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Portal 2 Review
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on 2011-06-16 at 13:19 (8724 Views)
[Note: The following paragraph is intended for humor and is not meant to be taken politically. Please remove panties if jokes that touch on politics cause said panties to end up in a bunch.]
In his 2011 State of the Union Address, President Obama complained of a deficiency in the scientific progress of students in America. This should come as no surprise. In 2007, Valve released Portal, their surprise blockbuster which, in its climax, tasked the test subject Chell with killing GLaDOS, a computer construct concerned with collecting data to finish beta testing the portal device to prepare for its mass release. Millions of players beat Portal with no thought of the consequences their actions would have on the advancement of science. Well here we are in 2011 and Valve has released Portal 2, giving us a second chance to appreciate science.
Portal was certainly an innovative game. The portal gun allowed for a style of gameplay that no one had ever experienced before. However, the unique gameplay is not what the game is remembered for. The AI GLaDOS and the black humor she inserted into Portal transformed it from an intriguing game into an amazing game. It was remarkable that a game with only two characters (ignoring the Turrets and Companion Cubes) had such strong chemistry, especially considering one of them never talked. At the end of Portal though, Chell killed GLaDOS, repressed science, escaped Aperture, and went on her merry way. As Portal 2 starts, it is revealed that her merry way led her right back to Aperture. Paired up with a new AI, Wheatley, Chell sets out to try to escape again from Aperture. Their adventure soon leads them back to GLaDOS, and before long Wheatley’s bumbling brings the vengeful AI back to life. As the story progresses, players travel through a side of Aperture that was previously unknown, and a hilarious story is filled in through recorded conversations provided by a new cast of characters that were crucial to the history of Aperture. These over the top characters remind us of what made Portal so memorable without resorting to rehashing the same experience.
Whereas Portal felt refined and sterile, the world of Portal 2 is filled with decay and ruin. At the start of the game, the pristine Aperture facility has long fallen into disrepair and a substantial improvement in the graphics quality from Portal helps to depict this world. Walls have crumbled, machinery no longer works, and pieces from the experiments lie strewn about. It’s remarkable to progress through the game and watch as the facility is gradually repaired and returned to its original state. Chell’s journey eventually takes her to the long abandoned original Aperture test facilities where players are given a window into the company’s early experiments. During the course of the game, players also get to peer through the cracks into the inner workings of the facility. Some of my favorite moments in the game were the ones that required paying attention to the environment and looking for those tiny secrets. Unfortunately, the changes to the stability of the Aperture facility also come at a cost. One of the biggest challenges in the original Portal was that players were essentially thrown into a room and tasked with finding a way to the exit. The myriad of portal-able surfaces resulted in a plethora of potential solutions to these puzzles. In Portal 2, partially due to the damaged state of the world, partially due to an increase in non-portal-able surfaces, many of the puzzles were simplified to figuring out which of the handful of portal-able surfaces you needed to utilize to find the single solution out of each chamber. Looking at it from the context of the game, it makes sense that it was this way, but there were certainly times I felt they could have made some of the puzzles more challenging.
Portal was universally praised for its unique gameplay. As a result, Portal 2 was expected to remain true to those original innovations while also introducing its own improvements. At its core, Portal 2 is still about using portals to solve puzzles. Without spoiling the surprises, the innovations come in the form of the tools to solve the puzzles and the new challenges these tools produce. For the most part, everything from Portal returns, save for the Aperture Science High Energy Pellet which is replaced by the Thermal Discouragement Beam. The puzzles are complicated by the inclusion of around a half-dozen new testing elements that are rather hilariously named, and often come with equally hilarious explanations. Arguably, the most inventive components are the series of gels, each with a unique property that allow for some truly challenging puzzles. By the end of the game, when all these different elements start being thrown into a single puzzle, any reservations about Valve’s ability to keep Portal 2 creative will have long since dissipated.
No review of Portal 2 would be complete without mention of the biggest addition, the inclusion of multiplayer. The multiplayer aspect of the game puts players in control of Atlas and (the far superior) P-Body, robots designed for the sole purpose of testing. Set chronologically after the single-player campaign, GLaDOS tasks these robots with a series of tests to develop their skills so that they might eventually reach the vault where a dejected collection of test subjects are tragically prevented from partaking in science. These puzzles cannot be solved alone and require players to cooperate and utilize two sets of portals to solve them. From my experience, it is much better to play in the same room with someone you’re comfortable with as GLaDOS will try to drive a wedge between your team by praising one player while criticizing the other. This works well to create a competition to win GLaDOS’ praise by satisfying criteria that you never actually know, especially if the other person doesn’t realize you’re now competing and receives the blunt of her insults. Additionally, in my limited experiences playing with random partners online, I’ve found that there are a lot of players who don’t understand the concept of working together and are only looking for a fancy paperweight, not a partner. That said, even if online is the only option, this campaign is just as worth playing as its single player counterpart. Both GLaDOS’ dark humor and the unique challenges and gameplay return to cement the multiplayer as a phenomenal addition to the Portal 2 experience.
Based on the success of the original Portal, I doubt there were many gamers who didn’t play it. Talking with friends prior to Portal 2’s release, the biggest concern I heard was that there wasn’t enough Valve could do that would manage to make this sequel standout as more than a carbon copy. Let me assure you that Portal 2 manages to remind us of all the things that made Portal great while including enough changes and additions that it doesn’t feel stale. Value has successfully created a sequel that expands on its predecessor without being a cheap emulation. If you played Portal, you should definitely pick up Portal 2. If you haven’t played Portal.. ..what’s wrong with you?? Go get it now, and then play Portal 2. You owe it to science~
All images are owned by Valve.
PS -- someone really needs to make me an adorable turret figure :3
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