My biggest issue with Portal 2 was that puzzles generally only had 1 solution. In Portal 1 some Puzzles allowed placement of portals in areas that had no relevance and you could create odd solutions sometimes which made the game feel expansive instead of locked down.

Also, GladOS spoke much more eloquently in "Portal 1", eg: "You will be missed" meant she was going to kill you.

In Portal 2 - she has no tact, no intuition and no evil she simply calls you "fat" straight out - there is no whitt. Sure the dumb masses will get the joke - but it comes off much more prude and football cheerleader dumb. GladOS was a evil mastermind - In Portal 2 she becomes a ally and a Potatoe - Picard would triple facepalm as did I when I played through Portal 2.

But it all makes sense why the story is so terribly "forced" - they never intended to make a sequel at all - a lot of the assets during production were meant to make the game a Portal Prequel - and management couldn't justify "wasting money on all that Aperture Laboratories level design and models. So they pointlessly shoehorned it into the Sequel to save a buck and adapted the story to accommodate, eg: Maximize Profits. Portal 1 on the other hand was started in some guys dorm as a passion project. Very differen't spawning pool environments for a Portal game.

Additionally I didn't like the new puzzle mechanics - speed goo and jump goo - I mean seriously? The Formula to make games "Fun" is to keep the game mechanics simple - we don't need light bridges and speedy jumpy goo - it's like when you take a classic like Super Mario Bros 1 and ask - why was this so fun? You literally run to the right and jump, and you can duck slide - the game has no other major mechanics.

Portal was well - Portals. Now Portal decided to get whacky since they "made it big" from Portal 1. It's like bears or candy bars where they pointlessly add all this extra shit in an attempt to make it "better" and "20% more peanuts" or whatever. The Candy bar should literally be Choc-late, and peanut-butter and maybe caramel max - then you read the nutrition facts and get a stroke from them deviating from a very simple recipe.

Portal 2 should be called "P.J.S.L.B" for Portals, Jumping, Sliding, Lasers & Bridges - Hey guys you play the latest PJSLB? Yeah it was great!

It's like "I can't believe its not butter!"

And in reality there's like 1% butter max.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

I would love to run StarCraft BroodWar on this via WINE. Also, it seems like a excellent streaming device - but if so then it should certainly be priced to sell.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Wow that CPU is x86 in a hand held device. What a oddity. I wonder if the battery life is really low considering. I would instantly install snes9x and play some ALTTP on that thing.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Awesome, now I can take Unity3D seriously as rebooting to Windows is a serious turnoff.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

This game keeps coming up on my "to-get" list - the only thing is that in my latter steam days I'm really cautious about making sure I love a game before I'm willing to buy it. $20 could be worth it, the other "watch" on my watch is Road Redemption (which sure is taking its sweet time) and Might No.5.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: Segata Sanshiro@ElectricPrism - what kind of framerates are you getting at what settings?

I get 26 - 36 FPS outdoors on Epic. I get 45 FPS indoors on Epic. A average of 30 FPS outside.

I would assume that it should do at least high on a GTX 960, it seems that motion blur helps smooth the millions of vertexes rendered on the grass, trees, etc...

Any other questions?

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: Segata Sanshiro@ElectricPrism - what kind of framerates are you getting at what settings? I have a GTX 960 and want to run it on at least high settings because the game looks so pretty (I'd be happy with 30fps+) but have a feeling it's still going to be a while until that happens... might be even worse with OpenGL.

@Segata Sanshiro - I can't find a area to display FPS in the menu so I think I'll just guess that I get above 30 fps @ 1080p easily. Sure there is an occasional stutter but things seem to run pretty smooth - if I had to guess I would guess my CPU may be the most "potential" bottleneck as it's a LGA 1366 i7 920 1st Gen.

My girl plays it on her GTX 750 Ti SC on high settings, but it sure is a noticeable difference on Epic.

Here's a screenshot of my settings and what it looks like in our house
http://postimg.org/image/sp4usdm3n/full/
http://postimg.org/image/6r3fcx7vh/full/

I think I'm gonna pickup a second copy on the 30th when this comes to Linux so we can jam. I suspect that it will actually run better on Linux than on Windows, maybe I'm delusional - but most software is faster on Linux including some games. Oh, and load times are pretty bad on a 7200 RPM HDD, even with SDD load times are still 40 seconds, but granted you dont reload ever and play for several hours - there seems to be no "loads" in game after the initial load.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: CrashThis is stirring the pot for me and my update plans. Despite Nvidia locking Open Source devs out of the 900 Series, I was dead-set on getting the Asus Strix 970. It appears to be perfect for 1080p gaming on Linux.

With a similar core clock, 384 vs 224 GB/s memory bandwidth, a 512-bit vs 256-bit memory interface, double the GDDR5, and about 50% more cores, I'm having a hard time justifying the 970 which is similarly priced. Maybe I'm wrong, though, and real world performance will prove the 970. Any thoughts?

My 970 is the perfect fit for my Linux gaming needs lately. I'm really happy I didn't get a R9 290 in February when I got this - why? I love tinkering on Linux and knowing "can I do this?", when I should be asking "should I do this?".

So I postulate the question "Should I buy a AMD R9 Card because they promise XYZ in the near future?" Then I look at Steam Machines and note that none of them are AMD, and I remember people everywhere crying out against the Catalyst Drivers, and I think - is hours of my time and a potential loss of my investment of $400 really worth trying something new and the processing technical advantage? Is AMD really better with existing drivers, or do I just like to root for the underdog? Do game developers Optimize for AMD presently or will there be a performance hit that automatically takes 30% performance off the product specs?

Needless to say I got a GTX 970 and don't regret it. I can't make large buying decisions based on promises, AMD isn't practical as they haven't completed delivery of their Vulkan and open drivers yet.

Hopefully AMD will be a viable choice in the near future as I would like to equip my other Arch PC with a roided out AMD - but in the mean time nVidia is a safe, practical, and most problem-free choice.

Don't be "Too busy asking if you can do XYZ, that you forget to ask if you should".

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Runs great on my GTX 970 on Windows. I'm really pleased that I won't have to boot Windows to play, last night I played for 6 hours and it's kindof like a adult version of Minecraft, it's kindof Terraria-esk in collecting Berries, Meat, Wood, etc... and constructing 3D homes.

The best part is you can collect a herd of dinosaurs that gang bang enemies with you - so when you go out to get collect wood you bring 3-4 more dinos that protect you and carry things back to base.

I probably won't play the online just local with my girl - it's by far one of the "chillest" games I've played in a while. A high spec PC is a plus as the game renders entire islands and thousands of blades of grass - which is incredibly amazing, a "first" in 3D for me.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: LeonardKI have to admit that this is one of the least-sought Linux releases for me, simply because it ran so well in wine for me. Anyway, I in no way do not appreciate this :D

Terraria is by far best played with friends. Even in wine to host a Mono Terraria Server would require a SSH tunnel hack to get around the WINE Terraria DNS issue connecting to other PC's via IP on a LAN.

Terraria is by far the most anticipated Linux game for me. Finally a awesome chill out game for after work.

View this comment - View article - View full comments