Competitive Multiplayer Cut from Portal 2
Posted by Lindsey Weedston at Fri, Aug 27 2010 02:52:25 CDT 234 views
Erik Wolpaw explains why it doesn't work.
Fans of Portal are excited about the expansions that are being made for the sequel, but apparently not all of them will work out. Valve writer Erik Wolpaw told 1up that they decided to leave competitive multiplayer out of Portal 2.
The idea was that two players would try to move a ball from one spot to another as quickly as possible while trying to stop each other's progress with portals. Wolpaw described it as "speedball meets Portal." The problem was that the competition got in the way of the puzzle solving.
"[I]t quickly became apparent that while it's fun for about two seconds to drop portals under people and things like that, it quickly just devolves into pure chaos ... Cooperative puzzle-solving was just a much more rewarding path."
Portal 2 will be released for the PC, Mac, PS3, and Xbox 360 on February 9, 2011.
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Current Comments
2 comments so far (post your own)I think this was a smart decision on Valve's part... competitive multiplayer doesn't seem to fit the Portal game-play, at least not the way they described it.
The whole idea of dropping portals under each other, that sounds fun though, and promising.
Instead of having people solve puzzles, which doesn't lend itself to this, they should have them racing or something. Imagine if both teams were trying to navigate through an obstacle course first, and were dropping portals on each other as they sped along. That would be hectic and fun.
Posted by SKGamer on Fri, Aug 27 2010 03:16:42 CDT | #2
Not sure if that would work. It would be rather difficult to drop a portal under someone while they were running while you were running. Seems like they could figure out something, though.
Posted by Lindsey Weedston on Thu, Sep 02 2010 01:44:24 CDT | #2