Portal 1 was a pretty brilliant game with a delicious mix of humour, so making a game as good as Portal 1 was obviously going to be a challenge. So the big question I imagine ticking in your mind, if you haven’t already bought Portal 2 “Do they pull it off?” Kind of, is the answer.
Portal 2 starts off simply, the story gets rolling in a way which new comers and long-term fans both can understand, already using a bit of humour. Stephen Merchant (A writer, comedian, presenter, director and god knows what else) voices a small loveable robot named “Wheatley” which sounds an awful lot like a kind of cereal.
Portal 2 gameplay is pretty much the same as the previous game, shoot stuff, make circles, and solve puzzles. Some new things were added, like strange gels, one that makes you bounce, one that makes you run super fast, and one that allows you to place portals on it.
The quality of the puzzles has become a lot better, Portal 1 was not really that difficult, but this game had me swearing, getting headaches, and various other signs of stress. It’s up to you if that is a triumph or just plain annoying, but I saw it as a good thing, I mean that’s what you want in puzzle games – Right? Puzzles?
So a concern I had was the humour drying up, and it does just a little. Portal 2 still has lots of brilliant humour, the mix of two contrasting characters battling verbally plays through it pretty well, and helps the levels being less of an annoying experience.
Which pulls me up to another point, the levels, just as they start to drag, something will happen. Okay, the plot twists were pretty predictable, more or less. But ones involving you, rather than the in-game characters help to break the levels up, usually in a creepy horrific way though. (But who doesn’t love horrific creepy things?)
The length of the game isn’t great, but the difficulty of the levels more than makes up for that, I spent literally over an hour on one chamber, I don’t expect you guys to, you’re probably smarter than me. It wasn’t even that hard, I just do things awkwardly. Anyway! Yeah. It’s good.
As I mentioned there are some pretty creepy bits, I don’t mean like “AGH zombie!” creepy, I mean like empty, factory, robot, creepy. That effect is lost pretty quickly by someone chatting to you, which is probably good.
And I mentioned about Portal 2 being short, well the game allows co-op both online and offline, which is nice to see now days. Not only that, but the single player ending ties into the co-op story! Which is a nice little feature.
So my final verdict is it’s pretty great! You should go and buy it. And if you’re an xbox 360 player you’ll get some sweet avatar awards.
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