AWKWARD ZOMBIE

OPPOSITE OPINIONS THEY HURT ME

The cosmetics shop sets an awful precedent. It's insulting. Valve is acting as if it is a privilege to have access to these features. A few years ago, Valve was all about giving free content to people. But now they would rather use microtransactions or random drop systems rather than let the players earn these items through their skill. Sure, you can earn the gestures and hats through playing Portal 2, but TF2 doesn't get any more achievements in its updates so that players can earn new items. Now they expect you to use the random drop system, craft tediously, buy keys for a mystery box scam, or just buy the item outright.

Precisely.

Completed single player, it was a delight to play, and i love that little bit at the end with the companion cube
easily 7-9 hours depending on general smartness/etc
played a bit of coop too, its tricky, but its fun

It's just some items you don't even need to play the game. And you can get them for free even though it may take (gasp) longer than buying them.

If you don't want the hats, don't buy them.
If you don't want gestures, don't buy them.
If you don't want the flags,
If you don't want the skins,
If you don't want the hats, don't buy them.

Except that they used to reward you with the items, rather than leaving it up to a random number generator to decide what you get.

Valve placing a cash shop in another one of their games is a bad omen. You can unlock the current gestures and hats by earning them, but this may or may not be the case if they release new ones in the future.

So you're criticizing them for something that may or may not happen?

I am criticizing them for slowly shying away from what made them an awesome developer in the first place: Giving away content for free, rather than paying people for it.

As I recall, the random drop system was instituted because people complained that achievement based drops were too hard to get

Im now starting the stuff with the repulsion gel

About how far into the game am I at this point?

rofl I finished in just under 6 hours

@Wordsmith: A good deal to go yet

I can't argue with you there. But getting the items you want with the random drop system now is rather difficult, what with the sheer amount of items in the game today. Starting a cash shop was not the way to go.

I'll give you that, I suppose.

Still Valve has every right to include the Cash Shop in my opinion. It's just patience versus paycheck. Since most of the things in Portal 2 are purely cosmetic you have no real reason NOT to wait for them.

TF2 is a different case and I won't discuss that

Single player is brilliant.
And the achievement Lunatic has a very fitting name. It was crazy.
The ending made me sad, partly because of how it ended and partly because it was so good I wanted to play more of it.