![]() ![]() We feel regretful when we should feel triumphant. Portal 2 is a triumph of presentation, and it evokes the same wild range of emotions that made players feel so connected to the original game. The key difference is that when Portal 2 reaches this point, the game has only just begun. Breaking free of the chains and finally seeing what lies beyond Aperture’s white test chamber walls was one of Portal’s greatest pleasures, and the sequel mimics that sense of discovery beautifully. I won’t tell you what happens after that. Meanwhile, we keep testing, and this goes on for just long enough to make us believe that there are no major surprises in store for us.Īnd then Wheatley makes good on his promise, and a getaway is initiated. ![]() Wheatley pops up from time to time, assuring us from behind the scenes that he’s working on an escape plan. It’s not long before we’re inevitably reunited with a bitter GLaDOS, yet her idea of revenge is to simply put us through more tests. More bizarre physics-based puzzles set in white test chambers, all bookended with jokes by a robotic supervisor (a male voice this time). The collapse of civilization is briefly mentioned, and a computer that tries to tell you how long you’ve been in stasis breaks down after saying “nine” a bunch of times.Īnd then, for a while, it’s just more Portal. We get our hands on a portal gun and are sent through a familiar set of warm-up test chambers, except now they’re overrun with lush plant life. We’re accompanied by a robot named Wheatley, who has the distinction of being the first character in this universe who doesn’t actually sound like a robot. And then we see said living unit physically ripped from its tower and dragged through an enormous underground city full of similar-looking buildings. We wake up in a living unit that’s blandly decorated and doesn’t look the slightest bit out of place amidst Aperture’s boring white corridors. Portal 2 toys relentlessly with our expectations. Where do you go from there? How do you expand on a game that begs for elaboration, yet garnered praise for its daring brevity? So, despite lasting only three hours, Portal ended at the only point it could have, on its highest and most tantalizing note. The reason it’s so difficult to distinguish Portal the puzzler from Portal the narrative is because they both peaked at precisely the same moment. Suddenly, we were out of the test chambers, and the skills we’d spent the entire game fine-tuning now served a far more personal purpose. Suddenly, GLaDOS had a role to play beyond dropping one-liners, evolving from malevolent overseer to outright villain. Suddenly, the rusty catwalks and empty offices suggested that there was more to this fictional universe than pristine white surfaces. It introduced an ingenious mechanic, trained us to use it, steadily ramped the difficulty, and then unexpectedly threw itself off the rails. Portal was a brilliant puzzle game, but I feel most people loved it for not stopping there. The key difference is that when Portal 2 reaches this point, the game has only just begun." ↑ 18.0 18."Breaking free of the chains and finally seeing what lies beyond Aperture’s white test chamber walls was one of Portal’s greatest pleasures, and the sequel mimics that sense of discovery beautifully.Setting the game to use the DXVK layer through the -Vulkan argument indeed fixes the flickering issue. ↑ 16.0 16.1 Graphical artifacts with Nvidia #315 - ValveSoftware/portal2 - GitHub - last accessed on.↑ Portal 2 artifacts in recent drivers #310 - ValveSoftware/portal2 - GitHub - last accessed on.↑ 14.0 14.1 14.2 Security camera's lens and behavior bug #391 - ValveSoftware/portal2 - GitHub - last accessed on.Tested with latest Nvidia GPU drivers and thus while using dedicated GPU. Saw it on the texture where the laser pointed at and also on the black tiles near the walls close to the exit door of the Chapter 2 level. Could only reproduce it at the Chapter 2 beginning room. Tested on first few levels of the game and especially the beginning of Chapter 2. ![]()
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