@Zel

I absolutely understand where you are coming from with Steam. I didn’t buy Half-Life 2 at release for this exact reason. I hated them for trying to leverage a high-profile release to force new restrictive DRM on us. However, 6 years layer I have 251 entries in Steam. What happened?

Well, I moved between countries twice, and became aware of how expensive in time, space, weight, and effort it is to carry around your DVDs. Sure, you can rip them, but some don’t rip cleanly (grr… copy protection), and almost all require the disk to be present while playing. I guess I could download no-CD-cracks for all of them, or even fully cracked versions; but it isn’t absolutely trivial since I hate antivirus software almost as much as I hate DRM.

Then, when the game is up and running, there is also the issue of finding the latest update and wait through the download over the limited “free” bandwidth option from some file hosting site. The process could take hours, and in the end just led me to play less. And that goes for the selection of games I had with me, while some where even forgotten in a storage crate in another country…

So I got “tricked” by steam-sale after steam-sale, where the price did seem fair for the tradeoff between the benefits of Steam versus the DRM. But I still very rarely buy anything that isn’t on heavily reduced price. I agree that the regular prices are laughable, especially in Europe.

@ Tino:

Yes, it is a bit short. But I’m not sure that if they made it longer, it wouldn’t drag. But yeah, according to Steam I spent 14 hours in Portal (90% of that in single player). It’s probably because I would always poke around, try to find Ratman dens, and enjoy the scenery. :)

To contrast that I have close to 40 hours both on New Vegas and Dragon Age 2 and I haven’t finished either of them yet. :P

@ Zel:

Fair enough. My friend actually lost his Steam password few years back, but never really bothered trying to get it back. I still yell at him for letting few hundred bucks in games just go to waste but he doesn’t think he can get it back. He no longer has the email he signed up with, he no longer has the the credit card he used for most of the purchases and he can’t remember the password. So yeah, this is a huge issue.

@ Mack:

True, the adoption thing makes much more sense this way. The great part is that they did not flat out said it in the game – they left clues for us to obsess and speculate about. :)

Not sure how to do whitetext so SPOILER WARNING ***************

I’m pretty sure Chell is Carolines *adopted* daughter – GlaDos tells the player “For the record, you are adopted, and it’s terrible.” It goes a long way to explaining the obsession with adoption insults from GlaDos, especially since she takes a fairly maternal role in both games: “Let me just clear that for you” and whatnot. I haven’t been able to confirm it myself because I have a lousy 1Gb of ram, not enough to run high textures, but apparently Chells potato plant is so overgrown because of a formula she got from “Dad” – Cave.

This is very true, but show me a AAA game publisher that does not put restrictive DRM on their products. It seems that every damn game released recently has some form of online activation. Valve seems to be the least evil of the bunch though:

My major gripe with the Steam system is that is requires you to tie your games to an account permanently. You cannot transfer games to other people. You cannot untie a game from your account in order to resell it. You cannot give a game you finished to a friend. Every single Steam game is a new purchase, at full price. If you somehow lose your account or get banned, you lose all the games tied to it. That can mean a fortune in game gone in a flash, with no way to retrieve them. You’d better behave and don’t complain too much.

The Offline feature is a decoy, you need an internet connection active to install games, and the software will require occasional check-ins with the servers after a short while. The disk version of games using Steam are exactly as you describe, after all why wouldn’t they use their widely accepted DRM platform for their own games ? I would actually prefer Securom over Steam, because they often offer deactivation tools.

Steam does offer sugar coating on top of their very restricting policy, but I care for none. Cloud saving or installation ? I don’t usually install games on more than one or two computers, and it’s faster to drag my DVD or transfer the game files through my LAN myself. Achievements and community tools are the least of my concerns, since I mostly play single player games. Other features can be covered with better suited tools.

Last but not least : at least in Europe their pricing policy, apart from a couple well chosen sales to lure in new customers, is one of the most expensive available. Especially for older games.

I’m surprised you did not put ‘short’ on your list. Sure, for a game to be ‘short’ isn’t necessary a bad thing. In fact, it is much preferable to being “dragged out”. I want to make it absolutely clear that when I say that I would have liked to see a longer Portal 2, it in no way means I would have preferred the story to be thinned out, and levels being extended by reusing the same structures and textures in a way that would just make my total play time longer. I absolutely do not want that. What I would have wanted was the same lovely game experience, moving on in the same pace, but, ending less soon.

I think the game closest to Portal 2 in ‘feel’ is Bioshock. It also had great level design, and communicated a story through the environment. Maybe not as successful as Portal 2, and certainly not as funny, but there are some similarities. According to Steam I played Bioshock for 30 hours, and Portal 2 for 8 hours. Other types of games show an even larger difference, e.g., Dragon Age (123 hours), Fallout 3 (63 hours), and Fallout: New Vegas (75 hours). All these are single player games, with about the same price at launch. Even if every minute of Portal 2 single player experience is of significantly higher quality than any of those other games (and it is), I cannot help but think that the experience did end a bit prematurely.

@ Gothmog:

Haha, no problem. It was fun. :)

And yeah, it blew my mind, so I had to share this.

@ nitro2k01:

Oh man… Now I might need to do that. LOL

@ Zel:

To me, the puzzles were just right. I breezed through the initial few chapters but that’s by design I believe. There were one or two chambers that had me completely stumped to the point I had to stop playing and sleep on it. So the difficulty curve seemed perfect. But that’s just my opinion.

I don’t like the concept of release day DLC’s either, but Valve’s approach is much better than that of Bioware in Dragon Age and Mass Effect games for example. Their DLC’s are playable characters, weapons, abilities and even entire quest chains. And yet I don’t remember anyone complaining all that much it when these games came out. I’m not really sure why are people so outraged at Valve for implementing TF2 hat system for Portal. Honestly, it’s not that bad.

Zel wrote:

I have trouble enough accepting Steam in other games, because they’re technically only leasing you what you buy until their company goes under or changes management. They’re also openly against the second-hand market and doing great harm to it with their policies.

This is very true, but show me a AAA game publisher that does not put restrictive DRM on their products. It seems that every damn game released recently has some form of online activation. Valve seems to be the least evil of the bunch though:

– Steam does not limit the number of installs, so as long as Valve servers are still online you can keep installing it on your new machines
– It does not tie your game to hardware platform either. You can install most of your steam games on every single machine you own. And thanks to their Cloud save feature, you can even start playing a game on your desktop and finish on your laptop.
– They keep the installation files for you on the cloud and allow you to keep downloading it at will indefinitely. So while you technically don’t own the game, you also don’t need to worry about installation media. Compare it to other companies which sell you games online, but only offer limited time download, and tell you to get lost if you misplaced the installation files.
– They provide additional features – cloud saves, storage for installation media, statistics, achievements, built in tool for making and sharing screenshots online, community tools, in-game chat and invitation system, etc…

You are absolutely right – they lease you games. I don’t really own my Steam game library. But due to all the stuff mentioned above, I still get a decent value for my money. They take something away, but they give me something in return – a degree of convenience, community tools, etc.. I can live with this arrangement. Especially compared to other DRM schemes which are more restrictive than Steam, but provide nothing in return.

Mack wrote:

Or you could just buy Portal 2 on disc. Youknow, like, not from Steam.

Does that work? I thought that the disc still forces you to install Steam. I actually bought HL2 as a physical disk back in the day, and the first thing it did was to install Steam on my computer. I would expect Portal 2 to do the same. Having the disk will probably just speed up installation (you won’t need to download the game).

Mack wrote:

I found the italian end serenade pretty goddamn heart wrenching after I looked up the translation. The singing turrets easter egg was friggin’ neat too.

Yeah, but I still don’t fully buy into this.

[SPOILERS BELOW]
I’m not convinced that Caroline is Chell’s mother. I do think she is a daughter of one of the employees but it seems like a stretch that she would be Coraline’s. Especially since the “bring your daughter to school day” seemed to be the day GlaDOS was activated.

But if it is true than it is indeed quite tragic.
[END SPOILERS]

Anyways, you gotta love valve for putting little tidbits like this into the game. It really makes you think, and it keeps people talking. This is what good storytelling is all about.

@ SapientIdiot:

True, there is vastly less gameplay in Portal 2 than in Fallout NV (which I am yet to finish) but the game is polished to high sheen. Those are very different games.

But yeah, the price should go down around the next big Steam sale.

I was a little disapointed with the price tag. After playing the game, i can sort of see why its worth more then the entirety of Orangebox… but I’m just not the kind of gamer to throw down more then $30 for a single player game. I know there’s a co-op, but the replay value is still somewhat limited. I’d consider Amnesia TDD a great single play game, and it was totally worth $20, even though i’m probably only going to play it once.

Usually i try to buy games that i like (and work on linux/wine), after pirating them first to make sure. I’d like to pay for Portal 2, but its not worth as much as Fallout New Vegas. I’ll probably end up buying it during next steam sale season (xmas), when i’m sure it will be on sale for much less.

Or you could just buy Portal 2 on disc. Youknow, like, not from Steam.

I found the italian end serenade pretty goddamn heart wrenching after I looked up the translation. The singing turrets easter egg was friggin’ neat too.

I have trouble enough accepting Steam in other games, because they’re technically only leasing you what you buy until their company goes under or changes management. They’re also openly against the second-hand market and doing great harm to it with their policies.

I’m never going to openly support Valve by buying one of their game, however good it is. I already skipped Half-Life 2, Portal and the following episodes, I can live with skipping this one too, Game of the Year or not.

@ Zel:

Really? You aren’t getting Portal 2 because of Steam? Why? I thought people like you died out long ago. Steam is pretty popular now, ya know?