More further

So I got up to where I was supposed to get up to after a couple of attempts of jumping into new portals. More jumping and GLaDOS taunts later I arrive in this area:

  Also, note the external hard drives in a nearby office:

GLaDOS (I'm starting to hate this psychotic thing) says something along the lines of "If you don't stop now, I will kill you.  You don't even care"

This next bit, getting past the rocket launcher was actually kind of fun.  Until I got stuck at the air duct.  Should be 50 minutes after the previous posting.  Which means approximately 5.5 hours total so far.

Will continue later. 

Oh oh oh, I found this plush toy of the Weighted Companion Cube in the VAVLe store... It looked really nice, except it's USD30! Which makes it $45 Aussie dollars.  It's relatively detailed though.

Edit: I must add: What's really interesting about this section of the game, after all the actual test chambers, is that I have no real idea how long this lasts. To explain, during the test chambers 1-19 I mostly knew how long they each would last.  Generally they were about two - four rooms before you got to the exit elevator.  Some were easier than others, the harder ones having more involved triggers required to active the doors, and/or more involved processes to get to the door.  Importantly though, you knew how many test chambers you had left:  your main goal (finishing the test chambers) could be broken up into much shorter goals: finish this chamber, ok X more to go.

But now that there's still a reasonable amount of game left and no test chambers to indicate the progress, it's much more difficult to tell how far along the player is to finishing/the character is from escaping.  This is a very interesting game design technique, because if you were doing the game in real life (Heaven help you) you actually wouldn't know how far along you are and would be incredibly unnerved. It's interesting because it's in contrast to the beginning of the game, with clear, structured goals.

I'm thinking with Portals

[brrup brrup, jump fall jump

boing, boing, boing Vaaapoorised...

Think....]

repeat. several times...

"Target acquired.." "Scanning" "Ouch" "Critical Error"

3.2 hours over a few days...

Then.. Test Chamber 18 came along...

Oh no, timed sequences!

 

Updates will come...

So, yep

  It's been awhile I know, I basically stopped taking screenshots in game and felt it would be more appropriate to discuss each level as a whole and relate them back to each other.  This requires finishing the game first then going through and playing looking at the levels in peace.  Well actually I could do it anyway but the game is too interesting.

The other issue I had was that discussing short pieces of a level or physics puzzle ended being kind of pointless outside of the context of the level it's in.

So eventually I'll go back and take a look at the level designs themselves.  In the meantime, here's my last few.

 

Such a strange case. Not the medic, the computer.

 

Here it is zoomed in. 

 

 

At the top of the Citadel:  It's strange because all through the game wondering around through City 17 it looked deserted and run-down, now I come up to the top of the citadel and there are lots of lights, cars on the highways, working bridges...  It's also interesting that when I was on the ground the top of the citadel was obscured in fog, though now at the top you can clearly see the nightscape.  Maybe.. the "fog" has gone away in the evening..right sure it has...

So I'm going to start the FEAR expansion Extraction Point, then Portal, with Flatout as well every so often.  And umm, non-game things.  Outside.

Half-Life 2 commentary

So I've decided to start a commentary on HL2. Inspired by Phil Reed's commentary, I decided to do one.  However it couldn't be the same sort of thing, for two reasons.  He's already done it (doing it) and I'm not that wordy.  I'm going to try to focus on the level design itself, what would it be like if it was just normal, how the Combine are using it now, and some of the puzzles.  Be Warned, if you haven't played this yet, there may be spoilers

Ok, so a bit of background before we start. I bought The Orange Box of Steam the other month (late last month) and have been playing Half-Life 2.  It runs really well on my machine, X-Fire reports 120 fps, I have everything on High.  Oh, and here's a tip I learnt from the Steam forums, if your card can't do 6x Anti-Aliasing, it won't even try.  Which actually makes sense.  So I put it down to 4x AA and now I have some atleast.  Makes it look alot better.

Spoiler space.

A space for spoilers.

What? no no not quite.

Yeah, I'll get to the content later...  Eight <p> </p>'s later in fact.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

To start:  I am up to the chapter Sandtraps.

(Actually this isn't the beginning of the chapter, but the beginning was inside another tunnel so not really much to tell)

This whole section from Highway 17 chapter seems to use tunnels to separate battles and levels; they also provide a convenient point for the designers to load in the next map and autosave the game...

I'm going to have to skip some parts here as I didn't grab screenshots of everything I wanted to and couldn't be bothered to go back and get them..

  This little gem is another electricity puzzle (turn on something, give something power, turn off something etc.).  It's pretty, though I wonder what that thing on the wall is.

And, oh look it's another battery, in a car, actually a good spot really:

Stay on the rocks!  This section is quite nice, a change from the shooting, mainly because if you fall, you will die.  F6 is your friend.  It seems a relatively well designed, normal looking beach, strange but believable.  I mean I have been to beaches that are that rocky in parts and sandy in others.

That is all for now, mainly because that's all I'm up to now.  At some point I might go back and comment on the earlier chapters, or particular sections.  Feel free to request any.