The talk of the week is Portal 2. It launched on Tuesday, and it's fantastic. Just like its predecessor, it is filled to the brim with brilliant dialogue, clever puzzles, and some of the best sound design in the industry. It's only April, and it is already a contender for Game of the Year.
It also launched with an in-game store, and the internet is ablaze with rage. User reviews on Metacritic are decrying Valve as the worst developers ever, and upset gamers are swearing that they'll never buy a Valve game again.
It's easy to see why the Portal 2 store is divisive. Everything on it is horribly overpriced - skins and animations for the co-op characters are several dollars apiece. The bundle containing everything costs 60-70% of the price of the game itself. Even the most devout of Valve fanatics (myself included) have to admit that it's a shameless cash-grab.
But it's not the worst thing ever created. It's not even the worst DLC (downloadable content) ever created.
Nothing on the store affects gameplay; it's either quirky gestures to amuse your co-op partner, or skins to make your robot look slightly different. If you ignore the store entirely, you don't miss a thing. The game doesn't stop having great writing or enjoyable puzzles just because you didn't buy the ability to make your robot dance.
"Day One DLC" comes much worse than this. EA loves to charge you extra for content that's already on the disc you bought. Activision has no qualms about charging $15 for five maps, three of which were on the previous game which you still own.
Yes, the Portal 2 store is dumb. But it's inoffensive, inconsequential, and insignificant. And really, as far as DLC that isn't story-related goes, that's all I can ask for.
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