Review- Portal 2

23 Apr, 2011

Developer: Valve
Release date: April 21st (2011)
Platform: Playstation 3, Xbox 360, PC (Steam for PC and Mac)
Version used for review: Playstation 3/ Steam

Well here we are again, it’s always such a pleasure. That it certainly is, and I would like to start this review by getting all the little nerd cliches out of the way before I don the guise of a serious journalist. So to sum up Portal 2 in a nutshell- ‘This was a triumph’. Ok now that that is out of my system, onto business- but seriously, I haven’t felt quite this excited about a new title in a very long time, so it was with this fiendish glee that I arrived home from work Wednesday, put Portal 2 into my Playstation 3 console and prepared myself for what has honestly got to be one of the finest gaming experience I have ever had. Portal 2 is surely going to be a contender for 2011s Game of the Year, and for my money I can see this already being my personal choice for the prestigious title.

Brought to us by the lovely people at Valve, Portal 2 throws us back in the saddle with everyone’s favourite long-falling mute Chell as she works her way through Aperture Laboratories, completing a series of complex and potentially deadly test chambers while under the watchful eye of the sinister GLaDOS. Sure, you could be forgiven for thinking that Portal 2 is essentially just more of what made the first game so enjoyable and you would be absolutely right, but what Valve have done in taking a small cult puzzler and expanding it’s entire universe into the epic scale event title that we now have is truly something special. The massively increased length of gameplay standing at about 6-8 hours for completion, as well as the incorporation of new characters such as the sociopathic boss of Aperture Science- Cave Johnson who only adds to the trademark dark humour of the Portal universe, which is delivered by the bucket load in this installment. While many of the famous and familiar meme’s have not featured in this installment outside of minor cameos, Portal’s script is razor sharp with hilarious and highly quotable dialogue.

The single-player game begins with Chell waking up in a stasis relaxation chamber after an unspecified but assumingly long period of time following the end of the original game, when she is approached by motor-mouth personality core ‘Wheatley’ (expertly voiced by British comedy actor, Stephen Merchant) in the Aperture labs we all know, but in a sorry state of decline. Straight away the dark undercurrent of this game comes into full swing as you begin to get a feeling for the sheer scale of questionable ethics on behalf of Aperture Science in regards to their testing protocols on both sides of the fence. To crystallise it, I’m not sure they would make the list of ’10 best employers of the last 100 years’.

Gameplay wise it is everything that was good about Portal, the game dubbed as the ‘First Person Shooter where you shooter no one’. Your Portal gun is your only weapon to navigate through the wide variety of challenges that see’s a whole new box of tricks added to the existing formula and really gets the cogs turning as they bring a new dimension to the game’s puzzles. Deploying repulsion gel in order to bounce up and across vast spaces and greasing ramps with propulsion gel allowing you to jet under machines before you are crushed into a fine pulp are epic in their execution and unbelievably good fun to pull off. Certain puzzels will require you to play around with deadly lasers to open doors or operate lifts, as well as bridges made of hard light, Aerial Faith Plates (think super charged versions of the spring-boards at school) and excursion funnels that allow players to travel against the force of gravity which when dealing with great heights are a huge bonus. The puzzles overall in Portal 2 are challenging and really require you to stop and think, but occupy a rare space by where while providing a great challenge it never feels frustrating and the triumph you feel when you finally work out a puzzle is hugely satisfying.

Portal 2 is perhaps one of the most technically impressive games available at the moment, as during my two playthroughs I encountered absolutely no bugs or technical issues and overall the game flows seamlessly between sections, separated by Chapters that progress the action. The inclusion of Steam on the PS3 version of the game runs silently in the background allowing you to gain achievements for both PSN and Steam, as well as allowing cross-platform play between the two formats. The free copy for PC or Mac included in the box with the Playstation version is also a very nice touch!

When it comes down to visuals, it is fairly easy to say that the Source engine has never looked so good as it does here. Regardless of which platform you chose to play the game on, the environments and attention to detail are sublime, and while the PC naturally has a leg up providing you are running the game on a souped up machine- it is still a breathtakingly pretty game to look at. The environments have moved away from the purely clinical test chambers and added interesting little touches such as the vegatation that appears on the run down remains of the former thriving Aperture complex, as well as the stylised period sets which appear later in the game. Small details such as character models have been improved, namely Chell who is now modeled on Alésia Glidewell who also modelled for Left 4 Dead’s Zoey and pushes the games sense of complete developement in all aspects from the original.

A hot topic for the new Portal title is of course the co-op! Valve spoke of how many players had described their initial experience of the orginal title was very much a cooperative one in which they sat with friends and wracked their brains over Portal’s mind-bending puzzles, so it seemed a natural progression to include a fully fledged co-op mode in the sequel! Players will take on the roles of ‘Atlas’ and ‘P-Body’, two robots created by GLaDOS to engage in the ‘Coopertative Testing Initiative’. Equiped each with a Portal gun you and your test partner must wade through increasingly more difficult and elaborate test chambers. Communication and wits are paramount when completing the co-op sections, with most of my Easter weekend so far as been spent sat huddled around the TV with a friend while we throw each other hundreds of feet in the air, dancing in front of turrets and take the concept of trial and error to the max. The co-op features plenty of achievements for completing sections of the game as well as for pulling off gestures such as playing rock-paper-scissors or dancing like an imbecile in front of GLaDOS’s monitors, and as with the single player the sinister AI provides her hilarious commentary for the duration of the test sequences. A ‘Ping’ system has also been introduced whereby players can guide their partners where to fire portals or to alert them to general points of interest which works very well in the frequent events that players are on opposing sides of the chambers.

Portal 2 is a highly accessible and humorous adventure for all, and for fans of the original this truly is the crown jewels that will likely be remembered as one of Valve’s very best games of all time. There was honestly no point in this game in which I felt bored and disappointed, the story introduced some interesting and exciting twists and turns that kept me propelling towards the finale with anticipation. The ending sequence features a new song over the credits in the spirit of ‘Still Alive’, which I have yet to be able to stop singing and convinces me that the creative brains behind this should write some kind of album. Portal has long been recognised as an ingenious and imaginative take on the FPS and puzzle genres and Portal 2 serves only to cement that reputation, as Portal 2 is one of the best sequels I have ever played and a slice of near gaming perfection. If you’re a fan and have yet to pick this game up or have been flirting with the idea of giving it a go, do so as soon as you can because remember- Science rhymes with compliance.

10/10

Screenshots are courtesey of GGS reader and my Portal 2 partner in crime ‘Relic Hiss’, and are taken from the PC version of the game.