Portal 2

"You are now thinking in portals..." - this used to be the tag line for an underdog game-project which completed the Orange Box. While most of the people bought this product because of Half Life 2 - Episode 2 the main feature only had limited playtime. After exploring the game set of the the Orange Box players were stunned by "Portal", an ego-shooter with no shooting and parallels to the Half Life universe.

In fact it was only a matter of time until the huge testing facility of Aperture Science got revived for the next run - and story.

While Portal 1 was pretty much done within 3 hours its successor waits with 7-8 hours of fun. It appears a little short - that's where the co-op mode comes in, adding almost a new dimension to the game's paradigm. Solving puzzles, mazes and riddles with a partner not only opens up possibilities of creating problems to solve - it also enhances one's horizon of thinking. The co-op mode does not really develop a story, but just for the fact that after solving some puzzles ("tests") the player is left with an unique impression, this games deserves a huge credit.

The story picks up where its predecessor left off - but digs way deeper into the history and structures around Aperture Science. It's a delight to move through very different environments solving unique puzzles which are created with a particular love for details. After some rooms the player occasionally feels like a genius because the presentation of problems are extremely unusual. The voices you are accompanied by dramatically raise the level atmosphere as the voice actors do (typical for Valve) an exceptional job. The whole flow of the game grants a fluid game-play and hardly ever comes to halt.

To me personally the main point of praise is the fact that Valve manages to send you through approximately 8 hours of the same game-play without making it boring. The story is appealing, unique and weaves in seamlessly into the Half Life universe.

Two things that I thought were not quite state of the art: 1. The graphics engine is out of date, no doubt. For this game it isn't THAT important to have the latest graphics, still it's very apparent at some point and very untypical for Valve. 2. Many aspects are almost too familiar from part one. The showdown, the credits, some monologues and game-plays, etc...

BUT, some other aspects would receive more than just 10 points and that's why Portal 2 still deserves a solid score of 9 points.

Let's face it: Valve produces games which are far more than the average assembly-line-games pumped out every year. The love for detail, interaction, presentation of problems, dialogs, story and game-play clearly stands out in comparison to even major game developer studios. And Portal 2 continues this tradition seamlessly - yes, I may have expected "a little" more but in the end it's still another magnum opus which will be talked about for a long time. No doubt, this game is already one of 2011's highlights and even though other games have way better effects, graphics, models or realism - Valve draws a very clear line: While other studios produce games, they craft art!

Portal was an already excellent puzzle game. Portal 2 however expands everything from the first game and makes it eleven times better. The puzzles are bigger, the stakes are bigger, the Enrichment Center is bigger. But let's not get ahead of ourselves.

Chell has been kept in stasis for a long time since the first game ended and is awoken when a tiny personality core named Wheatley tries to break them out of the facility. Chell and Wheatley pass through a few test chambers before accidentally reawakening GLaDOS, who has many more tests for you. You have to get out of the facility and finally escape GLaDOS and Aperture Laboratories... at least at first.

Portal 2 is one of the most fun games I've played all year. The puzzles have the same basic formula of portal shooting as the last game but there's a lot other stuff thrown in as well. New gels that propel you and increase your speed and a lot harder puzzles that will keep you guessing.

Not only does Portal 2 increase the puzzles, it also goes deep into character development. When you go deeper into the facility you find out the truth about Aperture's origins and also the origins of GLaDOS.

Portal 2 is one of the best games of the year. If you haven't played it, I strongly suggest it. You'll laugh, you'll get frustrated, and you will be heavily engrossed in this amazing game.

Portal 2 is the much anticipated follow-up to 2007's Portal which Valve released as an extra game on their Orange Box compilation. Although short, Portal's innovative game-play and memorable cast captivated players and made it a runaway hit. Calling Portal 2 a sequel would only be partially correct since the first game was more of an appetizer with Portal 2 being the main course. Does Portal 2 live up to the expectations? Let's take a closer look and find out.

Portal introduced us to our silent protagonist Chell and her fight to escape the deserted Aperture Science facility controlled by the insane AI GLaDOS armed only with her portal gun. Portal 2 picks up roughly 300 years after the first game where Chell has been recaptured and placed in cryo-storage and is woken up by Personality Core Wheatly so that they can escape the run-down facility before the reactor core melts down. Chell is once again forced to use her portal gun to navigate the ruins of the facility and deal with the resurrected GLaDOS. The story takes some very interesting twists and turns along the way and the terrific dark humor of the first game remains intact. The voice acting in the game remains top-notch. Ellen McLain returns as the voice of GLaDOS and as the voice of the polite and cheerful attack turrets. Joining the cast are Stephen Merchant who gives hilarious life to Wheatley and the always entertaining J. K. Simmons features as the voice of Cave Johnson, the eccentric founder of Aperture Science.

The game-play from the original game returns in all of its mind-bending glory. Players use the portal gun to shoot blue and orange colored portal holes onto walls to traverse over deadly pits, transport Weighted Storage Cubes to switches to open doors and lower elevators and redirect lasers (or Thermal Discouragement Beams if you prefer). Additions to the game-play include the propulsion and repulsion gels (in keeping with the Portal color motif they are orange and blue respectively) which do pretty much as they describe either sliding the player off at great speed or sending them bouncing high into the air. In addition, players must redirect light bridges and conveyor beams with portals as well. Perhaps one of the most exciting new features in Portal 2 however is the inclusion of co-op game-play. Co-op game-play gets its own storyline and characters, Aperture Science robots ATLAS and P-Body, each armed with their own portal gun and even more challenging puzzles for the gamers to solve. You can either play with a friend (split-screen or online) or team up with a random player. Good communication is vital to success however, and the co-op interface has several helpful tools to communicate with your partner including a small pop-up window to see their viewpoint though you may want to use a microphone as well. Portal 2 even features a commentary mode (a returning feature from the first game) where you can play through the game with speech bubbles placed throughout the levels which, when activated, trigger audio files of various production members discussing the creation of the game often relative to where the player happens to be at the time. This feature really shows off the amount of effort that went into creating this game.

In general the game-play is challenging, but never really frustrating. The game does a good enough job of teaching players the basic mechanics as new elements are introduced that even newcomers will be able to pick up the nuances of the game fairly quickly but has enough challenge to it that even veteran Portal players won't be able to just breeze through it. Some of the achievements/trophies are centered around players having to solver certain puzzles either in quick fashion or in different ways then they normally would. Exploration and experimentation is highly encouraged in game. In short, there is plenty of content to keep veteran Portal players on their heels and dazzle newcomers with all the possibilities.

Visually Portal 2 holds up pretty well considering it's running on Valve's somewhat dated Source engine. The environments are much more expansive and dynamic than in the first Portal and the visuals are much sharper. Some may lament the change from the cold and sterile look of the test chambers from the first game, the change in style suit's the story well. While it may not quite hold up to some contemporary major releases, it is by no stretch of the imagination ugly. The background score does a good job of reinforcing the tension and isolation of the game's story. All this really comes together to bring an enjoyable experience to the player. Portal 2 delivers in all aspects. Fun and challenging game-play, engaging characters, and the ability to play with friends make this a can't miss title, unless your only system is the Wii, in which case you're out of luck.

They have done it again. After Portal, which was more of a fun game teaser really, they have finally made the concept into one hell of a game.

First of all, it now has the proper length of a full game (6-8 hours for the single player campaign on your first run). Secondly, the creative puzzle solving from the first part is not only back, but improved with many new gadgets that make you wonder how they come up with that stuff. Find me more creative game play in the industry, I dare you.

The single player campaign is now filled with even more hilarious dialog and characters (the old ones are back of course), a better story line and what i thought to be a jaw dropping finale. That's the scale the concept is made for, well done! The game now features a co-op version where you go through a different set of levels which you can only solve through teamwork. Those will puzzle you even more than the single player campaign (in total the game is about 3 times as long as the original by the way). Before they send you out to places where you have to really rely on your partner to, say, not fall into the abyss, they send you through a course of team building exercises so you can get used to how things work now that you're not alone any more. Extremely well thought out. Solving those puzzles is even more gratifying when you do it as a team, or so i have found.

Last but not least a little shout out to the group of actors voicing the various characters in the game. Good voice acting is something we have come to expect from Valve games but those guys and gals really know how to deliver comedy. At point I had to stop playing for a minute to wait for the laughing to stop ;-) How often do sequels let you down. Not this one. It's longer, bigger, funnier. Now you will see why the people at Valve took so long to make it. Instead of rushing the game and get something half finished *cough* Dragon Age 2 *cough*, they took their time to get it right.

Hats off, Valve, hats off.

"Aha!" that is the word you will be saying most to yourself as you progress through Portal 2's nine chapters in the single player campaign. These test chambers or individual puzzles you progress through are so cleverly designed, that once your about to give up you find the perfect piece of information you were missing in order to solve the puzzle.

The game starts off as you awake from suspended animation, several hundred years after the events of the first game. You play as the same silent protagonist "Chell", and are broken out of containment from an artificial personality core named "Wheatley" in an attempt to escape the Aperture Science facility while accidentally awaking GLaDOS (Genetic Lifeform and Disk Operating System), the chief antagonist of the franchise in the process. Eventually your put through another series of test chambers but things take an interesting turn in the second act which I won't spoil.

The gameplay from the first installment remains mostly the same with developer Valve adding several new elements to freshen things up. First off, the art style has changed with the setting of the Aperture Science Facility having been dilapidated for so many years. Overgrown vegetation and ruined architecture freshen up the scene as well. Tools such as Repulsion and Propulsion gels, Excursion funnels, Aerial Faith Plates, Thermal Discouragement Beams add a new level of complexity to the puzzles, but the development team does a really great job of introducing you to these new elements, allowing you to master them before they hand you a new thing to play with. It's all great fun!

Graphics wise, the eleven year old source engine that the game is powered on continues to be updated with some great lighting effects and animations with a mostly steady frame rate, but the loading zones should definitely be trimmed, especially for a game this late into the console life cycle. The audio work is fantastic helped by the hilarious dialogue voiced by Stephen Merchant, Ellen McLain and J.K. Simmons. This is truly the funniest game I've ever played!

The game is well worth its sixty dollar retail price with an equally long two player Co-operative mode (which wasn't available at the time of this review due to PlayStation Network being down) and developer commentary throughout the single player story mode. The PlayStation 3 version (which I recommend over the Xbox 360 version) comes with Valve's SteamWorks support, a popular service on computers which allows for cloud saving and automatic updates not previously available on consoles. Two people are able to play with each other cross-platform from the PS3 over to PC or Mac, which is a fun bonus.

The take away from this experience is the atmosphere of the world you are re-introduced to. The game trains you in solving puzzles based on the physics of forward momentum allowing you to walk away from this game feeling smarter than before. The themes of isolation and science as a main priority above all else, are minor messages scrolled into the background, similar to the environmental storytelling you will find written on the wall of the game world, in one of the best games of this year.

Rating: A