Reading PCGamer today, new information about Portal 2 has begun to rear its head from the Valve parapet, with the game now taking place several hundred years after the first. The new changes announced so far include a two-player co-operative mode in addition to the single player, while players can now take advantage of physical effects that “bleed” through portals, such as air from vents or the use of tractor beams through the portals themselves to draw objects towards the player.
What is interesting is that the game introduces a special paint that can be used to impart physical effects to a surface or object. Orange paint, for example, will impart high speed to the player or any object which comes into contact with it.
As far as ingenuity goes it all sounds fabulous darling. However, I have found no media source which has picked up on the fact that this addition to Portal is a direct cut-copy-paste of an existing idea created by seven RTIS and BFA students at Digipen, and that Valve with their eye for talent have scooped up the clever students and placed them firmly within their development team.
For those of you who don’t know, Tag: The Power of Paint is a first-person platformer that allows the player to manipulate the physical attributes of the game’s environment using different colours of paint. So before the world goes bonanza at Valves ingenuity once again (when Portal 2 is eventually released) I thought that I would post footage of Tag: The Power of Paint in its original form, before Valve take all the credit.
You can view footage of the freeware in all its glory, here.
Email the author of this post at lewisb@tap-repeatedly.com
So it’s Narbacular Drop all over again? Looks like fun – ta for the tip!
This is really interesting, since the team that created the first Portal were all DigiPen students who’d worked on Narbacular Drop. Valve just swallowed the whole team when they graduated and put them to work on Portal.
They should give credit where it’s due, of course, but I really applaud Valve for looking to indies, students, and modders for staffing and design ideas.
This is great to hear brother because Tag was one of the most inventive indie titles I played last year, hardly surprising considering it was a Student Showcase winner at the 2009 IGF.
Anyway, screw the video: go and play it, all of you (including you Lewis, you dirt devil). Shoo! It’s bloody brilliant and doesn’t take too long to play through. Think of it as Mirror’s Edge with a crazy Portal-esque physics spray gun. I can’t wait to see what Valve do with this. Portal 2 is sounding incredible and I don’t remember getting this excited since… well, Portal.
I think I’m the one person on the planet who is upset about the existence of Portal 2.
What I mean to say by that is that sequels are evil incarnate, and I wish just for once that an original and critically acclaimed game could go without a sequel, leaving us all to wonder what said (non-existent) sequel would have been like. In my eyes Portal is one of the greatest things to have ever happened to our known universe, inexplicable as it may be!
Is a non-sequel too much to ask for? Do the people who cry for these sequels realize how ridiculous they sound?
“This ORIGINAL INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY is brilliant! This is so very wonderful and amazing, and it could only have happened by creating something fresh, new, and original! Why aren’t there more games like this? What are you all doing out there? Oh, you’re busy making sequels to the games I bark about? Well…yes, excellent! Where the hell is my sequel to this ORIGINAL INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY! A sequel must be had! Blah blorg bloop bleep barf bork bloop bloop bleef blah blorp bloop.”
While sequels can certainly be crap, they aren’t always so. Without sequels we would never have had the movie Aliens, for example.
And sequels can be innovative, too. As long as the end product is enjoyable, does it matter if it’s a sequel or not?
Many sequels are disappointing (or awful), to be sure. But I kind of like them. There’s a sort of comfort in knowing that the next installment is around the corner. Take the STALKER games. The first was like a cupcake. The second and third added frosting and sprinkles.
It’s strange, I know. I don’t hate all sequels; in fact many of my favourite anythings are sequels: Sysshk 2, KOTOR II, Dark Forces II, NOLF 2, UT2004, Warcraft 2, TIE Fighter (quasi sequel to X-Wing); and not forgetting film either: T2, Empire Strikes Back, Aliens, like mentioned by Jarrod, hell one of the greatest ever, The Good, The Bad and The Ugly is technically a sequel.
Sequels are sometimes amazing, and I often buy them… but I still loathe them. When sequels are clearly intended or mentioned explicitly I have no problem with them, like when most games plan a trilogy; as long as they’re upfront about it. Halo, Gears, Mass Effect, no problem.
It’s stuff like Bioshock 2 that I hate: they make an amazing game that is a story in and of itself (okay, minus the ending that I try to pretend doesn’t exist every morning I wake up), and then once it hits a magic number of sales they green light a sequel that will have inevitably shittier writing. These are the kinds of sequels that I hate.
This is what Portal feels like to me. GlaDOS was just funny enough, the credits song was just the right amount of phenomenal, the companion cube just cute enough, that it had all the right ingredients to make The Internet say: “more please.”
Well, I want less.
I know this bad stuff is not even possible to happen to Portal because Valve are pretty bloody amazing, but I still just wish it didn’t exist. It will be fawned over, and I will no doubt buy it, but a small part of me will die inside.
Um, speaking of sequels….. gotta run!: Blizzard just released patch 1.13 for Diablo II. Goodbye.