Portal: Prelude, A Huge Portal Campaign
When they said "All chambers up to 14 are reasonable", I was like 'It can't get any harder, can it?' And it could.
Man! I have cheated a few times in the last chambers, I'll admit it. But it was late and I could simply not be bothered with being stuck on the same puzzle for 2 hours. I did not cheat in the entire ending, however.
And man was it a great ending!
Indeed, the TTS lines were moodbreakers, but fortunately the monotony only was easily detectable a few times, especially when emotion or unusual syllables would have been on their places. Put actual voice acting in the next version. Also, the lip syncing wasn't always working properly.
"Duct Tape is the answer."
Man! I have cheated a few times in the last chambers, I'll admit it. But it was late and I could simply not be bothered with being stuck on the same puzzle for 2 hours. I did not cheat in the entire ending, however.
Exact same as me, there were parts where I was like, IM TO TIRED TO CARE UGH I WANNA SEE THE ENDING, ILL PLAY THIS LATER.
I was sensing someone taking the internet too seriously in your OP.
If you want the story of the pre-pubescent extreme version of your post though, ask msleeper. It involved the DMCA.
EDIT: Whoaa wtf? wall of text incoming!!
pffft my tongue was planted firmly in my cheek and besides, I don't mind, wish I'd known about it and had a chance to collaborate though...
Oh well, there no point crying over every mistake.....
On to my mini-review:
Difficulty - A bout as easy as they could get away with, I'd really have liked a few of these to be harder. They used turrets as a device to make it harder WAY too much (and I'm sure they tweaked the health values) adding 4 turrets to make an otherwise simple room a nightmare is acceptable, doing it in every bleeding chamber is not, it just got tedious. However annoying the mass of turrets were most of the chambers were very logical and following them though from start to finish just took a calm mind and some thinking with portals, which I think i can safely say I now can think with portals.
(anyone saying it was rediculously hard before the WCC chamber... wow, seriously, go revoke your membership at a portal site, be ashamed that you can't think with portals)
at the end of several chambers I felt like I'd bypassed half the chamber, the design just needs to be neatened up so that it doesn't feel like you missed something.
I broke chamber 18 or something (
Voices, shit
humour, nonexistant
The dialogue felt really really dry, I don't even think that script could have been made good if it was spoken by real people. It reached its lowest when one of the test chambers (one with several deaths invovled) had them swearing at each other for no reason at all..... seriously swearing for the sake of it isnt cool, it just makes you sound like a jerk, this bit made me hate the voices and after a few tiems hearing it the people who made it as well. (swearing in the right places however is alright, like in HL2 when the combine attack some of the citizens swear, the situation permits so its ok, in the chamber there is no situational information so its just out of place)
A huge amount of the speach seemed really forced to fit bad design in the puzzles and the frail fragments of a storyline towards the end, it would have been better without any speach at all really.
(absolutely) everything after you 'win' the last chamber - totally and utterly shit, it was just terrible, the
Cubemap resolution - ruined the otherwise professional look of the testchambers, just because it can go up to 128 units doesn't mean it will look good, infact the higher res you use often the worse it looks, and this was a textbook example of how not to do things that at first glance might appear better just because you can.
The test chambers were inconsistent, some allowed removal of cameras and some didn't
I found several places where I could place a portal and then see a nodrawed face
The cylindrical holes in the walls in the chambers was a really good idea and worked really well
the strange gravity mechanism was pretty cool but unfortunatly only used on one or two early chambers and none of the latter.
many of the chambers felt very short sort of half a puzzle per chamber (a chamber being from one elevator to the next) One of the level change points near the end was really badly placed, just after you get out the lift.....
integrating some of the original test chambers (with the exception of the
one of the flinging chambers was quite good in the way it had breakable bits as you stood on them, although they kinda got in the way afterwards.
Again whenever you destroyed a cube the voice would moan and bitch at you and explain how he had to go make another... I don't want to hear it, maybe after the fourth or fith cube I kill in a level but after every cube? it was just too much. really made me want to throttle the guy after hearing it just twice.
Some of the autosaves were very well placed, however others were appalingly placed.
The lighting was on the whole quite good, with nice low lightmap scales, however I think there were a few places where higher would have been better, just the same as the cubemaps, the initially better sounding option isnt actually always better.
The chambers are reasonably well constructed but most felt very claustrophobic, some had little bits just too far out and were really in the way whilst others felt like they were actually breaking the laws of physics to fit themselves in such a small space.
The inclusion of the BTS areas felt wierd, in one place you walk out of the elevator straight into BTS only to walk around a corner to be back into test chamber, a big wtf moment. just like
There were a lot of situations where a portal would suddenly be closed when you got to a certain part of the chamber, rather than go for the initially good design option in where the player couldn't snooker himself or make the puzzle too easy for himself they just went for the easy way out by closing your portal if you went back a bit. in one place they even changed the texture on a bit of wall... talk about a work around!
Overall I had a lot of fun playing with this, I know the negatives listed above seem to outweigh the posetives but for the most part (that means everything before the end of the last chamber) it was very well done and I recommend this to anyone who enjoyed portal however I will warn them it is harder and its got less than 0% of the pitch black humour that made portal the thing we love.
Did I say how much I hated the ending yet?
As do I, however I would also like to point out that I managed to totally and utterly trap myself in one chamber - I was standing in a pit of metal and had to enable the dev console to kill myself; Not good.
And I know this has been said, but I just need to point out - TOO MANY DAMN TURRETS.
I've played up to chamber 18 so far (snuck into 19 for a peak) and to be honest I probably won't bother going any further. I think youme covered all my points already. Some chambers felt really short, mostly the early chambers. I have come to loathe turrets now. The voice overs were ok but nothing spectacular and the humor was weak. Also what youme said about the cursing was dead on.
The lighting and cubemaps seemed way off in some places. Also the indicator lights were a bit confusing at times, crossing over each other or pointing to seemingly nothing.
Also the "electric" areas looked horrible to me. The particle effects didn't make sense and the walls were just black?? This isn't a new element to the game and there's a better looking electricity particle available, why not use that? I think one of Duffs maps used them really well.
In chamber 3 (I think it was) I placed 2 portals and when I went through I wound up stuck outside the map in limbo and had to kill myself to restart the chamber. Chamber 9 crashed on me twice. Not sure what caused these issues but they were a bummer for sure.
Chamber 18 lags the crap out of my system. I think it may be too many particles and sound effects on top of those crazy high cubemaps. For the record I run Windows XP, AMD AthlonX2 dual core at 2.3Ghz each core, 4Gb ram, ATI X1300 512Mb (DX9) and play at 1280x1024. Even at 1024x768 it lagged. Another bummer.
Chamber 18 seems kind of odd. I can get to the elevator without getting the WCC and there's no fizzler by the exit. Maybe I'm missing something there. If I continue I guess I'll have to figure it out.
Another thing that kind of confuses me is why did this have to be made into a mod rather than just a map pack? I asked this before release but it was never answered. I honestly didn't see anything that really warranted a full blown mod, no significant new elements.
I did like the opening cartoon, that was entertaining. Having characters in the observation rooms was a nice touch as well.
Overall the whole thing seemed more like work than play. I felt like I was grinding my way through it waiting to get to the "goo part". The chambers were somewhat difficult but not really challenging or innovative. This one just did not live up to the hype.
It suprises me how many people find it hard. I've played from start to finish in one go without too many deaths and without nearly any frustation.
Oh I did cheat at the ending because I got pissed off by constantly being thrown around.
It was nice to play trough. Maybe I'll go trough it again someday.
I have found that the best way to get through this "mod" is to just walk away for a day and come back. I did that with three or four of the chambers and I've finally gotten to the 17th chamber. I thought I would get nowhere when I got stuck on chamber 5. But now I've managed to even beat most of the least portal challenges so far.
Someone give me a download link so I can mirror it here. I thought the guy was going to give it to me so I could, but he hasn't said anything to me!
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