Hello guys!

I would love to know what you disliked about Portal 2. I want to hear anything and everything you thought the game executed poorly. It could be something overall or some minor detail, just throw it all in the response. Anything from mechanic, story, atmosphere, loading time, ugliness, lack of cohesion, level design, to combat.

Here are a few questions to ask yourself to get you started:

What distracted you from the gameplay?
What forced you to stop playing the game for a while?
Which puzzles made you stupid even after you figured it out and why?
When you feel misled or betrayed by the game at any point?
Where you feel bored at any point in the game?
What sequence(s) let you down after psyching you up?
Where you feel a lack of ingenuity and why?
What did you feel Portal 2 missed?
If you could remove three features from Portal 2, what would they be?
Where did you feel like there was too little reward?
Where did you feel like there was too much reward? (Dangling a carrot?)
Where did you lose your suspension of disbelief and say that can't possibly happen at any point?
Where did the storyline fall short?
Did the transitions between puzzles feel awkward? Where did it interrupt gameplay?
Where did the game feel repetitive after a few times?

Don't limit yourself, and feel free to ask your own questions with regards to the failures of Portal 2.

Thanks everyone.

I can truthfully say that there is nothing wrong with portal 2.

The one and only complain I have about Portal 2 is the loading screens. Especially when you escape from GLaDOS with the help of Wheatly and in the final where Wheatly tries to kill you. It's not that annoying to have loading screens between puzzles, but they don't really fit in well in the action sequences.

Portal 2 is one of the best games I've played and I can't come up with any other criticism for it. I might leave something out here, but I was laughing all the way through the campaign the first time playing through and I haven't experienced anything quite like it.

EDIT:

I just thought of another thing. The first time I played through the campaign I got stuck in the chamber below. I didn't understand that you would jump automatically when you stepped on the blue gel, so I tried jumping just before that, to try and land on the blue gel. It didn't work at all and I missed the portal sooooo many times doing that. I got a bit frustrated once I found out the auto-jump feature since I felt like the game didn't explain that at all.

My only criticism: It's too damn good.

Logic wrote:
EDIT:

I just thought of another thing. The first time I played through the campaign I got stuck in the chamber below. I didn't understand that you would jump automatically when you stepped on the blue gel, so I tried jumping just before that, to try and land on the blue gel. It didn't work at all and I missed the portal sooooo many times doing that. I got a bit frustrated once I found out the auto-jump feature since I felt like the game didn't explain that at all.

Wow... would you believe that chamber is one of my favourites of the old aperture theme ones? I loved that map and I've played it a thousand times, Logic, seriously!

Logic wrote:
I didn't understand that you would jump automatically when you stepped on the blue gel, so I tried jumping just before that, to try and land on the blue gel. It didn't work at all and I missed the portal sooooo many times doing that. I got a bit frustrated once I found out the auto-jump feature since I felt like the game didn't explain that at all.

That's a good point! If you didn't play Tag: The Power of Paint before Portal 2, at that point in the game, the only experience of bounce paint you'd have is that you bounce when you fall onto it.

At the end of Portal 2 I felt rather uneasy because all the puzzles were to easy for my taste. I didn't got stuck anywhere and nowhere was a point where my head started to smoke. I expect of a phantastic puzzle game that at night when you go to bed, you suddenly become aware of the solution you could not have found out some hours before. The gameplay tended to be more a smooth floating through the many levels, than really hard puzzles.

However, that's my personal POV and if VALVE would have executed that, they would have gone broke.

Brainstone wrote:
At the end of Portal 2 I felt rather uneasy because all the puzzles were to easy for my taste. I didn't got stuck anywhere and nowhere was a point where my head started to smoke. I expect of a phantastic puzzle game that at night when you go to bed, you suddenly become aware of the solution you could not have found out some hours before. The gameplay tended to be more a smooth floating through the many levels, than really hard puzzles.

However, that's my personal POV and if VALVE would have executed that, they would have gone broke.

I agree, I wish there had been something like Portal 1's Challenge Maps. They would have been fairly easy to create: remove the cube which let you do the old solution, say, or make a box dropper broken so that you only get one pivot cube.

Technically, I also dislike that you can't specify your own models for hard light bridges or excursion funnels, but that's a fairly minor issue.

(Amazing resurrection of a forgotten thread btw! Has anyone noticed the OP arranged this topic in January? ... well, all replies have been posted these days...)

I can only help but wonder why the OP wants to know our criticisms. Just saying.

But personally, I missed the advanced chambers and the achievements that went with the challenges in Portal 1.

EDIT: Jose ninja'd me so now I feel like an idiot for posting...

josepezdj wrote:
Wow... would you believe that chamber is one of my favourites of the old aperture theme ones? I loved that map and I've played it a thousand times, Logic, seriously!

It's a great chamber, don't get me wrong. But there were no indication at all that you would automatically jump when you stepped on the blue gel, while running on the orange gel. I think I found it out by accident when I forgot to jump.

I do admit that showcasing this effect in a good way might have been tricky on Valves part though...

THAT is exactly the best part, mate! Sometimes Valve wants you to learn the basics and they use indicators and easy chambers... but the best is when after those basic concepts, they simply drop you in the middle of that kind of chamber knowing that forcedly you will learn the next level of the puzzle element! There were no other option than run along the orange gel line and accidentally discover that. Do you think any player did assume that part? None of us. Everyone found it accidentaly... and I loved that and that's why I clearly remember this chamber and the feeling.

That reminds me of HMW's Sendificate and how you learn the basics but then you must apply the rules to higher levels of reasoning! I think that little detail is one of the best things that puzzles have

Aperture Curtains? Seriously? Overall, I found the underground level w/ the elevator that goes up those tower of stairs, w/ all the intercoms and the pic of Cave and Caroline to be frustrating when i first played it. I'm really not much of an underground fan.

No more Combine balls and rocket turrets.

Cool lighting. I prefer warm Lighting. Reminds me more of portal 1.

Why is GLaDOS all glitchy in Portal 1 but not in 2? doesn't make sense, especially since she would be more glitchy in 2, because shes broken.

Companion cube is really weird now, too pale, doesn't stick out on the symbol parts (circular).

too randomly sarcastic at times, GLaDOS doesn't even talk about the tests sometimes.

I would kind of agree that the single player campaign lacked challenge, and at times it felt that the scripted events were overshadowing the gameplay somewhat. I also agree with CamBen that the 'transition' levels at the start of The Fall (when you first get to Old Aperture) are a little annoying - too much walking around looking for the distant portal surface, not enough thinking. I do love the look of those parts, though, and I'm a huge Cave Johnson fan, so it kind of balances out.

The co-op campaign didn't have the strong story of single player, but in terms of pure gameplay I thought it was much better. Absolutely stellar, in fact.

CamBen wrote:
Aperture Curtains? Seriously?

Shower Curtains have been part of Aperture's backstory since the original Portal.

CamBen wrote:
No more Combine balls and rocket turrets.

The Thermal Discouragement Beams (lasers) are essentially the same puzzle mechanic as the combine balls except that

• They're easier to adjust; you don't have to start all over again if you fuck up- There's no time pressure forced on the player- They don't instakill the player if he/she accidentally bumps into it
  The balls were specifically replaced because they introduced too many gameplay issues. There really is no reason (other than nostalgia) to want the ball launchers back in the game (though many people have put them back in anyway).

CamBen wrote:
Cool lighting. I prefer warm Lighting. Reminds me more of portal 1.

Not sure what you're getting at here; both games use a mix of cool and warm lighting depending on the scene. There's certainly a lot of warm lighting in underground (old aperture).

CamBen wrote:
Why is GLaDOS all glitchy in Portal 1 but not in 2? doesn't make sense, especially since she would be more glitchy in 2, because shes broken.

I'd excuse this under artistic license because throughout most of Portal, GLaDOS is trying to maintain the illusion that she is just a harmless computer system with no axe to grind. When you first play the game, it just seems you're in a long-abandonded science facility with no one left in it but yourself and a computer playing pre-recorded messages. As the game progresses, the player slowly begins to realize that the computer is not only highly intelligent to the point of self-awareness, but actually quite deliberately malicious towards the player. The static-like glitches in GLaDOS' voice during the bulk of Portal helps sustain this illusion. Once the veil around GLaDOS is pulled back, the glitching pretty much stops (except when you start killing her of course).

Similarly, when GLaDOS is awoken in Portal 2, the player already knows who and what she is so there's no sense in pretending.

Nacimota wrote:
The Thermal Discouragement Beams (lasers) are essentially the same puzzle mechanic as the combine balls... There really is no reason (other than nostalgia) to want the ball launchers back in the game (though many people have put them back in anyway).

I totally disagree. The combine balls allow for puzzles that are impossible to reproduce with the discouragement beam or any other Portal 2 mechanic. There is no comparison in my mind. That being said, I agree with all the problems that combine balls have, and it was a good decision to remove them.

Mevious wrote:
Nacimota wrote:

The Thermal Discouragement Beams (lasers) are essentially the same puzzle mechanic as the combine balls... There really is no reason (other than nostalgia) to want the ball launchers back in the game (though many people have put them back in anyway).

I totally disagree. The combine balls allow for puzzles that are impossible to reproduce with the discouragement beam or any other Portal 2 mechanic. There is no comparison in my mind. That being said, I agree with all the problems that combine balls have, and it was a good decision to remove them.

Well, what I was getting at is that while the ball launchers introduce a different gameplay style, the increase in variety (which I wouldn't consider significant) does not (in my opinion) offset the numerous gameplay issues associated with the mechanic in the first place. So yeah, it lets you do things that lasers cant do, but it isn't worth the trouble as far as I'm concerned.

That being said, I'm not going to downvote a map that properly executes a combine ball puzzle; I just think that people should be focusing on other mechanics instead, and that removing them was a good thing.

I find things that are insta-death are annoying. Some people missed combine balls but I never looked back.

Valve is a game company, and their beta testing is broader. Who thinks they might know a bit better? .

It might be more interesting if, instead, touching the player fizzled the combine ball.

Or better yet, if it didn't clip against the player at all, or pushed the player away like a laser.

The only real complaint I have is the "test chamber" where you start to use the Conversion Gel. Before that the Conversion Gel had no other sort of explanation so I spent forever not realizing that there were two giant pillars and that the Gel could be used to "climb" up it with Portals. Valve just kind of threw the player into a full fledged Conversion Gel chamber without any sort of tutorial level. (The part before it doesn't count IMO because of the fact it placed itself and was only used once) All the other test elements got tutorial levels so that the basic concept of how the gel could be used got into the player's head.

One more final small complaint. There was a lack of Conversion Gel in the campaign at all. I understand it's difficult to use in test chambers, seeing as how they can break chambers real easily, but other than the one underground level it was really only used during transitions between chambers, no real puzzles were built with them after chapter 7. Which was disappointing because that's one of my favorite elements to use.

Other than that, the game is perfect.