basically a free add-on (DownLoadable Content) for the Portal 2 game. more levels and stuff.

Fuck me, I had to fight through the first set on my own, anybody else try that? Its actually fun, two controllers and all. My GF isn't a fan, and I had to finish the story.

I got the DLC this morning. I will probably be playing it tonight.

I still have yet to play through this game. :(

This thread made me all nostalgic, and I started re-playing it from the beginning yesterday. I got to Chapter 7 and couldn't stay awake any more.

starting with portal 1 and the 2D flash game too?

Aah, the flash game. That was how I discovered Portal, actually. Good times.

For some reason I never really got into the co-op mode in Portal 2. Although apparently TF2 has been released for free, so I'm downloading that right now.

Sidebar:



Oh gods! That kitten is going to kill GLaDOS!

Joe, its been free for awhile. Lemme know if you have any interest in playing. Im usually down for a little tf2 here and there.

Yeah, I tend to lag behind a bit on the latest in gaming.

Interesting game, actually. Reminds me a lot of the ole' Quake II levels where you'd storm the beach or whatnot.

One thing bothers me- gameplay appears to be asymmetrical. In other words, it seems that you have to either spend hours and hours "leveling up" or go and spend actual money to buy virtual guns in order to actually be competitive. I kid of liked it when gameplay was equal- everyone had access to the same weapons based on what you found lying around the playfield or took off of your slaughtered foe.

The idea that a casual user can't join in and experience gameplay in which they are able to actually score a kill is kind of off-putting.

Attachment 240418

You don't need the upgraded weapons at all. You just need to practice and understand the flow of the map. I have lots of the upgraded weapons but I usually go back to the starting ones and I dominate on most maps.

Trying not to be too far off topic but I never did finish Portal 2. Kind of put the 360 down for a while but my wife and I have recently started playing COD Black Ops Zombies (Toten level). We suck but have made it as far as level 19 before getting slaughtered.

I can't imagine trying to play any of the Portal series on a little thumbstick game controller. Seems like that would be endlessly frustrating.

How far along did you get in the game?

Tens of millions of people use thumbstick controllers every day without frustration. Not that hard to image <G>.

Hmmm, not really sure how far I got. I seem to remember that I was about 3/4 way through it. I was playing co-op vs single but it was quite fun due to the conversation required. I haven't seen my co-op partner for a while so the game kind of died for me. I need to go back in and play some single mode. The conversation thing is what has made our nightly zombie killing fun. My wife and I now talk to each other like Seal Team 6!

Yeah i know that feeling. before the game was free they had a pretty good system. you would randomly get these upgraded items, could trade them ect. all of the items had an upside and a downside. some were still op. but it tried to level and vary the playing field as much as possible. and you could buy said weapons if you didnt have very good luck getting them. now that the game is free, they pretty much rely on people buying the weapons... kinda ruins the game imho. That, and the quality of the gamers playing has gone way down. Players before that point were really fuckin good at it, now its harder to find the good players.

Well, I definitely fall into the category of "players who aren't really fuckin' good at it." :D

Granted, the style of gameplay seems to be slightly more insane than the older multiplayer FPS games I used to love (Doom 2, ROTT, Heretic, etc) but it's still a fun game. The fundamental concepts of group strategy are definitely present in the "push the bomb" maps, for instance.

Also, there seems to be a distressingly large amount of homoerotic Rule 34 related to Sniper & Spy...

TF2 blows so please stay on topic.

http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/__...IS_PORTAL!.jpg

Joe, was your reply deleted? It was of the funny.

No, I just moved it over to the Random Pictures thread.

Also,Very funny. :D

Holy fuck.

I finally remember the addictive nature of online gaming.

It's been close to 15 years since I've accidentally found myself arse-deep in the middle of a deathmatch and noticed that it was 1am.

TF2, baby. (Yeah, I know. I'm way behind the times...)

Lol, I know that feeling. its an addicting game! Especially when you finally find a server where everyone isnt ragefacing everytime they die, cause lets face it, you die a lot in that game, even if you are good at it.

Yeah, I dont really play enough either to be great at it, but enough that I would consider myself better than average. Ive been at the top of the end game leaderboard enough times that im happy with it.

Thats what I really love about the game though, When my friends and I play together we chat through steam or team speak, or vent. that way we dont have to push a button to talk to each other. By doing that we talk and laugh, but when things get gritty, we work really well as a team to do what needs to be done.

This Portal game... It's only very loosely connected to Half-Life 2?

http://www.thinkwithportals.com/music.php

Free Portal2 soundtrack download!

kind of physically if you consider they came on the same disk for the PS3

If your a half life 2 nut then you will catch the tie in. they are very loosely tied in through the storyline.

Yes, and in a way that requires only meta-humor and in-jokes rather than any serious cross-functional interaction.

Essentially, both Portal and Half-Life take place within the same in-game universe, roughly in parallel with one another.

Within Portal 1, we find that prior to the GLaDOS incident, Aperture Science was in direct competition with Black Mesa for at least one government contract (namely, a commercial / military grade fuel line de-icer) and it is suggested that there is a long history of previous competition between these two companies, possibly dating as far back as the original Shower Curtain Contracts.

Within Portal 2, the pre-recorded dialogue of the late Cave Johnson (founder of Aperture) suggests that for many years prior to the events of Portal 1, Aperture found itself losing both market-share and prestige to Black Mesa, resulting in Aperture's eventual bankruptcy around the time of Johnson's death. It is not clear (to me, anyway) how Aperture rebounded from this financial condition and was able to continue work on either GLaDOS or the ASHPD.

^ joe got it right on.

Spoiler for those who havent played. Although its sort of a tie between portal 1 and portal 2.

http://www.thinkwithportals.com/comic/#1

Joe, I dont know how aperture science rebounded back up either, but I would say that they were doing much better for awhile before Chell came into things.

When exactly did Chell "come into things"?

When we first encountered her in Portal 1, she had apparently been in stasis for some time, several scenes in Portal 2 (the intro, the surprise, etc) seems to confirm that long-duration storage of human subjects in suspension is common practice.

But then GLaDOS starts dropping hints which suggest that the Chell we encountered in the original game might not have even been the original Chell. For instance, the dialogue redirects for "subject name" and "subject hometown" both fail and return default values when GLaDOS is taunting you early in the first game. And GLaDOS later admits to having a copy of your consciousness stored for backup purposes which she then deletes, ostensibly as an act of revenge. Could it be that by the time you make it to the end of the first game, Chell has already been duplicated into countless new bodies (eg: every time you die, you download)?

Events in Portal 2 make this seem plausible. Specifically, the Caroline epiphany.

How long HAD Chell been around prior to the GLaDOS incident? Was she a victim of Bring Your Daughter To Work Day? We have anecdotal evidence that the use of "captive" test subjects was a relatively recent innovation (it would seem that up until at least Johnson's death, the company tested on non-captive, part-time subjects; astronauts and war heroes originally, later homeless vagrants paid $60 each, and finally company employees for whom testing was "voluntary" but clearly not full-time.)


Warning: the message which you just read contained spoilers. If you did not want to read them, please time-travel backwards five minutes and warn your past self to skip over this message.

Read the link I posted above. its a comic made by valve, its set between and during both portals following ratman. Based on reading that comic. my hypothesis is that there is in fact only one chell, she was a volunteer or perhaps an employee. But I feel like she was a volunteer based on that comic. (infact, the comic mentions volunteer)

As far as the "chell deleted" comment made by GLaDOS, I think that those shouldnt be taken heavily. I am willing to bet that it is just one of many taunts that GLaDOS uses to try and break chells determination.

Concerning default values... I have no explanation...

I also believe that there are holes in the story. Respawning for example, makes the game playable. I dont think it has anything to do with the plot though because everything happens again, ie GLaDOS' dialogue mid level will still play as if you havent heard it. And when they originally made portal, there was no plan for a sequel. Because of that, stuff like "Chell deleted" doesnt really add up.

EDIT: The comic also mentions clones. so maybe the clones were also killed off. I guess that would mention the download when you die.

I read it when it was released. One fact to keep in mind is that it was quite clearly the ramblings of a deranged lunatic, who exhibited strong delusional tendencies. For instance, he heard the companion cube speaking to him, and regardless of what GLaDOS has to say on that topic, if the cubes could speak, why did they never speak to Chell?

In all likelihood, the author of the comic was Ratman himself.


I think we have to accept Portal 2 as part of the continuity of Portal 1, based on the large amount of retconning.

For instance (and take this for what it's worth), developer interviews have stated that the original game concept called for the Party Associate to follow Chell through the second half of P1, and finally catch up to her at the end. Early testing indicated that while this made for a very happy engine from the point of view of the Party Associate, it made for an unsatisfying end for the player.


I just tossed out the "download when you die" thing as a lark, but I don't discount the idea that Chell, in every form that we have seen her, may be a clone. And while GLaDOS may have been lying about deleting the backup copy of her, it's not at all unlikely that she did in fact possess a backup copy of Chell. This would be no different conceptually from possessing a "copy" of Caroline, and GLaDOS had no reason at all to lie about deleting that in P2.

Why would GLaDOS have even mentioned it if a backup copy (and the ability to do something useful with it) didn't exist? There are so many other ways that she could taunt Chell which would have been more in line with her usual repertoire. If it was a lie, it's kind of a departure from her norm.



Still, regardless of how many Chells there have been, where did she come from? Anecdotal evidence (both from the comic and from signage in the the later-era Aperture Classic test chambers) suggests that "volunteers" for testing were, by the later stages of the program, being drawn exclusively from the ranks of Aperture employees. Does this explain why GLaDOS seems to have some specific preoccupation with Chell even prior to her escape?


(And is there some reason why I am spending so much time hyper-analyzing the backstory of a videogame?)

This is very true.

No clue, but I am as well.

You bring up some very valid points.
I see what you are saying about the degredation of volunteers from astronauts, to volunteers, to employees. Evidenced in P1 and the more modern locations within P2, there is no mention within backstage areas of volunteering.

So...
Perhaps all aperture employees were cloned? And these clones are used exclusively as test subjects. By following that logic, It would explain where chell came from (her actual self passed away with all of the other employees) This would also explain why at the end of the co-op, you find access to other clones???

I think that GLaDOS may not necessarily have a preoccupation with chell, but more so that she becomes increasingly frustrated with chell as she manages to make it further than any other subject. I'm kinda iffy on this though, seeing as its been forever since I played P1.

OR, it may very well be that she does have a preoccupation with chell, due to some correlation between these two characters as the development of GLaDOS progressed. ie, programmer, something of the sort.

I earn Sandvich!

http://wiki.teamfortress.com/w/image...r_Sandvich.jpg

Sandvich is amazing! IMHO the key to heavy is knowing how to use it right!

[heavy] Put bullet in enemy. Is easy! Many bullet! [/heavy]

So far, I've only been playing the Payload maps. For offensive work, Heavy is definitely my favorite character in these. Make sure you've got a rear-facing Pyro to act as a spy lookout, and then just get beside the cart and never let up off the trigger. Snipers can be a problem, but my aim and response time are getting better with them. A side-to-side weave from behind the cart gives me about a 50% success rate in taking them down before they can get to me- higher if there's a second Heavy on cart duty as well. (Some of those Snipers are amazingly good.)


On defense, I'm undecided. So far, DemoMan has been my best character there. Most of the maps have good cover along most of the cart's route, so just mine the tracks, hang back and wait, blow 'em when BLU approaches, mine the tracks again, rinse, repeat. I've been practicing as Sniper a little bit as well. Not very proficient yet (it took me a while to realize that the rifle's power increases with time spent on scope) but I've made a few kills.


The one thing I really suck at right now is quickly switching to a melee weapon when some damned Pyro jumps out of the sky at me. I've gotta figure out if I can map the side buttons on my mouse to switch between weapons 1 and 3.


It's funny. I graduated from college about 13 years ago, and as many people do, I find myself sometimes wistfully longing for certain things from that era. One of the coolest things about being in college in the mid to late 90s was that multiplayer FPS gaming had just been invented, and what better environment for it? Not via the Internet, of course (we were connected, at a mere 4800 baud) but on local LANs running IPX/SPX. We had our entire dorm floor (admittedly, only about a dozen rooms) wired with coax 10 meg ethernet (10b2) and we used to go all night long with Doom 2, ROTT, Hexen, Quake, etc. And after I graduated, I pretty much got out of gaming altogether.

TF2 really takes me back to those days. Granted, it was kind of cool when you knew everyone you were playing with and "chat" consisted of just shouting out the open door into the hallway (we eventually ran some additional two-pair cable in parallel with the coax to create bridge lines via telephone) but still, I'm really impressed that the fundamental elements which were so revolutionary back in 1995 are very much alive today.

I was talking about the sandvich. If you use it properly, it can be a real life saver! If I have a medic with me, I can use it to heal my medic, since he cant really heal himself very easily. I can also step back from the line of action for a sec and heal some health and immediately resume killing shit. Dont get me wrong though, Heavy isnt terribly hard. But if you do know how to use the sandvich, it helps alot!

Payload IHMO are the best maps. The point of conflict between the two teams is always changing, making strategies, sniper locale, engineer posts. all constantly changing aspects.

I snuck onto your server thru MT steam group and played a bit.
Not gonna lie, you weren't half bad with demo or heavy! Demo is someone I can and never will be able to play properly, there is just something about him that makes him unplayable to me...

Dunno if you know or not, but your scroll wheel will switch weapons. its fast as heck, but sometimes you scroll a bit too far and get the wrong weapon.

Whats funny is that even with todays chat, I still do that! Some things never change I suppose.

Well, it was supposed to be a joke, actually. You have to read it in the voice of Heavy, and remember that he has a rather simplistic view of battlefield strategy. Maybe it was only funny to me. (That happens sometimes. Like when I built that nativity scene out of dead squirrels in front of the local Catholic school as a kid.)


This is the sort of area where I need to improve. Still not very good at quickly task-switching. (eg: realize Medic is getting raped, step back, switch to Sandvich, drop Sandvich, switch back to Sasha, resume killing people.)

That sort of thing is hard to do while halfway through a tunnel or while trying to take out a pair of sentrys, for instance. This game is shocking fast-paced compared to the old FPSs I remember.


I'm growing fond of DemoMan as a defensive character on the Payload maps. He requires patience to operate effectively, and in cases where your teammates have driven BLU back away from the cart, it's tempting to rush forward and assist in the front-line assault. I've seen some folks who can do this effectively, but my skill level with the grenade launcher is way too poor to be effective in front-line combat. For now, I'm most effective with him just laying stickys at key choke points and lying in wait.

Actually, there is one front-line area where DemoMan excels. There are a couple of places where you find yourself at a low elevation and the enemy is directly above you at a higher elevation (eg, a rooftop). DemoMan is quite effective at getting right up against the wall and lobbing grenades up onto the enemy from a position of relative safety.

Shoot me a message the next time we're online together. What name do you go by there?


Yeah, I got that. I'm finding it easier (eg: faster and more reliable) to use the number keys.



I went out an bought a headset yesterday. Very helpful addition.

OT, but I have to know....Joe, do you read Hyperbole and a half???

Well, yeah. Where else would I have gotten a copy of the "Clean all the Things" image?

That is some seriously funny shit. I think somebody posted a link to the "dogs don't understand moving" one a while back.


For anyone not familiar: http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.co...d-of-cake.html (see how I steered this back on-topic with that? :D)

"____ all the ____!!" has become its own meme independent of Hyperbole and a Half.

http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/x-all-the-y#.TpXhwb-Ik8k

Haha. Well how do you like that- I accidentally created a meme that already exists. :rolleyes:

Ironically apropos (from Y8s' link):

Attachment 240408

Yeah my bad, Joke went right over my head. I have a good deal on my mind as of the last few hours. It was funny after reading it a second time.

Yeah, its difficult to do in certain instances, during those times its just one of those things where they are just going to have to deal with it. Otherwise though, its a great thing to be able to do, and if anything it kinda gets medics to prefer healing you over another character because they know that you will do your best to help them as well.

I'm glad your finding characters that you are fond of, demo man is one of the characters that can be incredibly good. like ungodly OP good once you know how to use all of his abilities properly.

I sent you a message on steam.

Fuck you Joe and Gryff. I will be jumping on TF2 tonight. I have not played in ages and got the itch again because you you guys.

I like it alot.

Medic!
*wink*

I C wat u did there

:bowrofl: :bowrofl:


I'm going to step back here and be serious for a minute.

Last year, I spent several weeks working at the Meyer-Werft shipyard in Papenburg, Germany. Specifically, I was installing some equipment in a cruise ship that was nearing the end of the "outfitting" stage (eg: the hull is finished and they're installing all of the electrical / mechanical / cosmetic systems.) So alot of specialists, and also still alot of shipyard workers (electricians, plumbers, carpenters, etc).

Let me tell you something: a tall, well-built, blonde German woman wearing blue coveralls and a yellow hardhat, with a heavy leather toolbelt strapped around her very shapely waist, is the absolute sexiest thing you can ever possibly see.

^ Dude, I could only imagine!

Derrrrppp, missed it. oh well.

http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.co...verything.html

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_D_Z-D2tzi1...1600/ALOT6.png

I was healing Joe last night as we kicked ass, then it switched which team I was on and I lost. So sad.

2+2=10.... in base 4.

can ps3 TF2 play with PC TF2? I know portal 2 works but..

That would be silly. PS3 players would get pwned.

There's one way to find out. You're in the MT group, right? My Steam name is thraddax (you'll find me by the giant chicken.) See if I'm in-game the next time you're on (usually around 10pm your time) and join in.


Hehe. That empty server we wound up on was interesting. Here I was thinking "Oh, a totally empty server. Well, I wonder what achievements I'll get if I push the cart all the way to the end in one single maneuver without stopping?" and then some little Scout shows up! :bowrofl:

Do you have a mic / headset available? I am finding that it makes coordination much easier.

you play video games while getting a hummer and see how YOU do.

I have a mic and headset. I think I saw your name light up talking but I could not actually hear you. I will probably be back on tonight and I will try to stay on later.

Ohh yah, Gryff goes by Cave on there. I either go by shuiends or [MT]Shuiend.