On the Subject of Portal 2

Big boobs never get old, unlike Portal

It's a new Valve game and therefore PC gamers are obliged to bow down and worship at the feet of The One True Developer.

I played the original Portal through again recently. My main impression was that it was incredibly short; enough time had passed for me to have forgotten most of the finer details of the puzzles but it still only took a couple of hours to complete. And the first half of it was tedious tutorials. As far as I'm concerned it has minimal replay value, partly because it's ultimately a puzzle game and so once you've solved it there's nothing left to do, and partly because the "hilarious" quirky robot humour gets old very quickly.

And I know Portal 2 has a co-op mode, but how is that going to offer any more replay potential, other than twats trying to show off how good they are to players who are playing levels for the first time? Who gives a shit about finding alternate solutions to puzzles once you've already found one? No doubt there'll be a lot of downloadable levels, but that's just more of the same except without any sort of narrative layer.

Of course as a puzzle game it's riding the current gaming zeitgeist of everything being treated like a challenge and a competition, which is why so many people are blown away by it. That, and the Emperor's New Clothes appeal of Valve's so-called "storytelling", whereby players mistake the lack of narrative clarity for another layer of gaming complexity, where you somehow have to be good at the game to understand the story, just like with Half-Life 2. In reality there's simply not a lot there beyond the (admittedly well-constructed) atmosphere and polished gameplay.

I fully intend to pick up Portal 2, but I will wait for the inevitable Steam sale. Portal 1 was nowhere near a full-price gaming experience, and despite claims that the sequel has substantially more content I don't believe it has the lasting appeal of more conventional games. The forum hysteria has already died down, again because of the limited scope and longevity of the game.

So yeah, a new Valve game. And just like with L4D2, another "more of the same" sequel. Even the more oblivious gamers are beginning to notice the lack of any substantial new content coming out of Valve in recent years. Still nothing on the future of Half-Life, whether it's more HL2 episodes (so much for smaller chunks = faster turnaround) or perhaps HL3. I don't argue the fact that they're still putting out games with a massive degree of polish, they're just running low on innovation and substance. Their increasing focus on multiplayer, especially co-op which as I've noted in the past is several years too late given modern gamers' rabid sense of competition and basic inability to co-operate, is disappointing because it's resulting in increasingly vacuous gaming experiences.