Angry fans sinking Portal 2's Metacritic user score

FYI, all the dlc can be earned in game! dont buy the dlc if you dont want to. its just pointless crap anyways

five hours, damn it they must have done nothing but practiced playing the original portal for like months

I find it funny when people say professional reviewers are no different from some random guy at a keyboard. Here we have the evidence to the contrary. Let's say even if you don't buy the hype and you disagree with the professional reviews. Who's closer to your personal "true" score? The professionals giving it 10s, or the users giving it 0s?

So what did we learn today, according to those trolls? 1) People are entitled to any and all DLC, whenever it's getting released. There's bitch fights if it gets released on day 1 and there are the same people bitching if it's getting released too late (like when they resold their copy of the game). It should also be free, because creating additional content should be considered voluntary work. 2) Long games > short games. That's why waiting for 20 hours for FF13 to give you full control of the game makes it so great. That's why people look down on movies shorter than two hours, just look at Hollywood, only long movie receive Oscars! 3) The users are always right and total uberhumans as well. Did anyone see how many people played through Dragon Age 2 the first day it got released and how they then managed to write a review for Metacritic? I'd love to be THAT GOOD, but alas I'm not more than a normal human.

I applaud everyone who didn't conform to popular opinion with their reviews. A lot of people are ticked off by the marketing decisions made by the game industry as of late and the case with metacritic is one of the only ways the people can have their voices heard. "Professional" critics are usually full of crap and it's good that websites like metacritic allow those who aren't sheep to make a statement.

What I hate are the people who said that you can beat this in 3 hours. Really? Come on

I don't give a shit about Metacritic, that's the last place I would go to find a review about something.

I keep hearing about player created maps, if this is true. Then these people have NO reason to complain about length.

@p0wnd GR is not the only one taking an interest in this; the whole gaming media is. There are articles on IGN, Actiontrip, 1Up, and destructoid (those are the only ones that I have read) Im sure there are more out there. take a look around, you'll see everyone has an opinion.

That's how a lot of gamers are sadly, their really anal over a very very small reason. Only thing I didn't like from Portal 2 was no challenge maps or leader boards but that isn't too big of a issue> I'm playing through it now and its just a blast, well written story so far with incredibly funny characters with excellent voice work. No game deserves a 0 in my books especially a game like Portal. But sadly their are a ton of immature gamers out there who piss & moan over 1 tiny thing they dislike about it. I suggest no one listen to them and give this almost perfect title a go. Valve is an amazing company who is very kind to their fans with all their free DLCs (L4D2 for example) & cheap prices.

It's Dragon Age II all over again (although there were some legitimate complaints about DA2 even if I really liked it). Seriously this is just stupid. I doubt half of those people have even played the game. I saw some of the reviews and some of them specifically said they had not played it but were just pissed about DLC. Those guys need to get laid...BADLY! (To be fair, I'm sure some of the people who rated it 10 probably didn't play it either). Finished the single-player by the way. Yeah it was short but it was so much fun. It's like a more complicated NES game. I'm going to go back to it and there's still the co-op.

They are adding in the custom map-makeing in a future update I just checked on steam so eventually the game will get tons of user generated levels and people will stop bitching

@Shinespark428 Totally. If forced to choose, I would definitely buy Mass Effect 2 over Portal 2. That still doesn't make Portal 2 a bad game by any stretch of the imagination. We should be upset that games are $60, not that Portal 2 is "short."

Never understood the ire over legitimate micro-transactions for DLC. Having to pay for content that is already included on the "disk" is still inexcusable, but we've come a long way from horse armor. Items like appearance packs for ME2 or alt costumes in SFIV add no real content and are there for those who WANT to buy it (at a reasonable price, no less). Its optional stuff and is not required (IMO) to actually enjoy a game. Some will buy it, sure, but criticizing over the option is kinda dumb. As for having DLC available from day 1, most games have about a month from the time they "go gold" to their actual release date. This offers time to print and ship on disc. Some devs choose to work on additional content during this time frame, but we as gamers aren't really entitled to this content just because the game isn't on shelves yet. Some gamers' sense of entitlement is quite scary. Portal 2 also has co-op that lasts at least 5 hours also and should not be skipped by anyone who is complaining for more content.

@Solarpowered: Challenge accepted. My counterpoint? Superman 64. I dare you to give it a 3 or better with a straight face. :-p In general, though...some of the other posters made the big point. Don't measure a game's length by its single playthrough run alone; also measure replay value. That said, I doubt any two gamers will ever agree on the definition of 'replay value'. The guy mentioned in the article sounds like a hypocrite or an RPG snob; I can't think of a single action game [FPS/TPS/etc] from this generation that cracks the 10 hour mark. Most are hard-pressed to hit 8 anymore. I do agree that Day 1 DLC is annoying as h*ll at worst, and tactless at best. Yes, there's 3-6 months between gold master and street date, and that's time that could be spent 'putting back' things that had to be cut for the sake of time or budget...but I'm not willing to trust that all instances of Day1 are that way. I'd wager most are blatant p*ss-takes. So to gamemakers...use some tact. Wait at least a couple weeks to unveil all the goodies you've been working on since the game went gold. I really like the idea above [for skin-type stuff] of awarding for skillful play or paying for early access, but anything that modifies gameplay [anything from a stat buff to a new item] shouldn't be pay-for-early. Gets messy, and quickly becomes 'he who throws the most money at it gets an advantage'. Ultimately though it's all a matter of perspective. A game like Mega Man 2 was worth every penny of its $45+ price tag...and in the hands of a skilled player can be beaten in under 45 minutes. The fastest known player can do it in less than 30, and anymore if I take more than 40 I'm doing something majorly wrong. But it was also ball-bustingly difficult for its day; dying and retrying, getting to a boss and finding out you may as well be throwing paper airplanes at the dude, there was plenty of things to learn and retry to get that first 'win', dramatically extending its play length...not to mention the finer arts of speed-running, perfect-running, and even just getting things in the 'right' order. The 'that didn't work, what else can I try?' magic has largely been lost in recent generations of gaming, replaced by the linearity of a movie. Our art is a unique one; linearity to force a narrative is a huge waste of the medium's potential. A game can be hugely cinematic without being on a single, 5' wide rail...look at the original Deus Ex. True addictiveness (sadly being replaced by press button-get bacon psychological ploys), invoking "one more turn" syndrome, alternative pathing (a dead art these days), and true branching (this-or-that choices which meaningfully change the game) can turn a one-hour game into a thousand-hour game, even though it still only takes one hour to complete. In this case, agree with me or not, I see a group of passionate but immature gamers wrapping together legitimate criticism of industry-wide trends and unwarranted butthurt-fanboyism, targeting what they've chosen as a sacrificial lamb.

Yeah, I came from Destructoid, which had the lovely Jim Sterling tell people to 'fuck off' and stop 'whining.' Granted, that's nothing new for him, but I had to check out how you guys handled this and, well, I'm impressed. Pretty fair article, Portal 2 might be really good for some and not for others, but you put up an article which is pretty fair and unbiased. And for that, you win my respect. Good job, seriously, I don't imagine many other sites covering this like you guys.

It's quality, not quantity. If a story can be told in 6 hours, why go any further? I shan't go any further.

The political activist hippies have infected the games industry after realizing no one took them seriously anywhere else. Only with them and/or self-entitled brats would raise such a stink about Valve's "greed." I mean, that Day 1 DLC, so incredibly intrusive and hampering of the Portal 2 experience that I'm almost finished and I never even noticed until I went onto the internet. Get over yourselves, seriously.

How can you complain about the Potato Sack, I have got some new favorite games that I would never have played if this package had not been sold for such a low price. Another sad thing is people now complain about DLC being released too early when it is day 1 and complain they need DLC for the game when they don't release it within a couple of months, plus this DLC has no impact on the game so you have no need to buy the stuff you do not want the items.

Giving a 0 score to Portal 2 is just plain stupid. And giving the terrible score for only a few issues that have nothing to do with the overall plot, gameplay, and design of Portal 2 is insane.