Portal 2

A game that actually manages to end up lesser than its predecessor despite an expansion of nearly every concept, proving that more is not always more. Portal 2 has more dialogue, more humor, more characters, more puzzle mechanics, more locations, more visual spectacle, more secrets, a much longer story with three distinct acts as long as the entirety of the original game, and a sprawling co-op mode with tons of missions to work out.

Lengthy loading screens of generic Aperture logos are incredibly frequent and jarring. UI hints and tips pop up for the first 3 hours of the game to teach you how to play. Whichever AI is currently traveling with you is constantly hurling advice and instructions to proceed through the environment. Portal's hands-off approach to navigation and problem-solving, as well as its commitment to player immersion, are mostly absent here. To compensate, we get a slightly altered tone - one of comedic lathering (that does hit fairly often) rather than isolation or anxiety. There was a really great opportunity to re-invent some of that tension in Act 2 in old Aperture, and Valve fumbled it with big cartoony lighting, a jokey omnipresent voice of J.K. Simmons as founder Cave Johnson, and, of course, your forced hangout time with GLaDoS in potato form.

On the other hand Portal 2 is quite mechanically developed, with a number of welcome twists on the usual gameplay with light bridges, laser switches, super-speed and bounce paints, and these antigrav tube things. More of the puzzles here actually require some parsing and time to work out, especially in the third act. The co-op mode pushes these concepts to their limit, with some genuinely brilliant solutions. I will say though that a number of the puzzles follow the slightly tedious structure of working your way to the exit, just to push a button so a cube drops at the front and you can navigate back to the exit to open the door. It feels like solving the problem twice and it's not fun. Other times, especially in Act 3, you'll find yourself in areas that, with one misplace portal, take a fair amount of time to "reset" out of, which feels punishing in an obnoxious way. There's also one puzzle involving a completely un-portal-able room and a bunch of white paint that is completely janky to the point that I wonder why it was left in.

The writing is fairly good, although I think the player really needed some more downtime between barrages of jokes, and perhaps some more sinister elements of the plot. Many "escape sequences" you'll perform are not cutscenes but so rigid in execution that they may as well be. Additionally, finding the solution on the fly (and being punished when you do not) in these action sequences was really grating and sometimes patronizing. In many instances it felt like I was being shoved along to the next setpiece instead of just allowed to experience the game at my own pace. If Portal 1 was a psychological thriller, Portal 2 is like a generic sci-fi action film in the 2010s, with a lot of spectacle and big "moments" that fall flat in comparison to P1's quieter, darker reveals.

Portal 2 is still one of the better games available in the puzzle genre and the fact that there is a fun story and a drop-dead gorgeous setting on top of it make it utterly unique, not to mention the well-done new gameplay twists. My commentary was fairly negative but that's just me poking holes in a very good experience that unfortunately still manages to really misunderstand its source material.

So, Kyvetti, why so lukewarm towards the game that's supposed to be the best thing since sliced bread?

I quite enjoyed Portal, the mechanisms were nifty and the flavour quite fun. But while I liked the puzzle parts of the game, I quickly came to dislike the action platforming parts, the sections where it's not enough to figure out what you should do, you should also execute a series of actions with perfect timing and no room for error. I hate those and especially any game wanting to ride on a storyline should be extra careful about having bottlenecks like that.
I never finished Portal but apparently I finally got stuck almost in the end and had quite good time for large parts of the game, so that's ok.

Now, the second part has much of the same, but especially the stuff I disliked. The first fields were still pretty good (with couple of interesting new puzzle elements) but the flavour was increased in a form of an annoying sidekick. And once the test chamber structure of the game is pulled apart, the following section is both annoying and boring. I'd like to know who thought that mid-section was a good idea and whether he/she has been fired or on which other games he/she has been involved so I can avoid them.

It gets a bit better afterwards once we get back to testing, but I notice I just can't give a damn. So I never finished this one either.

In the Portal series the parts involving the portals are good but everything else has problems. And Portal 2 has more of everything else.

In a medium where even a cult favorite puzzle game can become a franchise, it’s refreshing how Portal 2 meets the high expectations set by the original without sticking to the same old routine. This is one of the rare times when a video game sequel expands on a smart idea and creates something truly memorable.

The original Portal was a two-to-four hour distraction within Valve’s 2007 compilation, The Orange Box which also introduced the much more popular titles ... and Team Fortress 2. Portal was nothing more than an experiment at the time — one with much to build upon.

In the year that brought Halo 3 and Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare to the masses, Portal stood out for its playful tone, clever script and complete lack of guns — well, the kind that shoot bullets, in any case.

Portal 2 once again finds the player, alone or in the co-op story with a friend, finding their way through mind-bending puzzles with only the Portal Gun at their immediate disposal, which lets the player create a portal entrance and an exit, allowing a shortcut from one side of the room to another or even a distant wall. The simplicity of the controls (create entrance, create exit) and ongoing goal (get to the exit) limits confusion while broadening the potential audience.

The real challenge (and fun) comes from the co-op, which adds difficulty by doubling the number of portals needed for puzzles and requiring action in-sync between two players. You’ll often take a meal break, realize the solution and race back home with your partner to solve it, like you just discovered the cure for cancer. It’s in these “a-ha” moments that Portal 2 shines.

Co-op in Portal 2 is as good of a gateway into gaming as any beloved Mario [マリオ] title. Rather than clumsily squeezing in a second player into the five-hour single player, Valve Corporation designed an entire campaign of equal length around the idea of cooperative play.

The original Portal was memorable, above all else, for being surprisingly funny. Those are two words aren’t often associated with video games. Portal 2 succeeds in providing memorable lines and characters, without relying on old jokes. Instead we have a cast of new characters, including Wheatley, a neurotic, incompetent robot that always says the worst things in the nicest way. “Assuming I find your dead body, I’ll bury you. Go team!” he cheers after you fall down a pit early on.

Fears that Portal 2 would require extensive knowledge of quantum mechanics should be laid to rest. Valve, developers of Half-Life and Left 4 Dead, have done an outstanding job of introducing numerous new environmental elements within a gradient that makes every puzzle approachable, overwhelming at first but slowly revealing its secrets through great level design. In fact, an experienced player can run through the single-player without getting stuck on more than a handful of puzzles.

Since 2007, head shots and competitive multiplayer have become ubiquitous, making Portal 2’s logic tests, quotable lines, heartwarming conclusion and focus on teamwork all the more memorable. No amount of delays could detract from this timeless experience.