Portal 2 Review!!!!

Portal 2

If you haven't played Portal 1 yet I highly recommend you do. Just about any gamer, casual or hardcore will enjoy Portal. It is basically a puzzle game with a highly entertaining and heart filled story. Add on to that the fact that Portal 1 is free on Steam, everyone should have their hands on it. The campaign will probably only take 5 hours but it will be some of the best hours you ever spend in a video game. Also, you will finally get all the Portal jokes that everyone makes.

Portal 2 is like Portal 1 but even more developed, originally, Portal 1 was just an extra free game that Valve gave to those who got the Orange box (for Half-life 2) but because of the success of Portal 1, Portal 2 is a fully developed and independent of the Half-life series game. It brings a new campaign/single player and it adds a multiplayer. The game is even more enjoyable than the first, it adds new types of puzzles and new types of levels, environments, and physics.

Wheatley

Equipped with your Portal gun that can shoot 2 wormhole like holes into walls you have to move and launch and jump your way around levels to move boxes, balls, or shoot lasers into switches to open up the door to get to the next level. Simple right? WELL, in the new game they add new physics, like this orange goo stuff that speeds you up almost uncontrollably, white goo that allows you to shoot portals onto anything, blue goo which allows you to bounce really high, light bridges that can be sent through a portal for protection or travel, and new types of levels like those in the multiplayer that require a high degree of coordination between the two players.

Chell

The single player mode is excellent; the story takes you several thousand years into the future. Aside from that I’d prefer not to say much as the storyline is definitely among the defining points for the game. You’re awoken from hibernation by a bot named Wheatley who insists you follow him. Through your journey with Wheatley you find yourself among the ruins of GLaDOS and must sneak by without waking her. Unfortunately this does not work and she begins rebuilding herself. Hilarity ensues (as Portal is known for) and the ending has a major twist that leaves you wondering what the developers will choose to do with the next installment. The first one seemed hard to top but they have definitely accomplished that in the second. As far as gameplay is concerned, I don’t believe it could have been done any better. The controls are properly responsive and the button choices make sense.

The multiplayer is great. It is more like a co-op campaign but that isn't very important. Instead of playing a human like you did in the single player, you play two robots of distinctly different shapes (egg and tall). Having to coordinate your portals with your partner can be difficult at times and while I only played the multiplayer while sitting next to my gaming partner I imagine it would be much more difficult to coordinate portals without sitting right next to the person you play with. It would probably be impossible without some sort of voice over communication, but the game is designed that way so I can't really see it as a flaw. The levels in the multiplayer are broken up into types, as you progress you will see trends in the type of level you can expect as they escalate to more and more difficult within that sub level type until you move onto the next level type. This basically means you will play all of one type of level in a row before moving onto a different type of level, I found this a little annoying because once past my favorite types (the ones that require a lot of launching) you see a lot less launching. It is worth noting that the single player is much more dynamic in the types of things used to overcome obstacles.

The gameplay itself is great in the multiplayer but we ended up focusing on absurd jumps and killing each other in the most humorous ways possible. I think that is what we enjoyed most about the multiplayer, the levels were good, the challenge was high, but purposefully killing your partner is priceless. Also, you can play rock paper scissors.

Portal 2 is a full priced game, and it delivers a full priced experience, at 50 dollars it offers flawless gameplay, enticing story, and amazing voiceovers. If you are hard for cash, wait for it to be on sale on Steam, since its release I’ve noticed two different times where it was on sale. There are very few things that I thought were problematic. 1. Communication with a partner you aren’t sitting next to (but they did add a way to communicate through marking and timers in game so I suppose two could technically play without communication) 2. Replay value, Portal 2, multiplayer and single player combined will probably only take 10-14 hours and unless you want to relive the awesomeness of the story or find a new buddy to play the co-op through, there is little replay value.

Portal 2 gets our Nerd’s Choice Award with a rating of 93/100

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