Portal 2

This is the most consistently amazing game I've ever played. I think it's flawless.

Apesar de umas adições aqui e ali e um level design mais interessante em geral, o núcleo do gameplay desta sequência é essencialmente o mesmo do seu antecessor.

O trunfo, porém, está no texto, engraçado e (muito) bem atuado, com reviravoltas impactantes e um dos melhores finais de qualquer jogo.

I wasn't all that crazy abouth the first one but it was still decent.this is just mediocre and boring.Nothing of this has anything special,i dont care about the characters,the inmersion isn't good and the gameplay is a worse version of the first one.I am actually struggling to think of an interesting part.This game is one of the most forgettable experiences i haved playing videogames.

If this was only the single player game, it would only get a 3.5-4 from me. Part of my problem is that I just didn't find it to be very difficult or clever. Some of my favorite puzzle type games (Inside, Braid, Outer Wilds) have puzzles that are absolutely mind-blowing. Like I have to rearrange how I'm seeing the game. Portal 2 never really does this for me. It's more of a trial and error slog. I also am not a huge fan of the type of humor in it. It's a little too desperate to be witty. Like trying too hard. As a result, it's possible that I prefer the more restrained, pure experience of the first Portal. What boosts the game into near 5 star territory is the co-op and online modes. There is a near infinite amount of game here as a result of that.

I played this once with a friend who I beat the game with and another that thought Au meant aluminum

I know I mentioned the fact that this game was a masterpiece in my Portal 1 review but I slightly take that back, even if this is really, really good. When looking at this compared to Portal 1 it really just feels better in practically every way, almost as if the first game was the proof of concept while the sequel was executing these ideas in a much more effective way. The game is longer while feeling nice and concise, the atmosphere is for the most part even better and more immersive, and the writing is somehow even closer to perfect. This sort of game is more or less the gold standard of effective sequels in the way it not only builds off the first game in natural and clever ways, but feeling like its own distinct entity.

The classic hallmarks of Portal puzzle solving make a return but are for the most part even more satisfying. While the portal gun itself remains largely unchanged beyond some more minor tweaks to make it feel less clunky, particularly when it comes to portal directions and momentum storage being streamlined a bit to make it just age and feel better. Where the game really shines in its improvements come from those secondary mechanics that complement the portalling around, most of them actually contributing to puzzle solving in a more engaging way when compared to something like the light orb from the first game. They also tend to have an even more distinctly sci fi, futuristic feel to them, which provides a bit of a more lively, colourful vibe to the cold, clinical test chambers the player will be spending a lot of their time in. The game also makes a point to constantly introduce new mechanics in even when it's approaching the end. This is a bit of a double edged sword however, as while it keeps things consistently varied and provides a wide range of challenges to overcome, it means that the difficulty curve ends up being pretty inconsistent as the game frequently needs to slow things down in order to teach the player new mechanics. With that said however, this grievance is alleviated by having even these more minor puzzles ties in with the story and make the player feel as if they are constantly progressing, which is great in keeping the pacing feeling right even if the difficulty is a bit all over the place at points.

The other issue with the puzzle solving rears its head in the middle portion of the game especially for me, this problem being the way certain "environmental puzzles" work. There are many points in the game in which rather than having to perform some kind of thought provoking action, the player will instead essentially be told to scour their surroundings to find a white wall to portal to instead. While this works occasionally as a way to fully establish the sheer scope of the setting, it's repeated so many times that it ends up becoming tedious and unsatisfying, there's such little difference between a lot of the scenarios as well, it's just, doing the same thing over again without much thought. It doesn't help that the telegraphing on where to go during these is fairly inconsistent, sometimes being intuitively designed to guide the player, while other times it feels as if part of the challenge is figuring out where the game wants you to go. The same can be said for a few stages, where so much of the difficulty comes from figuring out what the game even wants from you, rather than figuring out how to do it. I'd hesitate to call this actually difficult, and more just obtuse, it doesn't feel like the game's being clever in these moments, it just feels poorly designed. Fortunately, the game's usually so full of clever stuff that these weaker, more frustrating moments are easily overlooked.

The atmosphere is where I really feel this game shines, especially in the way it varies throughout. The opening scenes of seeing this long-ruined facility overgrown with foliage and broken equipment provides a more open, yet still desolate, isolated feel, but seeing it all slowly be repaired around you provides a completely different foreboding tone, representing the growing control the antagonist is gaining. Similarly, for my complaints about the middle section, I really love it in terms of how it looks and feels, being impossibly large in order to not only paint a picture on just how big Aperture Labs were, but also to give a true feeling of hopelessness when you realise you're at the lowest area of this absurdly large place. It also ties nicely into the background and environmental storytelling, as while the main plot is focused on escaping, a rich story about the rise and fall of this huge corporation along with the atrocities they caused and the failures associated with it is so compelling and makes for a fascinating experience.

As a final note, while the writing is a bit more on the nose and lacks some of the more nuanced elements of the first game it makes up for this by just being insanely funny and still having top tier writing. There's a certain earnestness in the dialogue and jokes that stops it from feeling overly smug or obnoxious no matter how frequently you're bashed over the head with it, which is further elevated by the way so much of the humour manages to tie in with another aspect of the experience as well. Having great comedy is one thing, but tying it in with the core experience in such an elegant and cohesive way is another altogether, and is really one of the defining aspects of this game working as well as it does. If you liked the first Portal, play this one for sure, if you didn't like the first Portal, probably play some of this one anyway. The game is concise, doesn't overstay its welcome, yet doesn't feel too short either, there's a satisfying arc here, and for those who are looking for a harder experience or something to play with a friend, the multiplayer in this is amazing as well, and really ups the difficulty in a fun way. Everyone's said their piece about this game because it's so damn iconic and a definitive classic, but hey, it's a classic for a reason.