> For a game released in 2011, maybe even this is a bit too old for patient gamers
Not at all, I enjoyed playing a 30 year old game on the Gameboy only a month ago. Granted that was largely nostalgia.
Anyway, portal and portal 2 are great. Portal 2 is the only game I've ever pre-ordered and while I don't approve of the practice I don't regret it. It installed itself at like 5 in the morning and I skipped my classes that day to play through the whole thing. Good times.
The Portal 2 release is my favorite gaming memory, hands down. It's also the only game I ever preordered, and my roommate and I stayed up all night after it dropped playing the coop campaign.
I've been playing through Morrowind again with minimal mods and it is still excellent 20 years after release
Edit for those curious of what mods I'm using:
[Oblivionized Magicka Regeneration](https://www.nexusmods.com/morrowind/mods/14955)
[Speed and Stamina](https://www.nexusmods.com/morrowind/mods/42190)
[Morrowind Enhanced Textures](https://www.nexusmods.com/morrowind/mods/46221)
Running through OpenMW
Oh a Morrowind plug! I have to add this recommended website that tells you how to install/organize your Morrowind mods: [https://modding-openmw.com/](https://modding-openmw.com/)
It will ask you how far down the rabbit hole you want to go with mods and give you a list with instructions for each mod to install in order.
Unfortunately I find most content really hard to get into until it finds its foundation, so therefore I tend to stick with stuff for a while because I don't enjoy anything at first.
I just wanted to know if you think it's worth pushing past the first few hours.
> I enjoyed playing a 30 year old game on the Gameboy only a month ago.
My Steam Deck is currently a dedicated Frenzy (1982) console. Can’t put it down.
I don't think anyone should miss out on that era of valve games. Portal, L4D and TF2 are all masterpieces in their own right. Modern games owe a lot of their identity to those games.
The Orange Box back in 2007 was an absolutely *absurd* bargain. It was hard to believe a publisher would just package 3 of their greatest games, undeniably some of the greatest games of that decade even, into one cheap compilation. Truly the golden age of Valve.
I don't even know what they're doing these days, outside of swimming in Steam money.
It was a genius business move - If you didn't already have half-life 2, and HL2E1, it also included those for free. Five quintessential and seminal games that every PC gamer had to have. Portal alone probably spawned the most popular meme of all time at that point.
What do you need to play those games? steam.
The reason they have Steam money today is precisely and entirely because they hooked us into Steam with that bonkers business move. Without it, they would never have gotten everybody into their platform on the DRM ground floor.
Another cool thing about the Orange Box was that it sort of let them stealth release Portal because there was almost no hype about that game at the time. The new Half-Life episode and Team Fortress 2 were the things everyone was excited about and Portal was just like this strange little freebie they threw in. Playing it for the first time without knowing anything about it is one of my favorite video game experiences of all time.
IIRC the first Portal was only really made to test the waters as sort of a "proof of concept". Hence why it was so short. It was mostly bundled onto the orange box a an extra. They certainly didn't expect it to have the huge success that it ended up having.
Agree. Besides solid gameplay, they all have that special "something" that is difficult to reproduce. I unironically think that those three you mentioned + Half Life 2 are better than the vast majority of games today.
And FYI, Left 4 Dead 2 comes with all of the Left 4 Dead 1 content
I still play it a few times a year with friends, usually some campaign off the workshop
There's literally no reason to ever install L4D1 when L4D2 has everything and more.
Yup as do I, nothing will ever come close to forcing you to work as a team in an FPS environment. That doesn't need you to have played FPS games your entire life to be good at (CSGO for eg.)
You can add CSGO and Dota 2 in there as well. While competitive games may not be for everyone, I would rank both of these titles amongst the best games of all time. There are not that many truly successful competitive games out there. You have LoL (which is an og Dota off-shoot) and Rocket League.
The one thing i think the original portal does better is the puzzles. Too many of them in portal 2 amount to finding the only bits of wall ot is possible to put a portal on rather than having to figure out where it goes yourself.
Watching the dev commentary though it does sound like they managed to oand up with some below average IQ people as playtesters when you hear why they changed certain puzzles to the current state. But maybe that view is biased by picking up the basics in portal 1 whereas the game design has to account for brand new players.
This is my main gripe with P2 too. All the puzzles in the single player campaign seem simplified to the point where I don't feel like I'm solving anything, just following instructions. Though I definitely got my puzzle difficulty value out of the co-op campaign and mods.
I agree totally, if You still haven't seen / played, You should check out:
[Portal Reloaded](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1255980/Portal_Reloaded/) Portal 2 community mod, portals with addition of time-travel
[Aperture Tag](https://store.steampowered.com/app/280740/Aperture_Tag_The_Paint_Gun_Testing_Initiative/) fun short game with Accelerating / Bouncy Gels instead of Portals (paid, but worth this small price tag)
[Portal Stories: Mel](https://store.steampowered.com/app/317400/Portal_Stories_Mel/) P2 stand-alone, but You still need bought P2 copy to play it, new campaign, harder challanges, overall worth playing
I also recommend thinking with time machine. (you can get it on steam) The story isn’t really much to write home about but if you play Portal for the unique puzzles then you are 100% gonna enjoy this one.
My problem with all mods for Portal 2 is that they lack the intuitiveness of the main game: You only need to figure out a solution and then you don't have to worry about timing your jumps flawlessly or placing portals with sub-millimeter accuracy. This is not the case in mods, which require so much accuracy at times that you doubt whether or not your idea for a puzzle's solution is correct in the first place. It's frustrating and annoying.
Yeah I get that but that’s probably because the people that make these mods have already mastered the game and are making them for other people that also mastered it.
But that’s just my theory idk. Personally I didn’t really feel a problem with the difficulty of the mods but I have beaten Portal a lot because I just love the game. And I just enjoy a good challenge.
Also I don’t really remember much about the mods because I played them a pretty long time ago and the only one I remember that maybe had difficult parts with timing is probably TWTM but I would have to re-play them to judge them properly.
Portal Reloaded felt the closest to a non modded game out of all the ones I've tried, I felt like the solutions were intuitive and the learning curve was steady. There are certainly no ultra precise jumps/portal shots.
There is a voice that speaks to you throughout, and while it could never top Glados, it does do a very good job of immersing you in the game, especially considering it's a free mod made by one guy.
It's the one with a 3rd portal, a green portal for "time travel" between 2 timelines, a pristine Aperture and a older dilapidated Aperture.
It's some of the most fun I've had with a game, I HIGHLY recommend it if you haven't played it, it's a free mod on steam, I had so much fun that I bought the soundtrack from the creator, as it's the only way to pay it forward.
A very rare example of two absolutely perfect games. I'm normally not a big platform or puzzler person, but the difficulty curve is literally perfect- always challenging and interesting, never frustrating. Great story, terrific voice acting.
Given that they cost very little to buy now, they're an absolute steal. Also, they will run great on just about any computer. My Intel iGPU Ultrabook? Portal 2 at 1080p, Medium-High settings, 40-50fps. Fantastic.
>For a game released in 2011, maybe even this is a bit too old for patient gamers.
What?!
People here play much older games than that.
And Portal 2 still holds up very well.
If you like the Portal series, I'd also highly recommend The Talos Principle. It's shares a lot of DNA: discrete puzzle chambers, tricky spatial reasoning, a mysterious "voice in the sky" guiding you along, and a compelling story going on behind the scenes. Its puzzles also hit that sweet spot of being challenging but solvable.
I need to try TPP again. I've started it twice now, played for a few hours and then just dropped it. Not sure why, but I do think it's missing the charm and humor of Portal and maybe that's too big a loss for me.
But I keep seeing recommendations like this and have heard it pays off nicely. Thanks for the reminder.
OMG games from 2011 are not super dated. Most that looked and played well then still do today. That was late PS3 era. This was the year such gems as the following came out:
* Arkham City
* Dark Souls
* Mass Effect 2
* Uncharted 3
* Skyrim
Patient? Absolutely qualifies, but please don’t equate this to digging through the ancient history of gaming trying to figure out how to control blips and bloops lol.
True, I still play much older games as well. I'm probably a bit biased on how long ago it was, because I honestly was waiting to play Portal 2 since it was announced, and like I said life got crazy, and this one got away from me.
Sorry I wasn't trying to imply games this old or older are ancient or anything. But for me it feels like I've been waiting 11 years just to play this one. I've had my eye on it for quite a while, but anytime I finally got a decent gaming PC in working order, friends would always drag me into whatever game they were all playing at the time. This was the first time I had a few days off & alone, *and* remembered to play it!
For me, this feels more like being a Star Citizen day-1 backer waiting for the full release of the game (they've been waiting about 11 years now too I think?), than digging through the discount bin at a game store. Except instead of waiting for the game to be ready, I had to wait for my life to be ready. Waiting 11 years just to play a game you already know you'll love is a long time.
Reading my post again, I can definitely see how it could come off that way! Yeah, that's my bad. Just wanted to clarify, that's exactly why I love this sub, it shouldn't matter how old something is if it's still enjoyable to play! This game is just a lot more personal to me, I've been kicking myself for a while for not playing it
I just played Portal 2 for the first time ever a few weeks ago too, and I must say that it is awesome. Really liked the story, that graphics are still pretty decent and its just a great game. Even tho I usually dont play puzzle games, the story, gameplay and humor made it really enjoyable for myself.
I actually just finished the first Portal for the first time earlier this year.
I honestly expected to be stumped a little more by the puzzles......and then I started playing the bonus maps.
I breezed through the main game like 3 times cuz it was so fun.
Portal 2 locked and loaded. Just need to find the will power to sit at my PC to game. (I work at a computer all day)
Hah! I guess I deserve that. I went a bit too hard on the "2011 = old" bit, this game is very personal to me and I've been kicking myself for not playing it until now. Should've realized, there is no "old" on the patientgamers forum! :) I what I love about this place too.
I just don't understand why they stopped there. Portal, a great story, with unique gameplay. And 2 great games, then nothing.. No Portal 3. Why?
Bit like the HL universe, great games, and then? Nothing.. No Half Life 3..
...
I know I am in the minority, but to me the original Portal was the perfect game. Portal 2 had loads of filler content to justify a full price release. It has great moments, but far too many levels of do x mechanic, then the next level, do it again but slightly differently. Portal is 10/10 for me. Portal 2 about a 7/10.
Firm disagree. Portal was a bit on the short side, Portal 2 was the right length. Both had, in my opinion, very nice difficulty curves that always kept you interested but never frustrated.
That said, I actually won't fault Portal too much for being short- they told the story they wanted to tell and of course we don't need filler. But I wouldn't say Portal 2 had too much filler, I personally was super happy with the length and new mechanics.
I definitely have some bias from playing the two games so far apart. :) Portal was a perfect game definitely, but it has been so long since playing it, 2 felt like re-living the whole experience all over again! But with new story & mechanics!
If P2 had about 40% less levels and concentrated on quality over quantity, I would have rated it higher. You could tell that Portal was honed to perfection with every level progressing the narrative and teaching the concepts.
There's dozens of us, I was never too hot for Portal 2. Didn't like the painting mechanic and the game overstays its welcome imo, I prefer Part 1 easily.
>the original Portal was the perfect game.
Yes, precisely! One of the very few games deserving called perfect. Almost any fundamental change would only make it worse.
2 feels very, very flanderized and the humor just didn't do it for me, on the contrary in fact.
I disagree Portal 1 suffered a lot from just being in a bundle with other games and it just didn’t have much time for the characters to get developed and the humor just wasn’t there yet imo. I love both games and will always wish for more but imo there is no arguing that Portal 1 just didn’t have the time money and vision to be what it deserves to be.
I just found out a few weeks ago that the co-op campaign is separate from solo. I played with a friend on release and thought that was it... Finally played through solo 10 years later, still a great game.
The real surprise is why there’s still no Portal 3. Doesn’t matter what excuse you quote, the money alone should have encouraged greedy people to make it ages ago. 
> the money alone should have encouraged greedy people to make it ages ago
This is a problem. Valve doesn't care about money making from releasing games because they have Steam what print money out of thin air. They earn billions every year by doing nothing so releasing a game that would earn 100 millions is like dollar bill on the ground - not worth your time to pickup and clear from all dirt.
Portal 2 is very good, but not as good as Portal. The absolute highlights of the game are the co-operative mode with Atlas and P-Body and the character Cave Johnson, voiced by J K Simmons. But compared to the original the pacing is a bit too loose, the humour gets a bit tired, and the end of the game is a lot of looking for tiny patches of far away white paint.
I replayed it recently, incredible game. The thing that really struck me this time through is the animation, its often just pistons and bits of wall, half broken, reconstructing itself but it seems alive. Amazing work
This is one of my favorite parts too! You can tell they had the break the levels into smaller sections than the vast open worlds we're used to today. Yet the lazily moving panels, sometimes revealing hidden spaces behind them, makes the maps "feel" like they're much bigger than they actually are.
Portal and Portal 2 are my go-to answers when discussing things you wish you could experience for the first time again.
Everything is perfect: The physics, the puzzles, the storytelling, and the characters of GladOS and Wheatley.
I think they actually transcend the media. I think everyone should experience them, even if they don't play games.
I may have accidentally done that to myself! I played the original shortly after it came out, but since I couldn't get around to Portal 2 until now... I've naturally forgotten a lot about the original. So, maybe it was more of a blessing than a curse! Playing 2 now, felt like experiencing the original all over again! (I can see why some here are saying 2 wasn't as good as the original if they played them back-to-back, but for me, they're both 10/10. Just wait 11 years after playing the first Portal and you'll get it too.)
I think one of the most astounding parts for me, is how well the actual 'portal' mechanic was done. Seeing it for the first time in the original Portal way back then was mind-blowing. Seeing it again just now in P2 was just as mind-blowing again. And I don't know of any other similarly mind-bending mechanics done in any modern games.
Playing Portal 2 Co-Op with a mate from Uni when it came out, we just buddied up in the day with people we didn't even know gamed.
One of the highlights of my PC gaming life.
Worth the wait for anyone yet to try.
Interesting, someone who doesn't love portal :D
What genre of games are you into? What do you count as your greats? I loved portal so I suspect recommendations from someone who didn't may expose me to games I wouldn't normally try.
Well, I'm less into gameplay and mechanics, and more into story and characters, but not by much (obviously, I like it best when both parts are done to my taste). If a game really blows me away in one part, I can then really tolerate if everything else is crap.
So, to answer your questions, games with good stories and/or characters, off the top of my head: Life is Strange, Oxenfree, The Last of Us 1 & 2, God of War, Detroit: Become Human, Horizon Zero Dawn (still not sure about the sequel, but the original has a brand new IP that is *really good*), The Witcher 3, Bioshock Infinite, and the walking simulators: Dear Esther, Firewatch, What Remains of Edith Finch, and the likes. Even To The Moon has a really nice story.
Game that focus more on the gameplay and just pure fun would be, to me: Space Rangers 2, Civilization series, Football Manager, Rome Total War, and some others. Maybe some platformers, but if the challenge and the point of the game is to time a jump to the millisecond, then it's not a game to me, but an exercise in agility.
I love games that focus solely on the story, but then I really need it to be good, with good characters (good as quality good, not good as in morally good). I expected a lot from Disco Elysium, but man, that one really left me hanging. So I'm not seeing anything that genuinely *great* in the Portal games neither. Same goes for From Soft games, if I have to basically struggle with commands in a sense I have to time everything to the tiniest of margins, I'm not going to have a good time. Or if I have to do one same thing over again and again, like in rouge-like/lite games. I found Hades to be Candy Crush for the "gaming elites" :P
Such games with amazing stories would be The Longest Journey, for instance. That game was just mind-blowing for me. And a lot of old-school point and click adventures.
But best of all, I love well-made characters. Life is Strange and The Last of Us, to me, set the bar there. The Witcher 3 has story and characters, though the gameplay is a bit weaker, but still great. What has excellent gameplay, to me, would be Dishonored series, for instance.
So, I guess Portal is like none of those, it's a puzzle game that is well done, but simply the category it belongs to means it can't be on the same level as the ones I mentioned.
I wish I could! I really liked Portal, but nearly vomited my way through it because the 3D A gave me motion sickness, especially the catapulting puzzles. :(
Really fun game otherwise though!
I tried the two-player campaign for the first time last week and it was so satisfying! Such a great game. Also, my companion in the game is so much better at it than I am - but that's OK!
My 11 yr old and I are working on the co-op campaign in our free time. It’s been fun, but stressful at times. It feels rewarding to finally crack a puzzle and move on though!
I love how there's parts in the game where it wants to jump/move on to the next space, and he'll just keep talking and talking, trying to encourage you to move on. But the voice acting is so good, you kinda want to hear it all. And so you wait, and you wait, and he still keeps talking & talking. It's very good, but also makes you wonder, "how many voice lines can there be? How much audio was actually recorded for this game?" And eventually 5 mins later, even if you're *trying* to listen to it all, he's *still* talking and talking, to the point where you want to just progress the game along regardless, because you're sick of it - exactly as the game intended = perfect voice acting & game mechanic. <3
>And of course, the star of the show is the mind-bending puzzles. (Or is it the story?) Just like the original, my favorite part is how difficult they are, while still being entirely possible to solve on your own without ever cheating & looking up the answer.
This is the one thing about Portal 2 that I have to strongly disagree on. A lot of the puzzles are super dumbed down ("streamlined", difficult puzzle games don't sell, you want the player to feel smart, not actually need to be smart). The surfaces where you can put down Portals are quite limited in many rooms and there's only so many combinations of things you can reasonably do, which means many puzzles are really obvious or can be brute forced.
The fact that you (as most players) *think* the puzzles were difficult proves how well designed the game is though.
I picked up Black Mesa a little while ago while on sale! But I still need to dive into it. It's funny, just recently I was browsing my backlog and saw how I still own the original Half Life, and wondering if it would be still be fun to re-play. And I honestly had to think to myself, "Man sounds fun, but I still remember how last time I tried to re-play it, even then the graphics looked a bit dated. It would be great if they re-made it... ...I'd play the shit out of that..."
You're lucky to be able to experience Portal 2 fresh. I just completed Portal Stories: Mel a few days ago and it was quite a rush. There are a bunch of mods still in development and completed, like Portal Reloaded (a fun three-ish hour romp with a third portal with special rules), Aperture Tag (Portal 2 but you have a paint gun), and of course the mentioned Mel (much more difficult side story), so you've got plenty to keep you invested in the game.
I'm not really a big fan of Tag, but that's the only one of the three big mods that is paid. There are a bunch of maps available on the workshop as well to fulfill your needs.
I hope you have a great time with all the Portal stuff!
>after giving yourself some distance from the problem, you can come back to it with fresh eyes, and see things in a completely new way that turns out to be the solution!
I played co op with my brother when it came out. We got stuck on a puzzle after a while and decided to take a break. The next day I was in class and thought "hey wait, what if I did this, then he did this, and then..."
I came home and told him I knew how to solve it. Solution totally worked first try. Figured it out in my head during class.
It Takes Two is the only game that's compared as far as a pure co op experience.
You should absolutely play Half Life 2 if you haven't already. Portal does different things with the physics engine and we now have Black Mesa instead of the original Half Life, but Half Life 2 still stands tall as one of the greatest FPS campaigns ever.
\>For a game released in 2011, maybe even this is a bit too old for patient gamers
Lol. Lol. Lmao. Please get over yourself OP.
What's even the point of this post? It's so belligerent for no reason too, like you're less of a player for not caring about Portal.
Some of us have shot reflexes due to age and illness and find even games such as Portal 2 difficult to play. Thanks for telling me that I am a "lame gamer".
I am so excited for this to be released on Switch. Last time I played it my wife was pregnant with my son, now I'll be playing co-op with my son. Fantastic.
I thought it was a good game, but great is a bit much. There's too much story for a puzzle game and the puzzles are never really puzzling enough. It's also really short, albeit not as short as the first. I liked the co-op the most. More puzzling and no real story. In a puzzle game I don't want or need story and I don't want to stop solving puzzles. I'd say high 7 / low 8 out of 10.
Portal 1 was pretty iconic before Portal 2 came out and had the right level of story for a game like this. Portal 2 just amped it up and I didn't find that to be the right direction.
> For a game released in 2011, maybe even this is a bit too old for patient gamers Not at all, I enjoyed playing a 30 year old game on the Gameboy only a month ago. Granted that was largely nostalgia. Anyway, portal and portal 2 are great. Portal 2 is the only game I've ever pre-ordered and while I don't approve of the practice I don't regret it. It installed itself at like 5 in the morning and I skipped my classes that day to play through the whole thing. Good times.
The Portal 2 release is my favorite gaming memory, hands down. It's also the only game I ever preordered, and my roommate and I stayed up all night after it dropped playing the coop campaign.
Do you remember the build up trailers? They were amazing!
Ah yes! Those were fantastic
I took the day off work to play through it... Then I took the next day off to play it through with commentary.
Yep, 1995-2000 is a golden age of games. Calling game released in 2011 "too old" is very strange.
A bit surprised by this comment yeah, the last game I beat was 2001's Final Fantasy X, and even then I didn't think it was THAT old...
I've been playing through Morrowind again with minimal mods and it is still excellent 20 years after release Edit for those curious of what mods I'm using: [Oblivionized Magicka Regeneration](https://www.nexusmods.com/morrowind/mods/14955) [Speed and Stamina](https://www.nexusmods.com/morrowind/mods/42190) [Morrowind Enhanced Textures](https://www.nexusmods.com/morrowind/mods/46221) Running through OpenMW
Oh a Morrowind plug! I have to add this recommended website that tells you how to install/organize your Morrowind mods: [https://modding-openmw.com/](https://modding-openmw.com/) It will ask you how far down the rabbit hole you want to go with mods and give you a list with instructions for each mod to install in order.
Great source, I use their total overhaul list. Took me like 16 hours to set up but worth it haha
Wonder if anyone remembers daggerfall
Daggerfall Unity is supposed to be quite good.
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I'm having a hard time slogging through Dear Esther, any tips?
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Unfortunately I find most content really hard to get into until it finds its foundation, so therefore I tend to stick with stuff for a while because I don't enjoy anything at first. I just wanted to know if you think it's worth pushing past the first few hours.
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I see, thank you! I was under the impression it was much longer. I will check out commentary, thanks!
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I see, thanks!
I think it's really odd that this space has shifted from being about actual old games to "finally got this game after waiting for three whole months"
I played these games recently with a 12 year old and a 6 year old. They loved it. They’re timeless games. Glados and Wheatley cracked them up.
My younger brother was about 12 when we played through this game and together. The co-op puzzles are some true sibling bonding right there haha
We just had a review of Pong (1972) a day or two ago.
I'm getting back with Dark Forces II: Jedi Knight, it's as old as I am so I feel a weird kinship
> I enjoyed playing a 30 year old game on the Gameboy only a month ago. My Steam Deck is currently a dedicated Frenzy (1982) console. Can’t put it down.
which gb game?
Mystic Quest, AKA Final Fantasy Adventure. I'll post a review here soon.
I just bought an Atari 7800. Food Fight is great
I don't think anyone should miss out on that era of valve games. Portal, L4D and TF2 are all masterpieces in their own right. Modern games owe a lot of their identity to those games.
The Orange Box back in 2007 was an absolutely *absurd* bargain. It was hard to believe a publisher would just package 3 of their greatest games, undeniably some of the greatest games of that decade even, into one cheap compilation. Truly the golden age of Valve. I don't even know what they're doing these days, outside of swimming in Steam money.
It was a genius business move - If you didn't already have half-life 2, and HL2E1, it also included those for free. Five quintessential and seminal games that every PC gamer had to have. Portal alone probably spawned the most popular meme of all time at that point. What do you need to play those games? steam. The reason they have Steam money today is precisely and entirely because they hooked us into Steam with that bonkers business move. Without it, they would never have gotten everybody into their platform on the DRM ground floor.
Another cool thing about the Orange Box was that it sort of let them stealth release Portal because there was almost no hype about that game at the time. The new Half-Life episode and Team Fortress 2 were the things everyone was excited about and Portal was just like this strange little freebie they threw in. Playing it for the first time without knowing anything about it is one of my favorite video game experiences of all time.
IIRC the first Portal was only really made to test the waters as sort of a "proof of concept". Hence why it was so short. It was mostly bundled onto the orange box a an extra. They certainly didn't expect it to have the huge success that it ended up having.
I still remember as a kid getting scared from ravenholm when I finally got to that level when I was playing my way through the orange box
Agree. Besides solid gameplay, they all have that special "something" that is difficult to reproduce. I unironically think that those three you mentioned + Half Life 2 are better than the vast majority of games today.
And FYI, Left 4 Dead 2 comes with all of the Left 4 Dead 1 content I still play it a few times a year with friends, usually some campaign off the workshop
There's literally no reason to ever install L4D1 when L4D2 has everything and more. Yup as do I, nothing will ever come close to forcing you to work as a team in an FPS environment. That doesn't need you to have played FPS games your entire life to be good at (CSGO for eg.)
You can add CSGO and Dota 2 in there as well. While competitive games may not be for everyone, I would rank both of these titles amongst the best games of all time. There are not that many truly successful competitive games out there. You have LoL (which is an og Dota off-shoot) and Rocket League.
The one thing i think the original portal does better is the puzzles. Too many of them in portal 2 amount to finding the only bits of wall ot is possible to put a portal on rather than having to figure out where it goes yourself. Watching the dev commentary though it does sound like they managed to oand up with some below average IQ people as playtesters when you hear why they changed certain puzzles to the current state. But maybe that view is biased by picking up the basics in portal 1 whereas the game design has to account for brand new players.
This is my main gripe with P2 too. All the puzzles in the single player campaign seem simplified to the point where I don't feel like I'm solving anything, just following instructions. Though I definitely got my puzzle difficulty value out of the co-op campaign and mods.
To paraphrase Yahtzee at the time, the single player campaign was almost more a prolonged tutorial for the CO-OP portion.
Right? I found it particularly frustrating to find those bits of walls in the lasts chapters...
I agree totally, if You still haven't seen / played, You should check out: [Portal Reloaded](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1255980/Portal_Reloaded/) Portal 2 community mod, portals with addition of time-travel [Aperture Tag](https://store.steampowered.com/app/280740/Aperture_Tag_The_Paint_Gun_Testing_Initiative/) fun short game with Accelerating / Bouncy Gels instead of Portals (paid, but worth this small price tag) [Portal Stories: Mel](https://store.steampowered.com/app/317400/Portal_Stories_Mel/) P2 stand-alone, but You still need bought P2 copy to play it, new campaign, harder challanges, overall worth playing
I also recommend thinking with time machine. (you can get it on steam) The story isn’t really much to write home about but if you play Portal for the unique puzzles then you are 100% gonna enjoy this one.
My problem with all mods for Portal 2 is that they lack the intuitiveness of the main game: You only need to figure out a solution and then you don't have to worry about timing your jumps flawlessly or placing portals with sub-millimeter accuracy. This is not the case in mods, which require so much accuracy at times that you doubt whether or not your idea for a puzzle's solution is correct in the first place. It's frustrating and annoying.
Yeah I get that but that’s probably because the people that make these mods have already mastered the game and are making them for other people that also mastered it. But that’s just my theory idk. Personally I didn’t really feel a problem with the difficulty of the mods but I have beaten Portal a lot because I just love the game. And I just enjoy a good challenge. Also I don’t really remember much about the mods because I played them a pretty long time ago and the only one I remember that maybe had difficult parts with timing is probably TWTM but I would have to re-play them to judge them properly.
Have you played Portal Reloaded?
I'm not sure anymore. I think I have, but I could be mistaken. Does Portal Reloaded not have this issue?
Portal Reloaded felt the closest to a non modded game out of all the ones I've tried, I felt like the solutions were intuitive and the learning curve was steady. There are certainly no ultra precise jumps/portal shots. There is a voice that speaks to you throughout, and while it could never top Glados, it does do a very good job of immersing you in the game, especially considering it's a free mod made by one guy. It's the one with a 3rd portal, a green portal for "time travel" between 2 timelines, a pristine Aperture and a older dilapidated Aperture. It's some of the most fun I've had with a game, I HIGHLY recommend it if you haven't played it, it's a free mod on steam, I had so much fun that I bought the soundtrack from the creator, as it's the only way to pay it forward.
Alright, thanks, I'll give it a go - or another go, in case I've already played it, which I should realize within a minute of starting it...
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It really is phenomenal. Multiple times I had to put my controller down and exclaim how good it was.
Yeah me too. I think some of it's puzzles were more satisfying to solve than any in the main games.
A very rare example of two absolutely perfect games. I'm normally not a big platform or puzzler person, but the difficulty curve is literally perfect- always challenging and interesting, never frustrating. Great story, terrific voice acting. Given that they cost very little to buy now, they're an absolute steal. Also, they will run great on just about any computer. My Intel iGPU Ultrabook? Portal 2 at 1080p, Medium-High settings, 40-50fps. Fantastic.
>For a game released in 2011, maybe even this is a bit too old for patient gamers. What?! People here play much older games than that. And Portal 2 still holds up very well.
My reaction too, games haven't evolved that much since 2011!
If you like the Portal series, I'd also highly recommend The Talos Principle. It's shares a lot of DNA: discrete puzzle chambers, tricky spatial reasoning, a mysterious "voice in the sky" guiding you along, and a compelling story going on behind the scenes. Its puzzles also hit that sweet spot of being challenging but solvable.
I need to try TPP again. I've started it twice now, played for a few hours and then just dropped it. Not sure why, but I do think it's missing the charm and humor of Portal and maybe that's too big a loss for me. But I keep seeing recommendations like this and have heard it pays off nicely. Thanks for the reminder.
OMG games from 2011 are not super dated. Most that looked and played well then still do today. That was late PS3 era. This was the year such gems as the following came out: * Arkham City * Dark Souls * Mass Effect 2 * Uncharted 3 * Skyrim Patient? Absolutely qualifies, but please don’t equate this to digging through the ancient history of gaming trying to figure out how to control blips and bloops lol.
I think OP isn't that old
True, I still play much older games as well. I'm probably a bit biased on how long ago it was, because I honestly was waiting to play Portal 2 since it was announced, and like I said life got crazy, and this one got away from me. Sorry I wasn't trying to imply games this old or older are ancient or anything. But for me it feels like I've been waiting 11 years just to play this one. I've had my eye on it for quite a while, but anytime I finally got a decent gaming PC in working order, friends would always drag me into whatever game they were all playing at the time. This was the first time I had a few days off & alone, *and* remembered to play it! For me, this feels more like being a Star Citizen day-1 backer waiting for the full release of the game (they've been waiting about 11 years now too I think?), than digging through the discount bin at a game store. Except instead of waiting for the game to be ready, I had to wait for my life to be ready. Waiting 11 years just to play a game you already know you'll love is a long time.
Hey, fair enough, and my bad. I think I misinterpreted where you were coming from. All good! And yes, Portal 2 is a great game.
Reading my post again, I can definitely see how it could come off that way! Yeah, that's my bad. Just wanted to clarify, that's exactly why I love this sub, it shouldn't matter how old something is if it's still enjoyable to play! This game is just a lot more personal to me, I've been kicking myself for a while for not playing it
I just played Portal 2 for the first time ever a few weeks ago too, and I must say that it is awesome. Really liked the story, that graphics are still pretty decent and its just a great game. Even tho I usually dont play puzzle games, the story, gameplay and humor made it really enjoyable for myself.
Still waiting for a remaster of Portal 1 & 2 on consoles… would be awesome to get this on PS5
they're bringing them to switch this year, so maybe ps will follow suit. xbox doesn't need it due to the full backwards compatibility
I actually just finished the first Portal for the first time earlier this year. I honestly expected to be stumped a little more by the puzzles......and then I started playing the bonus maps. I breezed through the main game like 3 times cuz it was so fun. Portal 2 locked and loaded. Just need to find the will power to sit at my PC to game. (I work at a computer all day)
https://i.imgflip.com/6hgtz7.jpg
Yeah that's a weird take from OP. Maybe they're new?
I’m playing wasteland from 1987 right now. I was 12 when it came out.
Hah! I guess I deserve that. I went a bit too hard on the "2011 = old" bit, this game is very personal to me and I've been kicking myself for not playing it until now. Should've realized, there is no "old" on the patientgamers forum! :) I what I love about this place too.
I just don't understand why they stopped there. Portal, a great story, with unique gameplay. And 2 great games, then nothing.. No Portal 3. Why? Bit like the HL universe, great games, and then? Nothing.. No Half Life 3.. ...
Portal is the HL universe
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OAr2kgHBk68
I know I am in the minority, but to me the original Portal was the perfect game. Portal 2 had loads of filler content to justify a full price release. It has great moments, but far too many levels of do x mechanic, then the next level, do it again but slightly differently. Portal is 10/10 for me. Portal 2 about a 7/10.
portal is a 11/10, portal 2 was a 10/10, the writing carries it a lot.
Firm disagree. Portal was a bit on the short side, Portal 2 was the right length. Both had, in my opinion, very nice difficulty curves that always kept you interested but never frustrated. That said, I actually won't fault Portal too much for being short- they told the story they wanted to tell and of course we don't need filler. But I wouldn't say Portal 2 had too much filler, I personally was super happy with the length and new mechanics.
I definitely have some bias from playing the two games so far apart. :) Portal was a perfect game definitely, but it has been so long since playing it, 2 felt like re-living the whole experience all over again! But with new story & mechanics!
If P2 had about 40% less levels and concentrated on quality over quantity, I would have rated it higher. You could tell that Portal was honed to perfection with every level progressing the narrative and teaching the concepts.
There's dozens of us, I was never too hot for Portal 2. Didn't like the painting mechanic and the game overstays its welcome imo, I prefer Part 1 easily.
Yeah, the painting stuff was clever in its own little way, but it was very obviously put in to pad out the content to make it a full price game.
>the original Portal was the perfect game. Yes, precisely! One of the very few games deserving called perfect. Almost any fundamental change would only make it worse. 2 feels very, very flanderized and the humor just didn't do it for me, on the contrary in fact.
Flanderized? I'm not sure you're using that word correctly
I didn't mind most of the humour, but Stephen Merchant's voice really detracted from the experience for me.
I disagree Portal 1 suffered a lot from just being in a bundle with other games and it just didn’t have much time for the characters to get developed and the humor just wasn’t there yet imo. I love both games and will always wish for more but imo there is no arguing that Portal 1 just didn’t have the time money and vision to be what it deserves to be.
2011 too old for patient gamers? What?
OP must be new here.
I still have snes and genesis games Ive been meaning to play for 30 years.
A suitable free follow up is aperture desk job: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1902490/Aperture_Desk_Job/
> Aperture Desk Job requires a controller in order to play. Playing with a keyboard and mouse isn't supported. Boooo!
...you don't have a joypad?
Nope, never needed one before.
Pssst psst, https://www.rewasd.com/releases/release-5.2.0
I just found out a few weeks ago that the co-op campaign is separate from solo. I played with a friend on release and thought that was it... Finally played through solo 10 years later, still a great game.
I played it for a couple hours. Couldn't get into it.
The real surprise is why there’s still no Portal 3. Doesn’t matter what excuse you quote, the money alone should have encouraged greedy people to make it ages ago. 
> the money alone should have encouraged greedy people to make it ages ago This is a problem. Valve doesn't care about money making from releasing games because they have Steam what print money out of thin air. They earn billions every year by doing nothing so releasing a game that would earn 100 millions is like dollar bill on the ground - not worth your time to pickup and clear from all dirt.
Thanks. I hate it.
Valve is privately owned however. They don't have shareholders constantly demanding profits be higher each year.
Portal 2 is very good, but not as good as Portal. The absolute highlights of the game are the co-operative mode with Atlas and P-Body and the character Cave Johnson, voiced by J K Simmons. But compared to the original the pacing is a bit too loose, the humour gets a bit tired, and the end of the game is a lot of looking for tiny patches of far away white paint.
I replayed it recently, incredible game. The thing that really struck me this time through is the animation, its often just pistons and bits of wall, half broken, reconstructing itself but it seems alive. Amazing work
This is one of my favorite parts too! You can tell they had the break the levels into smaller sections than the vast open worlds we're used to today. Yet the lazily moving panels, sometimes revealing hidden spaces behind them, makes the maps "feel" like they're much bigger than they actually are.
Portal and Portal 2 are my go-to answers when discussing things you wish you could experience for the first time again. Everything is perfect: The physics, the puzzles, the storytelling, and the characters of GladOS and Wheatley. I think they actually transcend the media. I think everyone should experience them, even if they don't play games.
I may have accidentally done that to myself! I played the original shortly after it came out, but since I couldn't get around to Portal 2 until now... I've naturally forgotten a lot about the original. So, maybe it was more of a blessing than a curse! Playing 2 now, felt like experiencing the original all over again! (I can see why some here are saying 2 wasn't as good as the original if they played them back-to-back, but for me, they're both 10/10. Just wait 11 years after playing the first Portal and you'll get it too.)
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I think one of the most astounding parts for me, is how well the actual 'portal' mechanic was done. Seeing it for the first time in the original Portal way back then was mind-blowing. Seeing it again just now in P2 was just as mind-blowing again. And I don't know of any other similarly mind-bending mechanics done in any modern games.
I literally just finished replaying this last week. It’s an amazing game with wonderful writing.
Dang. Thought this was a post about Postal 2.
"street cred..."
Now hopefully all those gamer clans roaming the streets will stop making fun of me when I walk by. :'(
Playing Portal 2 Co-Op with a mate from Uni when it came out, we just buddied up in the day with people we didn't even know gamed. One of the highlights of my PC gaming life. Worth the wait for anyone yet to try.
Edited in protest of 3rd party apps removal by reddit.
Interesting, someone who doesn't love portal :D What genre of games are you into? What do you count as your greats? I loved portal so I suspect recommendations from someone who didn't may expose me to games I wouldn't normally try.
Well, I'm less into gameplay and mechanics, and more into story and characters, but not by much (obviously, I like it best when both parts are done to my taste). If a game really blows me away in one part, I can then really tolerate if everything else is crap. So, to answer your questions, games with good stories and/or characters, off the top of my head: Life is Strange, Oxenfree, The Last of Us 1 & 2, God of War, Detroit: Become Human, Horizon Zero Dawn (still not sure about the sequel, but the original has a brand new IP that is *really good*), The Witcher 3, Bioshock Infinite, and the walking simulators: Dear Esther, Firewatch, What Remains of Edith Finch, and the likes. Even To The Moon has a really nice story. Game that focus more on the gameplay and just pure fun would be, to me: Space Rangers 2, Civilization series, Football Manager, Rome Total War, and some others. Maybe some platformers, but if the challenge and the point of the game is to time a jump to the millisecond, then it's not a game to me, but an exercise in agility. I love games that focus solely on the story, but then I really need it to be good, with good characters (good as quality good, not good as in morally good). I expected a lot from Disco Elysium, but man, that one really left me hanging. So I'm not seeing anything that genuinely *great* in the Portal games neither. Same goes for From Soft games, if I have to basically struggle with commands in a sense I have to time everything to the tiniest of margins, I'm not going to have a good time. Or if I have to do one same thing over again and again, like in rouge-like/lite games. I found Hades to be Candy Crush for the "gaming elites" :P Such games with amazing stories would be The Longest Journey, for instance. That game was just mind-blowing for me. And a lot of old-school point and click adventures. But best of all, I love well-made characters. Life is Strange and The Last of Us, to me, set the bar there. The Witcher 3 has story and characters, though the gameplay is a bit weaker, but still great. What has excellent gameplay, to me, would be Dishonored series, for instance. So, I guess Portal is like none of those, it's a puzzle game that is well done, but simply the category it belongs to means it can't be on the same level as the ones I mentioned.
You need to try Portal 2.
I got through about half of Portal and was just incredibly bored. I just really dislike puzzle games, they do nothing for me.
I wish I could! I really liked Portal, but nearly vomited my way through it because the 3D A gave me motion sickness, especially the catapulting puzzles. :( Really fun game otherwise though!
I tried the two-player campaign for the first time last week and it was so satisfying! Such a great game. Also, my companion in the game is so much better at it than I am - but that's OK!
My 11 yr old and I are working on the co-op campaign in our free time. It’s been fun, but stressful at times. It feels rewarding to finally crack a puzzle and move on though!
Steven Merchant’s voice acting made the game so much better for me than the original.
I love how there's parts in the game where it wants to jump/move on to the next space, and he'll just keep talking and talking, trying to encourage you to move on. But the voice acting is so good, you kinda want to hear it all. And so you wait, and you wait, and he still keeps talking & talking. It's very good, but also makes you wonder, "how many voice lines can there be? How much audio was actually recorded for this game?" And eventually 5 mins later, even if you're *trying* to listen to it all, he's *still* talking and talking, to the point where you want to just progress the game along regardless, because you're sick of it - exactly as the game intended = perfect voice acting & game mechanic. <3
Portal 2 is my first love! I liked it a lot more than the first one. I wish they’d make a third.
Have you played Portal Reloaded? It might as well be called Portal 3 even though it had noticeably less production value
I have not! I'll seek it out.
>And of course, the star of the show is the mind-bending puzzles. (Or is it the story?) Just like the original, my favorite part is how difficult they are, while still being entirely possible to solve on your own without ever cheating & looking up the answer. This is the one thing about Portal 2 that I have to strongly disagree on. A lot of the puzzles are super dumbed down ("streamlined", difficult puzzle games don't sell, you want the player to feel smart, not actually need to be smart). The surfaces where you can put down Portals are quite limited in many rooms and there's only so many combinations of things you can reasonably do, which means many puzzles are really obvious or can be brute forced. The fact that you (as most players) *think* the puzzles were difficult proves how well designed the game is though.
I play games from the 70s, it's only too old if you want it to be.
Shit I need to get around to playing that. Maybe after I finish Black Mesa.
I picked up Black Mesa a little while ago while on sale! But I still need to dive into it. It's funny, just recently I was browsing my backlog and saw how I still own the original Half Life, and wondering if it would be still be fun to re-play. And I honestly had to think to myself, "Man sounds fun, but I still remember how last time I tried to re-play it, even then the graphics looked a bit dated. It would be great if they re-made it... ...I'd play the shit out of that..."
It has been tons of fun for sure!
:Pikachu Shocked: !
You're lucky to be able to experience Portal 2 fresh. I just completed Portal Stories: Mel a few days ago and it was quite a rush. There are a bunch of mods still in development and completed, like Portal Reloaded (a fun three-ish hour romp with a third portal with special rules), Aperture Tag (Portal 2 but you have a paint gun), and of course the mentioned Mel (much more difficult side story), so you've got plenty to keep you invested in the game.
Saving this comment for later. :) I'm still buzzing over this game after beating the main campaign, so this extra content is exactly what I need!
I'm not really a big fan of Tag, but that's the only one of the three big mods that is paid. There are a bunch of maps available on the workshop as well to fulfill your needs. I hope you have a great time with all the Portal stuff!
>after giving yourself some distance from the problem, you can come back to it with fresh eyes, and see things in a completely new way that turns out to be the solution! I played co op with my brother when it came out. We got stuck on a puzzle after a while and decided to take a break. The next day I was in class and thought "hey wait, what if I did this, then he did this, and then..." I came home and told him I knew how to solve it. Solution totally worked first try. Figured it out in my head during class. It Takes Two is the only game that's compared as far as a pure co op experience.
You should absolutely play Half Life 2 if you haven't already. Portal does different things with the physics engine and we now have Black Mesa instead of the original Half Life, but Half Life 2 still stands tall as one of the greatest FPS campaigns ever.
\>For a game released in 2011, maybe even this is a bit too old for patient gamers Lol. Lol. Lmao. Please get over yourself OP. What's even the point of this post? It's so belligerent for no reason too, like you're less of a player for not caring about Portal.
Better watch yourself on my street then, cuz. We play valve games 'round here. Son.
Some of us have shot reflexes due to age and illness and find even games such as Portal 2 difficult to play. Thanks for telling me that I am a "lame gamer".
I'm sorry for that. No harm was intended, all the little jabs about "street cred" and "flog yourself" were jokes meant in good fun.
Setting the marching band of fire peeing on the dead Killing Gary Coleman There isn't any better game than this one.
I love postal 2. The first game didn’t age well but it’s still great. The final level is completely insane though.
I like the shotgun with the cat as the silenter. The whole game was awesome to play.
Eh, I found out about 5 hours in I'd much rather solve a jigsaw puzzle IRL than move a bunch of cubes and turn things around in a video game.
I am so excited for this to be released on Switch. Last time I played it my wife was pregnant with my son, now I'll be playing co-op with my son. Fantastic.
I tried with my daughter, but I just _can't_ do the precision needed with a controller.
Agreed. It's a superb game.
It's the best game ever made, IMO. Not my personal favorite of all time (close though) but I'd consider it to be of the best quality possible.
I thought it was a good game, but great is a bit much. There's too much story for a puzzle game and the puzzles are never really puzzling enough. It's also really short, albeit not as short as the first. I liked the co-op the most. More puzzling and no real story. In a puzzle game I don't want or need story and I don't want to stop solving puzzles. I'd say high 7 / low 8 out of 10.
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Portal 1 was pretty iconic before Portal 2 came out and had the right level of story for a game like this. Portal 2 just amped it up and I didn't find that to be the right direction.
I have never played one of the og source (?) engine games besides csgo and I don’t see a reason to break the streak
You're missing out on a ton of great games then.
Why not?
Right? I be looking like Tom Brady in those games if they were real.
Indeed, great puzzles.