what's your steam username?

You'd love to know that, wouldn't you? So that you can stalk me, and insult me, and tell me how much better it would be for everyone if I were dead.

It's thraddax.

when I enable my psn -> steam link, I'll share my username up here. so you can all take steam baths with me

We were watching a few episodes of Pawn Stars tonight and this commercial for Portal 2 came on:

(I had not seen any until now. Thought I would share)

I love my computer. Defaulted to very high settings and it runs so smooth. Woot. I suppose I should expect that though with 2gb of video memory, 8gb of ram, and an water cooled OC'd quad core processor at 3.62ghz.

That's right, I'm bragging about my sweet computer specs.

You will perform the same with half the ram, and half the processor cores. This game, like most, are highly dependent on the video card abilities.

Fwiw, my hd5830 which replaced the hd4890 (under warranty. <3 xfx) that I bought in 2009 for $150 plays it flawlessly at 1080P with maxed graphics. Now my 12 gigs of ram and I7 920 dont play a very big part in that.

Hell, even my laptop's gtx 280m plays it at 60 fps.

Anybody notice how much more often P2 loads compared to P1, and how it goes to a loading screen instead of overlaying the words?

"This next test was designed by one of Aperture's Nobel Prize winners. It doesn't say what the prize was for. Well, I know it wasn't for being immune to neurotoxin."

Does anybody else think that the single-player levels are seeming a tad easy? I just got to the start of Chapter 4, and I just can't shake the notion that despite having some interesting new tools to play with, these tests don't seem as complex as they were in the first game.

the hole thing was to easy.

I was really hoping they got much harder/more complex.

yeah i get that impression too. the later chapters get a bit more challenging, but they are by no means impassibly difficult. chapter 7 is interesting.

Maybe "easy" isn't the right word, but perhaps "one trick pony".

On the one hand, it's interesting how much larger and more open most of the test chambers are. I wonder if this represents some technological difference in the game engine, or if it's purely a stylistic choice.

On the other hand, it seems that each chamber only has a single puzzle in it, even if it's repeated several times. It's mostly been a matter of "ok, if I put portals there and there, and then jump into this one, and then re-place the first portal while I'm airborne, then I'll land there, and I can grab that cube. So I'll just go ahead and repeat that exact process six times.

Chapter 4 Spoiler:

Like the room in chapter 4 with the three lasers and three receivers, but only two blocks. To me, at least, it was obvious within a few seconds that you needed to send all three beams through a single portal to get them where they needed to go, and after that it was just a bunch of tedious trial-end-error getting the angles correct.

END SPOILER

Or maybe I'm just jaded...

Has anybody noticed numerous billboard advertisements in their city? This is the most advertised game to date if you were to ask me. I counted 4 billboards just on the northwest side of town, not to mention countless commercials.

I don't get TV commercials, but I did notice a billboard in San Marcos, ironically right next to Fry's.

Funny that you mention it. I can't recall having seen a billboard ad for a videogame since Red Dead Redemption. They had Chicago and NYC plastered with those things.

This, of course, brings up painful memories. My good friend and neighbor Mark Robinson was the lead developer for the Midnight Club series, and after the most recent installment was done, they put him in charge of the Red Dead team. Needless to say, as soon as that game was released (and had set every record imaginable for game sales) they laid him off along with nearly the entire Rockstar Carlsbad team.

Thanks for bringing that up.

You monster.

no billboards out here. and the trees are saying nothing.

btw, I finished the game this afternoon.

so short. and i'm tormented by the damn playstation network outage preventing me from network coop.

I actually got past that section on accident. I just happened to drop a cube in the right place and it worked.

Well, we had some friends/family over today and I finally started playing (coop split screen). Was pretty good. I'll fire it up in single player tonight if I get a chance.

How many levels are there?

Chapter 5 Spoiler:

Ok, I have to rescind my previous criticism a bit. I've just gotten into the Aperture Classic phase of the game, and it's actually kind of interesting. Still somewhat basic in terms of problem-solving, but for the first time I'm really starting to enjoy the atmosphere of a game.

I love the old logos and vintage feel. You'll continue to like the forthcoming levels I suspect.

Rob, there are 9 chapters. each varies in length.