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Portal 2 Review

Today’s Guest Post is by my dear friend Ana of Lipsticks & Lightsabers. [Her blog is still on hiatus, but it will be back eventually!] **Also, please do not post spoilers in the comments of this review, per Ana’s request.

Portal began as an innocuous little puzzle game included as a bonus inside The Orange Box compilation. Originally intended as a humorous extra thrown in with the popular Half-Life 2 and Team Fortress 2, Portal’s success was unexpected and unprecedented.
Despite being short and simple, the gameplay was original, challenging and fun, (helped in no small part by Valve’s much-praised physics engine) but it was the combination of original gameplay, unique, darkly comic story together with one of the wittiest scripts in any game to date that made Portal so overwhelmingly popular.

 

Winner of numerous awards, including Game of the Year for 2007, Portal was short and sweet – it came out of nowhere, dazzled us, spawned its own memes and cult following, and left us wanting more.

The disadvantage of this success was that fans wouldn’t be caught unawares again – the original Portal may have been a happy surprise, but now we had expectations. Portal 2 had a lot to live up to.

Still Thinking With Portals
GLaDOS’ design was based on the Botticelli painting ‘The Birth of Venus’.

Four years after its predecessor, the sequel is finally here. Portal 2 begins chronologically after Portal 1, with the player character from the first game, Chell, waking up from stasis in the Aperture Science laboratories to discover that many years have passed since her first adventure.

GLaDOS, the insane AI who ran the facility and tried to bake you in the first game is back, naturally, but you also have new characters to accompany you through the game.

Wheatley, voiced by Stephen Merchant, is a pro hacker.

The most obvious new addition is Wheatley, a not-so-bright robotic core sidekick voiced by Stephen Merchant. If you’ve ever seen anything by Ricky Gervais, he’ll probably sound very familiar. Wheatley is definitely a prominent character, so if you find him irritating it might be a little too much – personally, I love Stephen Merchant and thought his voice was the perfect and charming fit for the dumb little droid.
English voice actors are used a lot in American games, and whereas in Fable I want to drown out the endless sea of NPCs who all sound like they come from either Somerset or East London, Wheatley’s voice was characteristic, appropriate, but still realistic and recognisable to anyone who actually lives here.

Wheatley isn’t the only new character; as the game progresses you’re introduced to other new voices, all of whom are connected to Aperture in some manner or other. They’re all witty, extremely entertaining and each reveal more about Aperture and the game’s backstory. Together, they make the game more involving – these aren’t your usual “Press B to Jump!” NPCs; you won’t want to play music while gaming and risk missing anything.

Keep On Testin’
Place could use a bit of a tidy-up.

Much better!

Portal 2 is much longer than the original, allowing you to explore the absolutely huge facility and discover more about it in the process. Although the game is linear, it often doesn’t feel as if it is; the area is absolutely massive and your unique method of travel allows you to explore much of it, far beyond the testing chambers of the first game. In fact, I died far more often falling off walkways and so on trying to get to the test chambers than I did in the chambers themselves.

Portal 2 does have new chambers, though, with new puzzles, and with new puzzles comes new mechanics. Portal 2 keeps the devices from Portal but introduces new innovations like propulsion, and repulsion gel, which will make you run faster or bounce, a conversation gel which can make any surface portalable, bouncy plates, swirly tunnels, light bridges and more lasers.

Bouncy turrets!

These aren’t too hard to master and add a wonderful new range of possible solutions to puzzles, when combined with the original portal gun and the intrinsic principal of momentum redirection – the idea that objects exit a portal with the same direction and velocity they entered. My primary criticism of Portal 2 is that this rule is not explained in Portal 2 as it is in the original Portal (as GLaDOS explains it, “speedy thing goes in, speedy thing comes out”), even though it is key to solving many of the puzzles. In fact, none of the mechanics introduced in the first game are explained again in the second, instead relying on the player to be familiar with the first Portal game.

While I understand this from a story point-of-view, I think the game could have been stronger and have wider appeal – not just as a sequel, but a strong game in its own right – if it included a tutorial option which introduced new players new to the basic gameplay concepts covered in the first game.

Platforms, the Planks of Tomorrow!

I played Portal 2 on the Xbox 360, and found the controls simple and intuitive, and the extras really worthwhile. The Achievements are funny and often really add to the humour of the game; there’s a good mix of achievements for game progression and hidden extras, and there’s even a couple of free, unlockable avatar options, including a mini companion cube for your avatar to play with.

I did wish the audio options were more comprehensive – there’s only the option to change master volume and music volume, and I found the music pretty sparse and would have liked the option to turn it up, or loop it, or hear more of it when I was stuck on a puzzle for a considerable length of time and had run out of dialogue.

I can’t comment on the PC and PS3 versions, but as Portal 2 also has a 2 player co-operative mode allowing online play as well as split-screen, anyone wanting to play with friends should take that into consideration when deciding which platform to buy it on, since you won’t be able to play someone on Xbox Live from your PS3 and so on.

6 Extra Seconds of Co-Operation!

 

ATLAS and P-body, demonstrating the loyalty of robots.

Portal 2 introduces the 2 player mode, which is an extremely welcome addition. The players control two robots – ATLAS and P-body – and steer them through the test chambers, guided by GLaDOS and working together to solve puzzles. These puzzles are different from the single player ones, and require two people working in tandem to solve.

I haven’t played this mode beyond the introduction, but I’m delighted the option is there and that it provides a whole new set of levels and more gameplay, as well as the option of online play as well as splitscreen. I’m looking forward to being able to play it with my boyfriend and introduce the game to my neighbours this way.

The Xbox 360 also has a set of achievements unique to the 2 player mode.

I’m Making a Note Here: Huge Success

The original Portal raised a lot of questions, and Portal 2 goes beyond answering them. In fact, it does what every sequel promises to do but almost never actually does – it gives you more of what you loved the first time. Not the same content simply repeated, but a huge expansion, building on the aspects of the original game we loved, but developing on it, with new additions, new mechanics, new levels and content, new characters – all of which are masterfully woven into a giant exploration of what Aperture is and was, where it came from, how it started and developed.

It’s a shame that Portal 2 doesn’t include a tutorial to recap the things covered in the first game, but given how cheap and quick Portal is, it could serve as a tutorial for the sequel on its own, and hopefully that was the point, and it will encourage newcomers to play the first game as well. Portal 2 is, of course, much more enjoyable if you’ve played the first Portal, although I think it’s an excellent game in its own right, and even more enjoyable than the first one.

Although the single player game can still be completed in a day, it feels bigger, more expansive and involving, and the extra 2 player mode is almost an entire other half of the game with its new content and levels.
Portal 2 doesn’t feel like a sequel, rather it makes Portal feel like a preview of Portal 2. It would have been easy to repeat the same cake memes and throw out some new puzzles, but Valve have gone beyond that to fully realise the possibilities that the original Portal so briefly hinted at.

All in all, I think I can safely say this was a triumph.

25 Comments

  1. Ana, I miss you so much I may have to play both games just so I can come back here and comment specifically on them! I know Brad had to have it the day it launched, and I don’t think I saw him for 2 days after!

  2. I just got a gaming-capable computer and Portal was the first thing I got my sticky little hands on 🙂 I blame Shiro.

    Good to see you around the interwebs Ana, hope you’re doing alright!

  3. I had to share this with my manfriend who is all hyper about Portal and his first comment was, “she’s alive!” ^.^ Clearly we are *all* very happy to hear from Ana!

  4. I don’t even really play video games *gasp* 🙂 but I loved reading that review…simply because I was glad to be reading something YOU wrote!!! Can’t wait until I see you pop up on my dashboard again!!! Despite not really having a clue….the game sounds like it was just about everything you wanted/expected it to be 🙂

  5. D’aww. thanks guys.

    My boyfriend is telling me that the voiceover guy DOES explain the conservation of momentum thing, but I didn’t hear it. Maybe I missed it? Anyway.

    I think Portal 2 is easier than Portal, but longer, and more enjoyable generally. All the content is really well spaced, and the graphics are a lot nicer, in Portal the behind-the-scenes all looked kinda grungey and blegh.

    Also, congratulations to Phyrra on her new job, and happy birthday to her! :]

  6. Thanks for a great review Ana! I’ve played a bit of Portal 2 on the PC, both single and co-op, and I love it! It sure feels like a worthy sequel to the first game.

  7. Yay Ana! It’s good to hear that you’re still out there somewhere!

    I played Portal and loved it but haven’t gotten Portal 2 yet. I definitely will because there is such a dearth of co-op games out there. Well, couch co-op anyway. Both my boyfriend and I love games and we play pretty much every co-op game there is, even the crappy ones.

    1. I completely agree – I’m not a competitive person and I really wish there were more co-op games out there which didn’t involve trying to kill your friends. It would be awesome if you could update the co-op mode with new, downloadable maps and stuff.

  8. Hey there, pretty Ana! I’ve missed you. I’m glad you’re doing well.

    We never played through Portal at my house, but I adore Portal 2.

  9. I’m currently on a no buy for video games, so I haven’t picked it up yet… but as soon as I finish the games on my list, I plan on my buying it! (Loved the first game) Nice to see you blogging again, I miss your rants 🙂

  10. Ana, I’ve missed you. Can’t wait to see you start blogging again. I hope all is well with you. Thanks for the review.

  11. Waaaaaaaaaaaaant!!
    I played Portal for the first time when Shiro’s collection came out and I am so so glad I did! Not only was it awesome but I’m pretty sure I understood 50% more of the references on Ana’s blog 😉

    1. Vijaya, don’t feel alone ~ I’ve never played it either.

      Ana, I have missed you so much!!! Can’t wait to hear what you have in store on L&L!!!!

    2. Don’t worry Vijaya, I’ve never played Portal either! The concept seems awesome but I don’t like suspense (I get anxious) and I hate losing which is why I hardly ever play any video games, lol.

      1. I’m kind of the same Judi. Also, I can’t aim at stuff, so I hate real time combat in games. Portal 2 doesn’t have that problem though, the only parts that are a little anxiousy are with the gun turrets or the boss fight, but you have time to stand still, look around, decide what to try and so on.

        In the first Portal defeating the turrets was a lot harder, in the second one it’s pretty easy to avoid peril if you look around and puzzle it out. Although if you’re like me you’ll probably still fall off things or catapult yourself into the stratosphere.

  12. Missed you Ana! Good review. I will definitely pass this on to my brother, as he is a big gamer!

  13. Thanks so much for the review! Very descriptive. I can’t wait to play. Also absolutely squeeing over seeing any post from you, Ana. Be well!

  14. Oh, Ana, I’ve missed you! I can’t wait for you to start writing again! Great review- I’ve never played either of the Portal games but they sound like a lot of fun!

  15. Yay Ana! Can’t wait to see your blog back again 🙂 I played Portal a bit, I enjoyed it but I got confused after a while and gave up :p

  16. I was so sad when I finished the 2 player mode with my boyfriend, I wanted it to go on forever. Probably my favourite game at the moment, great to see such a wonderful and informative review that doesn’t give too much away for those unfamiliar with the game. Hope you return to blogging on L&L soon! 🙂

  17. – Thankee for the review!
    – Glad to see you’re okay. Wish you the best 🙂 !
    – Looking forward to seeing L&L pop up on my Blogger dashboard again 😀 .

  18. Thanks for the review, Ana, and very happy to “hear” your voice again!
    Hope all’s well with you.

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