Portal 2 - PC Gamer demo impressions

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In the demo, you meet one of GLaDOS's personality spheres, a brit called Weylan. Think of him as a sentient Companion Cube. He's funny and clever, but shy. In one small piece of brilliant comedy, he won't plug himself into a particular piece of machinery until you turn round. "Don't look!"

The lighting model has been significantly improved, as have the textures of the world. Whereas Portal 1 was clearly a fairly low-art project, Portal 2 is of the same art and graphical quality you'd expect of, say, a new Half-Life 2 episode. There's also a fluid dynamics model added, and better physics simulation.

There a bunch of new problems and solutions in the game, but the fundamentals of how you interact in the world are exactly the same. You fire entry and exit portals, and you pick up and move objects. There are no guns, no buckets of paint. It's still the same old Portal. Here's what's new:

• Fluid dynamics
  Great globs of liquid fall from pipes, and they change the way you move. Yellow paint makes you move at great speed. Blue makes you bounce high into the air. You spread them by placing portals under their exit pipes, and they slosh around beautifully. The fluid dynamics are startling.
• Excursion funnels
  Now you can jump into a floating tractor beam, or as Valve calls them, the 'excursion funnel'. If you place your portals right, you can divert them from their original path.
• Vacuum tubes
  They were used as a comedy way to suck up turrets – just turn their vacuum to the exit of a portal. At one point, the vacuum tubes sucked the panels off a wall.
• Mirrors
  Used to divert lasers, and to cook the little turrets. "I'm burning!" they cry, as they slowly toast.

Writer Erik Wolpaw explains that they "wanted to make a bigger and better game, but maintain the Portal feel that players fell in love with." He also said that the game "won't be significantly harder, even despite the additional mechanics."

Sounds cool, I wish it hadn't been delayed for PS3 though... Oh well. :P

Here's the trailer

Is the character dragged back into the Enrichment Center?

Here's the trailer

Is the character dragged back into the Enrichment Center?

martialbullet

Looks good!

Love that little jab at the end.

INTERVIEW

Looks fantastic. The graphical upgrade is incredible, this really looks like a big budget game. The new portal manipulation options are really cool, should be pretty varied. However, I'm most excited about the new characters, GLaDOS is obviously awesome, but the spheres should add another element to the game. The writing is top notch, as expected. "Turn around, I can't do it if you're watching." :lol: Priceless.

Vader, those looked great but I honestly stopped watching a few minutes in; I'm not sure I'd call those spoilers but I'm looking forward to playing the whole game. :)

He won't plug himself into a particular piece of machinery until you turn round. "Don't look!"

I did. Most was similar to the other link. Also the whole jumping high on those colors... I saw that in an indie game that was based around that kind of platforming. It was for PC. Anybody know what game it was?Nifty_Shark

Its called Tag; The power of Paint, and it is free.

Here it is a link, it is in portuguese though. You only need to click on "Clique para baixar" Here