Jesus Christ I knew people were complaining but I didn't think it would be this bad! I mean I don't mind a loading screen at an end of a level when you go into the elevator, but halfway through one? That's fucked up. It's even more fucked up when you're in a goddamn chase/big action moment and the game pauses to load! Really takes you out of the action, which is a shame since there's so many terrific moments. 

I am with you completely on this feeling about the annoying loading times.  I love this game but the Source Engine is showing its age hard and they really need to get on making a new one or implement better loading methods in the current one.

Is it me or am I seeing a lot more gamers wanting everything delivered to them on a silver platter. Sorry, nothing against you, but it's going to happen sometimes and you'll just have to deal with it till Valve can fix it.

in portal 1 most of the loading screens were broken into 2 test chambers until you got to larger test chambers. The loading screens in Portal 2 remind me a lot of Half Life 2 of coming up too frequently over very little action.

Yeah they broke up a lot of the later action but they were long or anything.  I was okay with them.  If they could underly in the game like the MK 9 cutscenes then that would've have been great but I'm not complaining.

Yeah, it is kinda annoying, but the humor in that game is so damn good that I can overlook it.

Yeah I kinda agree there is tons of loading in this game.   I think it's just the weakness of the Source engine, it's always had some loading interruptions tracking all the way back to Half Life 2.  Still a pretty good game.

Took maybe 10 seconds max for loading screens for me. I could barely read my tweets and stuff.

" Is it me or am I seeing a lot more gamers wanting everything delivered to them on a silver platter. Sorry, nothing against you, but it's going to happen sometimes and you'll just have to deal with it till Valve can fix it. "

I felt conflicted on the loading screens. The game played fantastic in 1080p on my 9800GTX which I didn't expect so that was awesome but the loading was super experience breaking for me. Maybe I'm crazy but I would have preferred a little bit longer loading if they just left me in game with some occasional dialogue.

The worst was definitely anytime you felt like you should be moving quickly. Turning a corner and looking around for an exit and hitting a loading screen felt super bad. Basically my only complaint about Portal 2.

" @ch13696 said:

" Is it me or am I seeing a lot more gamers wanting everything delivered to them on a silver platter. Sorry, nothing against you, but it's going to happen sometimes and you'll just have to deal with it till Valve can fix it. "

It's just you. "

" Gamers complain about a lot of shit, ridiculous loading times are one of the justified ones. "

It is really annoying the times it happens outside an elevator. I don't think it's as bad as some make it, but it is jarring and a little disappointing, especially because the rest of the game feels so seamless. Wonder why it's so hard to get streaming loads down on source when other engines seem to handle it fine.

The loading times were fine. Their was alot in frequency but the game is so quick to load I was cool with it. And they were interesting with the logos and everything so it's fine.

" Is it me or am I seeing a lot more gamers wanting everything delivered to them on a silver platter. Sorry, nothing against you, but it's going to happen sometimes and you'll just have to deal with it till Valve can fix it. "

"I think the main problem is that the game is so good, and you get so into it when doing those puzzles that having this loading screen slap you in the face every time you complete something becomes extra visible."

I was really enjoying Portal 2, having lots of fun as I run my way through a chase scene. Then, a loading screen popped up. I patiently wait the 5-10 seconds, and then continued to enjoy myself as I ran through the next part of the chase scene.

The frequency of them didn't really bother me (PC) and they were pretty short (the animations played once, maybe twice, then done).  Honestly, the frequency is pretty forgivable to me given how great it looks and how big some of the environments are.

@Enigma777: Maybe install and see how much, if at all, shorter they are?  Can't really do anything about the frequency though.  As for the air-locks, they're just another load point like the elevators.  I was actually surprised when I came across one late in the game and it didn't load.

@Vodun said:

"You get completely yanked out of the game and shown a looping animation without any connection to the current state of the game."

" @Vodun said:

"You get completely yanked out of the game and shown a looping animation without any connection to the current state of the game."

That is not true at all.  Watch them as you progress and you'll see that they are indeed related to what's going on. "

While waiting for the PC version to download, I jumped into the PS3 version to first check it out.

The initial load-time while Steam was getting set-up made sense, the other load times? Pretty impressive. I'm using "impressive" as a sarcastic, negative connotation.
My mantra right now is to play through the single-player first on the PC, and then do Co-Op on the PS3 to get the trophies. It's been really weird diving between both version. Suffice to say: You might want to use that free copy on the PC the first time-around, the load times are pretty ridiculous.

On the flip-side, I had the "luxury" (again, using a sarcastic, negative connotation.) of playing The Orange Box for PS3 at a friends house. While the loading times on the PS3 are pretty ludicrous, at least the game has the feeling, and the look of being optimized for the hardware it's running on. Flipping between both versions, (I'm running on Very High and High settings) and the differences while present, feel and look very marginal.

" @B0nd07: I'd happily install it but I can't find the option anywhere. Also I had a similar reaction when one of the doors didn't have a loading screen behind it. Valve is messing with our heads!

The thing about the elevators is that I feel like I'm heading to a different floor, so it feels appropriate to have it fade to black. On the other hand when you start at the exact same spot in front of the same air-lock door you were in facing 15 seconds ago... it just doesn't feel right. At the minimum they could have disguised it better. Look at Mass Effect. Some people hated the elevator rides but I'll take those over a static screen any  day of the week. Maybe have the doors close around you and have some pressurizing going on before it fades to black to show that at least you're skipping forward 2-3 mins when you come back or something. 

Again this is just a slight imperfection in an otherwise amazing game, but it still annoys me. 

"

Portal 2 is totally fine in the graphics/loading department. BUT the Source engine is kinda showing it's age. Although it's heavily modded it could still look better and load better. I'm not complaining about the graphics which are fine, but the loading is kinda annoying. By no mean game breaking, just a little annoying. I don't know how much of that is programmers fault, or if it is just the limitations of Source. I wonder if Valve will give Source a big overhaul soon. In a few years games will look even better, but will Source be able to keep up without a big overhaul? Also, load times.

Perhaps they are hesitant to make their engine too taxing on computers though, because it hurts sales (????). The lower the computer requirements = the more people who can run it, therefore the more people that can buy it. It's like rating a movie PG-13. It will be interesting to see how the next installment in the HL franchise looks, seeing as how that's kinda Valve's flagship series.

Definitely annoying.. like you said; WAY too frequently.. It's not even limited to once in between a level - there were a few levels it loaded more than once  during the level, and it completely killed the mood.

I don't know how people can try to defend it when it is a drastic tone killer, especially for a game that tries so hard to emphasize a certain tone.

" Definitely annoying.. like you said; WAY too frequently.. It's not even limited to once in between a level - there were a few levels it loaded more than once  during the level, and it completely killed the mood.I don't know how people can try to defend it when it is a drastic tone killer, especially for a game that tries so hard to emphasize a certain tone. "

Yeah there were tons of the bloody things. Didn't last very long though. I don't know why they didn't just mask it behind an elevator trip.

For the most part I didn't mind it, but the game having to load for about 5 seconds EVERY SINGLE TIME YOU DIE can get tiring very quickly. Especially if you're doing a lot of trial-and-error in a given area.

" @ShiftyMagician:  Yes, I agree with you for the most part. I disagree on the point that it doesn't interfere with the experience (as I do think it is enough that it kills the tone), but I do agree that overall in the grand scale of things it wasn't an unforgivable sin. An unforgivable loading experience would be those in Fallout New Vegas in which loads not only happen everytime you enter a building or new location, but can take 60-180 seconds on average. I think the reason why I am upset about it at all (which isn't by too much mind you) is that Valve has a reputation have being rock-solid with the QA/testing and high level of polish. It just doesn't seem very Valve to overlook something like that because they usually have a very keen eye for such things. "

At first I was a little bothered by them, but then I noticed they literally take like 3 seconds. No big deal, especially when behind the loading screen is amazingness.

I went back to the original Portal and Half Life 2 and there are the exact same load times (good luck getting out of C17 without seeing one). Valve needs to find a solution to these

The game could've done with less load screens, but it really wasn't that big a deal. The loading was frequent, sure, but it was also fairly fast.

 @FengShuiGod said:

" Portal 2 is totally fine in the graphics/loading department. BUT the Source engine is kinda showing it's age. Although it's heavily modded it could still look better and load better. I'm not complaining about the graphics which are fine, but the loading is kinda annoying. By no mean game breaking, just a little annoying. I don't know how much of that is programmers fault, or if it is just the limitations of Source. I wonder if Valve will give Source a big overhaul soon. In a few years games will look even better, but will Source be able to keep up without a big overhaul? Also, load times. Perhaps they are hesitant to make their engine too taxing on computers though, because it hurts sales (????). The lower the computer requirements = the more people who can run it, therefore the more people that can buy it. It's like rating a movie PG-13. It will be interesting to see how the next installment in the HL franchise looks, seeing as how that's kinda Valve's flagship series. "

The loading isn't that bad.  I have an i5, and never noticed anything too bad.  At the most it was about 10 seconds.
My problem with the game is the length.  

EDIT:  I have put more hours into MK9 during the same week I played Portal 2.  

I wish they would have hid the loading during the elevators. It's still annoying, but I'd rather watch an elevator go up than a loading screen.

Doesn't this all (long and frequent loads/no arms, feet, etc.) have to do with the fact that the Source engine is kind of dated?

30 seconds? I had 15 second loads at most.

Also, it's that or you bitch about elevators like its 1990-Mass Effect all over again.

It is a bit silly.  I guess Valve never got around to introducing any kind of streaming technology to the source engine.

" @KaosAngel: The problem isn't the loading time, it's the loading placement. 10 seconds isn't much of a wait, but it's annoying as hell when it's thrown into the middle of an escape scene. "

lol consoles

The loading time was fine for me i guess. I think Half-Life 2 had the more annoying loading times.

I got really annoyed by them in co-op.  Frequent loading screens AND that annoying animation of the robots being disassembled.  The loading itself is very fast (less than 30 seconds), but I just got fed up having to see it over and over again.

Yeah not really sure what's with that. Didn't the first Portal have similarly sized levels but much less loading? 

First Portal has much smaller levels and there's less going on. Portal 2 opens up at a lot of spots and there are more moving parts, so to speak.

I actually enjoy the load times. Watching the Aperture logo change, getting some mental relaxation time, spacing out a bit. The loads are almost always in places where they feel appropriate (I don't mind the 'speedy' sequence loading either).

The loading is very fast on a PC, so I didn't mind it at all.

It didn't ruin my experience, but there were some rooms I got through faster than the load to get there...