Comments - q00u

(resumed)

Then there are the bugs. There are a few spots near the end that would nearly always crash-to-desktop (even on bare minimum settings, and this is a quad-core machine with gigs of ram and a current-gen graphics card). There are ways to end level 18 that DON'T OPEN THE ELEVATOR DOORS. That's a whole heap of fun right there. I hope you like 18 because you get to PLAY IT AGAIN. After one of the crashes near the tunnels that lead to GLaDOS, my save ended up with AI Disabled. Weird, right? I couldn't figure out how to turn it back on, so I thought I'd start a new game from the last level. ONLY, IT WOULDN'T LET ME. I could start from the third map, and that's the closest I could get. OH GOOD, I get to play NEARLY THE WHOLE THING OVER AGAIN. Awesome.

Like I said: it's good (compared to most mods, but most mods are terrible; on it's own it's pretty bad), but it's definitely not great, and it's way over-hyped.

I really, REALLY wanted to like this. I am so disappointed.

D-, would not play again.

It's "good", in comparison to most Portal mods, but overrated.

I really really wanted to like this.

It's definitely not as good as the original Portal or TFV Mappack.

The voice "acting" is grating, but that I can forgive. I understand the creators are not native English speakers.

The terrible grammar is jarring too, but that I can also forgive for the same reason.

The ridiculously hard puzzles are frustrating, but I give that a pass. If you look at it like a hardcore mappack and not a prequel, well, that's what you'd get.

But the story (which breaks all kinds of canon) and the innumerable bugs, glitches, and crashes (I played through the 1.1.0 version) just ruin it for me.

Story first. It doesn't connect to the original Portal story properly, and it's not even internally consistent. Sometimes they say that Abby is doing better than any other girl that's run the course, and sometimes they talk about the other girls that have gone further than Abby has. Does it make sense that Aperture is staffed by homicidal maniacs before GLaDOS is activated? No. Does it make sense that random girls are sent through the course (remember, Chell in the original is a product of bring-your-daughter-to-work-day)? No. Does the presence of Manhacks make any sense at all? No. The story is terrible.

Similarly, the dialog is pretty bad. I'm not talking about the harsh computer-generated voices, or the translation problems. I'm talking about the lack of humor. I was promised humor, and none was delivered. Maybe it's amusing in the original French, but it's surely not funny in English. The dialog is almost universally pointless.

(split because of character count limitation)