Portal 2: First Thoughts

So I bought Portal 2. Still making my through. Some early impressions:

-Solid writing, although most of it has been spoiled for me by the internet parroting it all.

-I was seriously stuck dead in my tracks during one puzzle for about half an hour. And I figured it out right before I was going to surrender and look up the solution online. Figuring that out made me feel a lot smarter than I really am. Very few games have accomplished this. Most veer wildly too far into frustratingly vague territory, where you're punished simply for not having a psychic link to Tim Schaefer's schizophrenia.

-I miss when Chell was a person of colour, instead of a plastic-surgery-riddled Strong Female Character. Considering you're not even supposed to see her, and she's not even on the box, that's pretty disappointing that they would whitewash her just to appeal to a "wider audience".

-When I "rescued" the turret and brought it through the field that destroys anything you carry through it, I felt so bad I restarted from the last checkpoint and just left it before that part, intact. Just so it would "survive" my playthrough. It takes a very special game to make me care that much about the soulless robots shooting at me.

-The fat jokes get old, fast. 

END OF LINE

~A.H. 

 

A Letter From The Publisher

"Dear Mr. Tim Schaefer,

We regret to inform you that we will not publish your game. We do not feel confident at this time that anyone would be willing to pay for it. People only want brown and grey first-person shooters with chest-high walls and Madden. Nobody wants fun or creativity. Consumers would much rather have shitty sequels, movie tie-ins and intrusive DRM.

While it is true that you have maintained a level of trust with your audience, a transparent relationship of trust between a developer and the consumer has never equated to profitable business.


...Except for the 17,000 people who completely paid off your kickstarter project within 9 HOURS, with over a month still left to donate. This in turn raising over $800,000.

But other than THAT, clearly there is no demand for your work in this economic environment, Mr. Schaefer.


~Sincerely,

The Morons In Charge Of AAA Game Studios, DNR."