Portals is a fantasic freebee

[>HyperlogiK<]

Having played Far Cry and Stalker, linear, mainly indoor levels just seem like a hangover from the days when we didn't have enough VRAM to render outdoor scenes.

Portal is an exception to this because it isn't an FPS.

 

[Burninate]

Having played Far Cry and Stalker, linear, mainly indoor levels just seem like a hangover from the days when we didn't have enough VRAM to render outdoor scenes.

Portal is an exception to this because it isn't an FPS.

Well, given that Half-life's story basically revolves around secret governemnt complexes and the like, and given that there aren't too many outdoor or non-claustrophobic government buildings, Half-life's indoor corridors fit perfectly. It's not Farcry where you're stranded on a desert island. Given this, I think that HL2 did an awesome job at breaking up the action and not keeping the player feeling too confined by providing the outdoor car and boat levels and even the level in Ravenholm. I think HL2 is one of those rare games that kept the pace perfectly while balancing the story elements (which are pretty much exclusively in corridor environments) while providing dome fast-paced, open air action. They even threw in some survival-horror elements, and better yet, they did an awesome job with the survival horror element (not like some other games whose idea of survival horror is just turn off the lights and give the player a flashlight). I think your points are definitely valid in EP1 and I totally agree with you, as it was too story/puzzle driven and didn't have enough action-driven areas. I plan on playing EP2 next week, so I'm avoiding all info on it at this point, so I don't know if it's any better yet.

 

[TommyHolly]

I played through that FLASH version of Portal...that rocked too!! (and you get cake!)

It was seriously harder then the real version of Portal and it had 40 levels. Too bad it didnt have that "Im still alive" song by GLaDOS. I love that song!

 

[rainless]

Wait a minute! Portal isn't free.

If I recall correctly Episode 1 (at least where *I* shopped) was 19.99. Team Fortress 2 should by all rights be 19.99... if they were actually selling it seperately at retail. And that would make Portal ten bucks (this is assuming, like everyone at valve should've assumed, that everyone in western civilization... and half of the east... already owns Half Life 2 and Episode 1).

Free means it's a thank you from Valve to the two billion customers who own Half Life 2 and can be downloaded for nothing off of steam.

I don't know that they've ever done anything like that before though...

 

[Daemonfly]

OK check this out... Since Portal is based of the Halflife engine, you can put the -console into the portal shortcut to enable the console in-game. sv-cheats 1 works as well. After this, put in impulse 101 and you get all the regular Halflife weapons in Portal! Ok, not really that exciting, eh?

Now, knowing this, imagine a big deathmatch or CTF map that allows the use of both the portal gun, box, and the regular weapons