For Science!

When the first Portal came out I was just blown away by such a simple idea. 1 gun, 2 portals and a lot of puzzle solving. I fondly remember playing Portal in one sitting and before playing Portal 2, I quickly refreshed my memory by playing the original one more time. Despite Portal 2 just on the horizon it was still an absolute pleasure to play the original Portal.

Portal 2 returns you back to Aperture Science as Chell. Our female mute hero who has a knack for puzzle solving is awoken by a new character called Wheatley voiced by Ricky Gervais close friend Stephen Merchant. I’m going to get this out right now, the voice acting in this game is great and the narrative is spot on. GlaDOS makes her return with her witty, death threatening, yet very satisfying and often hilarious announcements as you play through each level. Stephen Merchant does a great job in his role as the rather dumb yet helpful sidekick that he is at the beginning of the game. Being British I enjoyed hearing a British talent in such a mainstream game and was quite surprised that voice acting, story writing and character gestures were all executed sublimely. I’m almost tempted to put down that half the fun was just waiting to see how GlaDOS would insult you next or what Wheatley was going to say the next time you saw him. Even Cave Johnson, the creator and owner of Aperture Science who you hear from later in the game does an excellent job of not only personifying the craziness that is the Aperture Science Labs approach to science but also the aging of the company itself.

Aperture Science is in large scale ruin. Nature has made its way into some test areas while others are just decrepit and falling apart. It’s a nice change to what we were shown in the original Portal, but GlaDOS is busy repairing the test areas for you as you advance. What I really enjoyed was how Valve showed the player just how big and massive Aperture Science is. If not darn right ridiculous. Test areas are just huge cubes of robotic tiles that can are themselves movable in this giant structure of a testing facility. It’s really quite cool and I was glad to discover more about Aperture Sciences inner workings and history.

The tests themselves have new components to them too. 3 types of Gels are introduced. Blue allowing you to bounce to the same height you dropped from; great for clearing massive gaps. Orange gel allows you to accelerate rapidly along it and white gel when applied to surfaces makes that surface usable with the portal gun. Tractor beams which could both push and pull, light bridges which could be used to walk along as well as act as a barricade for moving objects or protection against sentries. My personal favorite was the faith jump plates which would launch the player or an item very high into the air at a designated target. I really enjoyed the air time moments in the original portal where you had to plant an entrance and an exit portal while you were in midflight and was glad to see more levels like this in Portal 2.

With all these new additions, you might think puzzle solving in Portal 2 is a real head scratcher, but really their quite solvable. Admittedly there were times where I was like; WTF? But Valve did such a good job with slowly easing the player into learning each new device and how these could be used to help solve future test areas. The learning curve is balanced very well and I never felt any puzzle were impossible. Importantly Portal 2 never makes you feel stupid. Sure you might stall on a few levels while you think, but when you do realize the solution you’re never embarrassed by how stupid you were at not noticing the solution sooner, just genuinely satisfied that you solved the puzzle. It’s a great feeling solving a puzzle in the test area, reaching the exit and moving on to the next test area.

The story in Portal 2 is a lot more informative than the first one. You learn loads more about Aperture Science and its history. Wheatley sets the tone of the game at the beginning but soon you find the tables have turned and you’re learning a great deal from GlaDOS and Cave Johnson in the later levels of the game. I enjoy learning about the lore of game worlds and even though Valve has only briefly mentioned Aperture Science in Half Life 2, I did find myself thinking how Portal and Portal 2 fits in the Half Life universe timeline. In any case it was cool to finally hear about how GlaDOS had come into being. Some information is revealed about Chell’s past but nothing on the scale to everything else going on. While the story formula is nothing new in Portal 2, it was an absolute pleasure to play through to the very end and see the conclusion, which by the way is out of this world! Spoiler? Maybe, but it was an epic end and the rolling credits had me smiling.

A great game and one you should all add to your collections. Could it be game of the year though? Hmm way too early to say for sure. Were only just entering Spring and there are so many games to be released yet but I think it’s safe to say that since 2011 started this is by far the best game to be released this year so far. I’ll be posting my Co-Op review tomorrow.