Portal 2

[Meiscool]

I found them more fun to watch than to play. Definitely unique games though.

[Prpl_Mage]

Just finished portal 2, a lot better than the first game. Storywise and puzzlewise. Good game.
Also, coop worked without the slightest lagg today. Must've just been a bad connection day. Nothing beats coop that makes you want to punch your friend in the head.

By the way. Are there a lot of hidden stuff in these games? Noticed some achievments for finding secret broadcasts or something. Also something about a missing experiment and a portrait. Only "hidden" thing I found was that laser room with a turret in an air shaft. I lasered the turret in the shaft and could enter to find a choir of turrets singing.
Other than that I thought the closed testing centre was hidden, turns out it was the next part of the story.

[Archem]

Yeah, Valve likes to hide things in their games. This game is rich in hidden awesome.

[Prpl_Mage]

Just fixed the missing experiment which was more or less an empty dock. Don't know the point of that though. Glados didn't have anything to say about it. And the last viral test doors where down the same path so I got that one as well. Gotta love when science wants to decrease your water level to 20%, also when you start bleeding gasoline or why not.

Messing around with the testroom editor. It's pretty well done. Just takes some time to load when you're doing larger stuff. Also, I miss doors. I like doors. Just realised that glass could be converted into fence as well.

[Archem]

Just fixed the missing experiment which was more or less an empty dock. Don't know the point of that though.

Ah, the Borealis. It's a reference to the Half-Life series. It's said that Portal and Half-Life exist in the same universe (Aperture Science is supposed to be a rival company to Black Mesa, the research facility that the protagonist from the Half-Life games worked in before things went to hell). The Borealis was in the leaked Half-Life 2 beta, and was a cargo ship trapped in an ice field that was covered in zombies. Many hints suggest that, while the level was cut from the final game, it's due to reappear in Half-Life 2 Episode 3. This Easter Egg suggests that it's an Aperture Science ship, and that part of the reason for the ship's significance is that it held some big, important technology on-board. Perhaps portal devices.

[Razor]

By the way. Are there a lot of hidden stuff in these games? Noticed some achievments for finding secret broadcasts or something.

Gather 'round friends, I have a story to tell.
The secret broadcasts thing, if you only played Portal 1 once (which I suspect is the case) then this would come across as confusing. But here's why.
So Portal 1 was released and it was a great game and everyone loved it. Valve started working on Portal 2, and as time came closer, Valve decided to do this huge ARG for it. Amongst a lot of other things they did, one of their first moves was to patch Portal 1 a bit. With that patch, they made it so that on any playthrough after your first, a bunch of radios would appear all throughout the game. With these radios, you had to do a certain something and they would change their tune to some weird noise. The noise in question contained hidden morse code IIRC, and once you solved all the messages and morse code, you were left with a long hexadecimal code. Decoding that would give you the address to a very old bulletin board, like you would have in the days of old dialup modems - in fact you needed one of those old modems to even access the board. Now on this board there were a whole bunch of images that were themselves encrypted or something, these images were vague and scary screenshots of Portal 2!

Also, they patched the ending of the game. Originally, when you ended up outside, you'd fall unconscious and the game ended. But they retconned it with the party escort robot, and you getting dragged backwards before you fell unconscious.

The end. Go home.

[Meiscool]

Sounds like a lot of work for some screenies.

[Archem]

And the Valve fans ate it up. ARGs are cool, and everything that you have to work towards feels like a more significant reward.

[Prpl_Mage]

Gather 'round friends, I have a story to tell.
The secret broadcasts thing, if you only played Portal 1 once (which I suspect is the case) then this would come across as confusing. But here's why.
So Portal 1 was released and it was a great game and everyone loved it. Valve started working on Portal 2, and as time came closer, Valve decided to do this huge ARG for it. Amongst a lot of other things they did, one of their first moves was to patch Portal 1 a bit. With that patch, they made it so that on any playthrough after your first, a bunch of radios would appear all throughout the game. With these radios, you had to do a certain something and they would change their tune to some weird noise. The noise in question contained hidden morse code IIRC, and once you solved all the messages and morse code, you were left with a long hexadecimal code. Decoding that would give you the address to a very old bulletin board, like you would have in the days of old dialup modems - in fact you needed one of those old modems to even access the board. Now on this board there were a whole bunch of images that were themselves encrypted or something, these images were vague and scary screenshots of Portal 2!

Also, they patched the ending of the game. Originally, when you ended up outside, you'd fall unconscious and the game ended. But they retconned it with the party escort robot, and you getting dragged backwards before you fell unconscious.

The end. Go home.

That sounds excessive. But a rather smart move. People couldn't complain about plotholes then and they had a reason to replay the game once more.