Welcome to the Next Level, a.k.a. The Video Game Thread Options

[Jubei]

You guys fancy another game of Words? My username is Jubei700.

[monkeyman]

Just realised I was already playing you

More Portal 2 things. Minor Spoilers in the text of the quote, probably some bigger ones in the scans themselves

- Portal was a 'trial'. Size and assets specifically kept minimal. Had no idea it would be this popular.
- Portal was a 'test bed', Portal 2 is a 'game'.
- GlaDOS returns as the antagonist.
- Chell returns, and we play as her.
- Portal 2 takes place a long time after the original. Hundreds of years, in fact. The complex has overgrown.
- Those orbs seen at the end of Portal are personality orbs. They've cornered off sections of the labs as their own, and are concerned about the decaying state of the complex.
- The opening sounds **** awesome. Im a bit **** I spoiled it for myself.
- Portal gun remains unchanged.
- Physics will now be part of portal puzzle solving. EG: A vent that sucks air in can be combined with a portal to 'suck' from a different location.
- "Paint" mechanic, various liquid substances that cause some reaction. For example, in the demo shown a orange substance on the floor caused Chell to be propelled upwards. Using portals you can apply these 'paints' to other areas of the level for puzzle solving.
- Reflection cubes will allow Chell to reflect lazers for various puzzles.
- The co-op campaign will have you playing as two bipedal robots. The like to hold hands.
- Splitscreen for people playing on the console, and 'picture in picture' available for those playing remote co-op (eg: PC). This allows you to easily communicate with the other player and combine efforts for puzzle solving.

Nice that they've said the first was a test to see how it did and this one will be a full game.

[NiteFall]

I get the feeling that Portal 2 is either going to be a massive disappointment or game of the year. No middle ground.

[Llama]

The game apparantly streamlines things too much, especially the combat and there's no sense of freedom or exploration for the first 20-30 hours as most of the maps are basically like this up to a certain point in the game (apparently):

This is very true so far, I'm about 3 and a half hours of game play in and I'm near the bottom of that map you posted. It's pretty frustrating to be honest, I feel like the free reign of XII has spoiled me and now I feel incredibly restricted.

Really liking the paradigm system though, and it looks AWESOME. The cutscenes are just amazing. I am finding it quite distracting the amount of breathing and grunting sounds the characters make though, I find myself listening to that more than the dialogue at times

[Jubei]

I was thinking about the legality of it. It is very very similar to Scrabble. If they pull it I'm pretty sure they can't remove the app if you have it. I'm sure I read something about it a few weeks ago in relation to the baby shaker app.

You couldn't make it much more like scrabble without it actually being scrabble could you? I'm right in thinking the difference is differently laid out bonus squares and maybe different points for letters? It's good though huh? The two games i'm playing are going very differently though

[Atara]

My copy of FFXIII just arrived. Woot!

super early, colour me jealous. I can't afford it dammit!

[monkeyman]

You couldn't make it much more like scrabble without it actually being scrabble could you? I'm right in thinking the difference is differently laid out bonus squares and maybe different points for letters? It's good though huh? The two games i'm playing are going very differently though

I think the point values are very similar as is the layout but regular scrabble has more bonus tiles.

[Llama]

super early, colour me jealous. I can't afford it dammit!

Hell yeah! I only justified it because I managed to get it for a bit over £30.

[Everlong]

Payday: I'm torn between Bioshock 2 and Final Fantasy XIII. Haven't bought a game in months but can probably afford to grab one this payday.

Really leaning towards Bioshock though.

[Jimmay]

Finished Bioshock 2 last night and really enjoyed it. Not as good as the first one although the gameplay element is actually better. I will give it a few months and replay it on difficult as I didn't find it at all challenging and only died once (despite having 5 first aid kits and just forgetting to use them in time.) What is quite cool though is that by the end of it you feel really powerful and can just sit back and let all your summoned bots, mini turrets, traps and hypnotised beasties run around and do your dirty work while everything explodes around you which is great fun. The ending is pretty cool as well.

I think I shall mostly be playing Assasins Creed II now as I have stopped playing it since my brief stint at Christmas.

[logger]

5 creepy ways that games are trying to get you addicted

[monkeyman]

But the industry is moving toward subscription-based games like MMO's that need the subject to keep playing--and paying--until the sun goes supernova.

No they aren't.

The article was interesting but nearly all based around MMO's (particularly WoW). I'm pretty sure the majority of gamers aren't actually interested in MMO's.

[logger]

It is a Cracked article so I'd take it with a pinch of salt. I just thought there were some interesting things in there.

[monkeyman]

Oh there definetely are. It's fucked up how hooked people can get on games, particularly MMO's. I just thought their article title was a bit misleading.

[GundamGuy_UK]

The article was interesting but nearly all based around MMO's (particularly WoW). I'm pretty sure the majority of gamers aren't actually interested in MMO's.

The article mentions that normal games like CoD and so on don't fit this model, because there's a clear sense of competition and goal and so on. It's MMOs that the article is about.

I read it this morning, pretty interesting stuff. I can understand how people get hooked, but online games like that aren't for me because I can't get sucked into the world. Even the Star Wars/Trek ones don't really appeal to me, because I know it'll just be full of people asking for rare items and escorts to locations typed out in poor English. And people dancing everywhere.

I used to play Guild Wars, until I realized that I only played it by myself, and the only town areas I went to were the ones I knew were almost always empty, because I hated all the other players.