTRL+ALT+DEL tricks. Computer reboots. The system error dialog comes up and I report the problem, it says to try updating my video drivers, which is strange because I have the latest from nvidia. Oh well.

I fire up Steam again and run Portal 2. I get to the intro room where you have to look at the ceiling, then look at the floor, then.... black screen & sound loop. Double Uh-Oh.

Reset again. Computer reboots. Weird, better look on the forums see if anyone else has the same issue. I fire up IE and look on the steam forums and see that this is a known problem. Uh Oh, black screen, system unresponsive..... Reboot.

Hmmmm..... computer is rebooting, but the screen is still black, I hear the windows login sound, but the screen is still black. Seems it's stuck. After doing some tricks in the dark so to speak, I get the system shut down and powered off. I start it up and boot to safe mode. Seems to w@&k OK. I do a clean re-install of the newest nvidia drivers. Seems to go OK, except it says it didn't install the physx or ntune or control panel, something like that. So I reboot to full mode and install the drivers again. Black screen. Triple uh-oh. Hard reset again.

System reboots and nothing, black screen. Safe mode nothing, etc. It's now late and I need sleep. I shut it down.   :D

In the morning, I lug the computer back to w@&k to fool with it when I have the chance. It still boots to a black screen, monitor says "Check signal cable" as if it's getting no signal from the card. I pull the card and put it into another slot, no good. I put the card into another computer, nothing.

Does it seem to you that Portal 2 somehow fucked up so bad it ruined my $400 video card? Seems that way to me, though I've heard there is no way to physically damage hardware through software. The fan on the card works fine, it's power lights come on, it just outputs no signal. Steam forums are split, some users say it's not possible, others say it is. Take your pick. Steam support is it's usual helpful self, like "Delete everything in your steam folder and download all content again" Yeah, well, have you tried doing that on a 4K (at best) dialup connection? Heck, even on the high speed at w@&k, that would take about a day.

Then there's the issue that if you try to verify the Portal 2 files, it will say some files (18MB worth) didn't pass verification and will be re-aquired. Guess what? After re-quiring them, try running verification again, and it says the same thing, over and over.

So, in the end, I've just decided to finally buy a new computer, and went all out. $2600 all out. Good thing I can order it on the account at w@&k, and pay back my boss over time, with no interest. I plan on picking up a sub-$100 video card to put in the old computer just so I can sell it to someone.

So, no, I haven't played Portal 2 yet.  :-\\

[Art Blade]

Wow. That's a horror show. I have never seen nor heard anything like that -- except when I heard something in my computer go BANG! followed by another sharp POP!  and the smell of burnt plastics and something else not smelling exactly healthy, and of course my screen went all black. And the PC died. That was two computers before this one and obviously it was a hardware malfunction to put it mildly.

Regarding that super-8: I too checked that and it opened a steam window so it was something not running on your computer and it took a couple of moments to get to see the start screen of that which didn't even look interesting so I switched that off.

Good luck with your new machine, D_B, and don't touch that super-8 :)

[Dweller_Benthos]

Just to be curious, have you ever tried to verify the Portal 2 files? I wonder if it's just a bug in the verification process. A lot of people on the steam forums have the same problem.

[Binnatics]

Lol, what a story. I allready read your new rig specs, but I'm surprised to hear this story. I would have never thought that Portal 2 was actually too hard to handle like this. It more sounds like a malfunction in the software install, so it somehow blows you graph card by, don't know, overprocessing or something. But that goes far beyond my knowledge of computers.
I remember once having to do these 'tricks in the dark' like you told, and that was because I forgot pulling a jumper out of my mobo when I wanted to upgrade to another videocard.

The only graph-card-crash I ever survived was different: I got all sorts of artifacts in my screen once I fired up a game. Coloured dots, weird triangles through the 3D world I was in, somehow allways starting from a certain point in the invironment like a streetlight or a car-bumper.
When I reported that to my hardware store they said I could change it for a new one because it was obvious that the card had crashed. That was a good service, that's for sure.

Well, with your new rig, anyway, you're gonna have loads of fun! Portal wil be damn fine also, that's for sure  ;)

[Art Blade]

have you ever tried to verify the Portal 2 files?

When I'm in the mood for a black screen I will. :-D

[fragger]

I've never been brave (or foolhardy) enough to try doing anything like file verification through Steam. I try to have no more interaction with them than whatever it is I need to do to get a new game up and running, i.e. activation and installation. Having a slow connection like D_B's, I'm reluctant to get into anything else with Steam - that is, anything I don't need to do and which might result in hours of DL-ing stuff and eating up a good chunk of my ISP's DL allocation. If a Steam game is working, I'll gladly leave it alone - until those $%@&# updates appear that go and do their thing without asking for my say-so first, and which prevent me playing the game until they're complete. Those might be tolerable if I had a lightning connection speed, but since I don't, they ain't. I've still got some pending updates for Half-Life Episodes 1 and 2. One day when I have a few spare hours to kill, or should I say one month when I have a few spare days to kill, I'll let them continue...

D_B, sorry to hear about all your woes, you have my comiserations. For your sake, I really hope you enjoy P2 when you're finally able to get into it ::)

[Dweller_Benthos]

Apparently, from what I read on the steam forums, it's SUPPOSED to fail file verification os it can download that 18MB file  AGAIN as part of the DRM. Sheesh.

Anyway, I bought a $80 geforce 210 card to get by with, and it runs P2 fine. I had to crank down the graphics a bit to get a decent frame rate, but it works.

[Art Blade]

 :)