Portal 2 Review

With the massive success of the original Portal released with The Orange Box back in 2007, it was only a matter of time before a fully fledged sequel was released and it was officially announced March 5th 2010, one delay later and Portal 2 materialized onto Xbox 360, PS3 and PC on April 18th 2011.

From the start of the game you realise that this game is going to be wider and more ambitious than its predecessor. The story begins where you left off…….

(Spoilers begin here)

Your character “Chell” wakes up yet again after a prolonged sleep in the Aperture Science Enrichment Centre and is approached by personality sphere known as “Wheatley” (voiced by Stephen Merchant), he then leads you through the decaying and destroyed and overgrown test rooms of the facility (thanks to the players actions in the first game) and eventually leads to a reunion with GLaDOS, who you “murdered” in the last game. After swiftly separating you and Wheatley she proceeds to put you through testing yet again, until Wheatly yet again finds you and manages to take over the facility with your help and expose himself as the main enemy of the game instead of GLaDOS who now resides within a potato battery. After a large fall you and your vegetative A.I. work your way through the remnants of a 60’s style test site accompanied with the founder of Aperture, Cave Johnson (voiced by J.K. Simmons), you finally manage to escape the test site and have a final showdown with Wheatley, leading the GLaDOS replacing herself as the main A.I. and you finally escaping the facility.

(Spoilers end here)

The Reunion

As you can see the story has a lot more to look out for than its predecessor, and a lot more background to specific characters in the story, and many interesting Easter eggs linking to other valve games.

With a new game, must come new functions and boy, Portal 2 doesn’t disappoint. The tests in the game begin with your typical place portal in on one wall and another on another, but as the game goes on these mechanics are drastically changed with the introduction of lasers or “Thermal Discouragement Beams” that are directed using cubes,  Hard light bridges used to navigates through portals without falling and blocking objects, Repulsion Gel which allows you to bounce and jump higher than normal, Propulsion gel which allows you to move faster than normal, Conversion gel which allows you to place portals on any given surface and excursion tunnels which allows you to levitate. These different elements bring a fresh and a more challenging side to portal, which leads you too really to start “thinking with portals”. The overall campaign lasts around seven hours which is yet again significantly larger compared to the original Portal.

One of the many Test chambers.

One big element that was kept under wraps during the development of the game was the Co-operative multiplayer. Not only is the co-op multiplayer a difference from your typical co-op, it makes sure you need to rely on one another to get through the test chambers, instead of having two portals you now have four, boosting the possibilities of how to get through a stage which is pretty challenging and enjoyable on its own. You have the choice to play as the “Cooperative Testing Initiative” in the form of two robots “P-body” and “Atlas”. The player is able to use microphone support or if they do not have one, simple character commands such as highlighting an area to place a portal, or to reward a player for specific actions and hug or high five. The multiplayer is based in and around a “Hub World” and the players can select from 5 different sections, and can then work together and solve the 8 test chambers within each section. The multiplayer can typically last between 3-5 hours depending on how well you and your partner work together.

Big Hugs for a new and innovative multiplayer.

Overall, this long awaited sequel has proved to be much more enjoyable and tough, it holds many more features now that it is a standalone game and shows more intelligence than the most frequent point and shoot games we are so familiar with today. The only negative point about the game would be the occasional graphical errors, but this doesn’t take anything away from the game play, hopefully if a sequel is created, it will be within the Source 2 engine.