Portal 2

Totes

There's no doubt there'll be several incoming DLC maps. (What I'd really love to see are more little Aperture Science story vignettes.) Honestly though I think I played the advanced maps in Portal 1 for about 15 minutes before moving on.

i was the same - the advanced maps were focussed more on doing things quickly rather than being pure puzzles.

same here.

love the '70s style aperture logo.

man, i thought j.k. simmons at point says "i don't know, what do these people buy? beer dirt?" and that was the funniest line in the game (so far). turns out it's "beard dirt" - so not as good.

There's no doubt there'll be several incoming DLC maps.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2011-04-29-free-portal-2-dlc-detailed

...what's DLC?

method of removing the fetus

with portals

*going to hell brb*

ok thx to free dlc i take back all of my bitching

what is it

he's the guy who rapped with Run before the record deal

you shut up

Downloadable content

the fact that i knocked it out on a weekend day off is a plus imo---more like an "entertainment" and less like a "project"

more of this, imo

i still have never played the orig - i heard it's not great on PS3 though.

I just started this, it is MAD FUN

by sheer coincidence I read this right before starting the game:

http://www.ludix.com/moriarty/apology.html

needless to say, the "LOOK AT THE ART *BZZZZZZ*" part had me lolling explosively

holy shit that was an awesome read

i was less than impressed.

The identity of a game emerges from its mechanics and affordances, not the presentation that exposes them.

in traditional games, sure. in videogames, the two are (or can be) inseparable. narbacular drop has the same mechanics as portal, but it's a different game!

your character can't jump in Narbacular Drop, and in ND you can make portals inside of portals, ergo they do not have the same mechanics

*sigh* ok but one could imagine a game with identical mechanics but different presentation, and it would be a different game.

well no, it would be the same game with different presentation akin to skinning

Yeah. Sometimes two games have the same mechanics but different stories and settings (Jak and Daxter and Ratchet and Clank, for example), or sometimes they have the same story but radically different mechanics (Zelda games, for example).

disagree! thoroughly! you don't think level design, characters, story, are an intrinsic part of the game?

xp

I am likely not making my argument clear due to the synonymization of "videogame" with "game"

I do agree that distinct storylines help delineate one game from another if they share mechanics; where I am disagreeing is that I am arguing that, because they share the same mechanics, these two videogames are different instances of the same generalized game, which is encapsulated by the common mechanics.

games are just code sorry you're just another sucker

like when you play a game, you should just think to yourself, what nice code thank you, and that's all

like fallout new vegas just announced new dlc that is taking place in zion national park or whatever, what would plato say I wonder

ok... but if i say "this game is ART" i'm talking about the whole package. Change the presentation, and it might not be art anymore. in Brian Moriarty's phraseology, the identity of a game emerges from its mechanics and affordances, and the presentation that exposes them.

xp. my code is art.

I mean, this is bread and butter stuff and is played out across the industry in the form of genres and the expectations of gameplay that go along with them, and how the games that do something different in a way that people like tend to generate new genres (look at the whole "survival horror" sub-genre of adventure games started by "Alone in the Dark", for example, and how that was built upon by "Resident Evil").

Obviously all of these games within these general categories try to do SOMETHING differently in order to make themselves unique/desirable, some of which ties into developing specific mechanics to go along with the storyline/level design, but boil it down to, say, chess games; most of them play exactly the same way because the rules of chess are very strictly defined and well understood. If someone started a chess game and the first move was the black king leaping across the board and taking the white king, that game would not be chess.

xp: you realize that, at that particular point in time, he is talking about games in general and not specifically videogames, right

lol no not at all

I had a joke all typed up and ready to post before I saw that

he doesn't make that distinction, is the problem.

now I just typed up a post about your chess analogy

a joke, not a post

they are different, much like games are

I will never read a fucking thread is all I'm saying

really, your bone of contention is that you wholesale reject the idea that art is something you contemplate without rules or direct input

which is a fair oppositional position to take; I was more interested in reading and understanding the argument being advanced

wait I realized you are actually talking to ledge in your posts which makes it even more confusing holy shit delete all my posts

it's actually kind of funny because based on the argument advanced here, Final Fantasy VII is the most artistic game I've ever played

xp: lol no don't delete them, I treasure each and every one

("here" being that article; it also explains why what is ultimately a mediocre game managed to become such a mainstream hit)

*dusts off boring philo paper on Wittgensteins discussion of games, hovers over submit button, thinks better of it*

whose argument did it support

because if it supported mine you should totally post it, but if it supports ledge than keep that shit to yrself IMO

really, your bone of contention is that you wholesale reject the idea that art is something you contemplate without rules or direct input

Well, I do reject that. Probably. But my bone of contention upthread is his unfair conflation of games in general, which stand and fall purely on their mechancis, and videogames, where the presentation *can* be much more intrinsic. His 'All Your Art Is Belong to Us!' example is a horrible straw man.

Curiously he does actually say "Does it even make sense to speak of mechanics and affordances apart from presentation? Isn't it all one piece?" - but then he goes nowhere with it.

I think the counter-argument is that a videogame is still a game and, as such, the mechanics play a huge part in its success; in fact, one could argue that a videogame with excellent mechanics but poor presentation will trump a videogame with excellent presentation but poor mechanics.

the basic vibe of the wittgenstein thing is that there are no set of criteria that can actually define "game", but rather we appeal to a list of things we already understand to be games and assign the term according to our sense of it fitting in that set or not.

so it really doesnt help anyones argument.

youre welcome

lol I was misunderstanding the function of the set and sitting here going "uh, why are we evaluating a set of things we consider to be games to see if we think they are games or not" for way too long

It's such an unfocussed essay, all that stuff about mechanics, and kitsch, and Sturgeon's law - OMG Ebert thinks most movies are crap! Stop the press! - has no bearing on his Schopenhauer fanboy conclusion. And this - 'All sublime art is devotional' - thrown in there without defence or justification, pisses me off.

lets see if we can start an in depth discussion of set theory and get everyone to quit ilx within 24 hours! xpost