Back from the dead. Some of you may remember me from way back when. So when msleeper necroed me with his mail about the moving of the forums, that in turn necroed my interest in Portal, so I had a quick little reinstall and playthrough and then went custom map hunting. Long story short (too late) I found Portal: Prelude so I figured I might leave my impressions here in turn necroing this thread
Overall I really liked it. I liked the scope and the ambitions of the mappers, I liked that it was presented as a standalone mod with a full story mode. I liked the total length which was pretty similar to the first time I played through Portal. And I really liked the story and the writing, while rough, was actually a pretty decent attempt at Portal-like black humor in my opinion.
As many others have said the text-to-speech approach did turn my appreciation of the story down a bit, but on the whole that was a minor thing. (And most probably preferable to listening to French guys trying to speak English
)
Having spent quite some time away from Portal and the mapping community there was some elements about the actual gameplay and puzzles that stood out as annoying though. I hope my comments here can help mappers if they plan on using those elements.
What struck me as most odd was the way the early maps played out. It seemed like the authors couldn't quite decide if they were aiming this map pack at total newbies, at players who had just completed the original Portal or at veteran custom map players. Many of the early "puzzles" were so simple and spelled out in so pedantic detail by the voice overs that it felt more like a basic Portal tutorial than a natural continuation of the skills you accumulate while playing the game through once.
But interleaved with these shamefully simple elements were elements that basically required you to have lots of custom map experience, that were not explained in any way at all, which really seemed like a strange direction.
I think the most obvious example was the map where you get the fully upgraded portal gun. Right after getting it you have to do [spoiler]a simple double-floor-at-seperate-levels portal jump[/spoiler] to move on, and this is fairly explicitly spelled out, but right after that you have to do [spoiler]a demanding crouch and funneling powered fling[/spoiler] which is not explained at all but simply presented like it was any ordinary fling.
Not only does this highlight really strange map progression, but to me it also stood out because [spoiler]funnelling[/spoiler] is such a fundamentally annoying mechanic. I sorta vaguely remembered that there was a way to [spoiler]get more speed out of a fling[/spoiler] but I really didn't expect them to actually require that of me at that point and without explaining it. So I spent ages trying to solve the puzzle the normal way and in the end had to check out videos to see that I was basically doing the right thing only I wasn't [spoiler]actively exploiting funnelling nearly enough[/spoiler]. (I was crouching like mad, because they hinted that you had to, but that wasn't enough.)
Very much later on another fling puzzle requires heavy use of [spoiler]funnelling[/spoiler] which in turn again annoyed me. I think it was chamber 19 in the room with the two angled surfaces where one moved from time to time and some crosses on the floor tried to hint where you had to successively place portals. Now the puzzle itself was fairly easy, but even when you knew that you needed heavy use of [spoiler]funnelling[/spoiler] to pull it off it was very random and uncontrolled. (Hooray for a random energy ball flying around as another random blocker.)
The ending was interesting though [spoiler]the boss fight[/spoiler] was a bit too random and not much fun at all. The sequence where you run around [spoiler]Aperture Science offices after GLaDOS takes control[/spoiler] was a lot of fun because it was kinda different and unexpected and mercifully brief. Had it gone much longer it wouldn't have been much fun.
Oh and yeah, all turrets in the maps was badly used in my opinion. They were simply action elements you had to brute force your way through and did not contribute to the puzzle element of the game at all.
However they also did some things which really surprised me in a positive way. For example I was surprised to find that chamber 18 could be [spoiler]bypassed almost completely by just putting a portal next to the end lift while standing on a button[/spoiler] but was then later completely awed that I had to [spoiler]return from chamber 19 to get the companion cube after all going through the BTS sections that actually linked the different chambers together[/spoiler].
I also really liked that they [spoiler]included some of the original Portal chambers, at least partially[/spoiler]. It didn't really fit the story that well, but it was still a nice touch. (Oh and a lot of the story didn't fit the story that well, but meh what can you do.)
On the whole the map pack was a very nice thing to be able to play after being away from Portal so long though. Have there been any other packs in similar scope or length?
