Super Bunny Hop

Our former resident super hero of fantastic writing, George Weidman, has bunny hopped his way onto YouTube.  Please check out the new channel, and more specifically, his Critical Up-Close series.  You can check out his first video on The Legend of Zelda by clicking here.

Here are a few of George’s choice articles during his time at TPG.

A Daring Critique of Portal 2

Postal III Review: When A Game Punches Itself In The Face

Finishing New Vegas

 

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  • Tom

    I didn’t find ‘A Daring Critique of Portal 2′ to be that daring to be honest, though that’s probably because I agree with most of the points and actually found Portal 2 to be one of the most underwhelming games I’ve ever played.

    One thing George missed from his article is why the games were practically worlds apart in the first place & that’s simply because they were designed by entirely different people. Portal was designed by Kim Swift along with the rest of her team under the watchful eye of Valve, while Portal 2 was just most of the staff at Valve ‘wanting a crack at making a portal game’ (after Kim Swifts departure).. that’s me paraphrasing of course as I’m too lazy to find the quote, I assure you the sentiment is correct though. Valve naturally hired a new team* to work on it alongside them & shortly after that Kelly Bailey (Valve’s genius sound designer) sadly left the company, which is why the soundtrack to Portal 2 was complete garbage & well there you have it.. the demise of Portal!

    I can rattle on and on about this topic forever (and in far more depth) because of the ridiculous amount of love I have for the original but I’ve done it plenty of times before & well in all honesty nobody gives a toss because everyone LOVES Portal 2. Anyway I have to go, good article =)

    * http://www.shacknews.com/article/62689/valve-hires-digipen-team-seemingly

  • George Weidman

    True. When it was published, everyone was still singing it’s praises and critical material about the game hadn’t yet made the rounds.

    And I remember hearing that specific quote from the Portal 2 commentaries. Seems that Swift was more interested in starting up new IPs than sequels, and I can hardly blame Valve for wanting to make Portal 2 instead of Quantum Conundrum.

    A lot of the problems we’re talking about are simply by-products of the very concept of a sequel. When experiencing a new IP for the first time, one doesn’t know what to expect. You don’t have honed expectations or a solid standard to judge the original product by. Your mind is open. After a sequel comes out, one ends up judging it against the original simply out of logical rationality.

    So maybe it’s unfortunate that Portal was a bizarre and novel concept. They can never capture that novelty with sequels– we’ll always just end up comparing them to the first game.