Portal 2

glados is absolutely in love with chell

Compared to the original version, "Portal 2" is a more polished game, and the addition of cooperative play makes for a refreshingly different experience, but not enough to replace the single-player version. The puzzles are great and don't rely on poorly executed gimmicks, and the increased difficulty is never insurmountable in the cooperative version. There is an interesting story line, and well since this is a sequel to the previous game, if you played the previous game, you will know everything that happened leading up to this one. As such, the campaign feels self-contained, but that doesn't mean you can't enjoy it.

The puzzles are what make this game. They are never easy, and there will be moments of head-scratching, but they never feel unbeatable, and while it may take a while to find a solution, there are no tears to be shed.

one of the best games ever made when you don't have a bitch in your ear talking about how much they want to be dominated by glados the entire time. i can't believe the people i decide to be friends with.

j. k. simmons is the best part of this experience.

This is a 'holds up spork' ass game, inconceivable to think this is a better experience than the first one. It feels so Marvellized: no stakes, no atmosphere, and a juvenile discomfort with any sort of mystery or ambiguity. Its few good ideas go to waste. Portal 2 is firmly the sum of its parts.

The puzzles are OK, but amount to a collection of gimmicks. The first game elaborates most/all possibilities of the portal gun, the second game doesn't fully utilize anything it introduces. The gimmicks are cool--I love the lasers--but the mechanics are treated like a series of magic tricks rather than a set of puzzle mechanics. They are used only in shallow ways and you're quickly carted along to the next thing. It's both flabby and shallow. Both Portal games are quite easy, but Portal 1 is tight.

I think it's fair to say that the puzzles are not really the point of Portal, but the first game uses its writing very economically to both be funny and make you feel uneasy about the facility. It comes out in the wash that a rogue AI is essentially torturing you but this isn't actually explained, and the underlying sense that 'something is wrong' gets generated from the second you wake up in that weird glass room. As we get familiar with GLaDOS, the test chamber flow, and the suspiciously empty observation rooms, the game creates and intensifies the feeling that we're embroiled in something bigger than we can actually see.

Writing is important, but Portal knew it was subservient. The writing sets up impactful gameplay moments: the turret level, companion cube level, and the ratman areas specifically. There is very little writing in Portal and it is one of the best written games. Everything in it is iconic. "The cake is a lie" was a calling card for a certain type of nerd for well over a decade, and that seems to live rent free in Portal 2's head. It feels like becoming a meme was embarrassingly high on the list of priorities.

Portal 2 has no atmosphere because it explains everything--shuts off the metaphorical fog machine that constitutes an atmosphere--and replaces Portal's malaise with a straightforward plot we progress by falling into a series of holes. Incidentally we learn about the history of Aperture Science, which introduces the actually fascinating concept that GLaDOS is a specific person's consciousness, and this is barely explored or resolved because hitting the quota for ten hours of hi-larious quips was more important.

Portal could have released yesterday, and its spirit lives on in games like Void Stranger (a first playthrough of VS is defined by the phrase which opens the game, "something's wrong"). Portal 2 is stuck firmly in 2011, and I feel that it was an early symptom of Valve's shift toward lucrative but safe games like Dota and CS:GO. Half-Life, Half-Life 2, Portal, and TF2 are among the best of their respective genres. They didn't play to a crowd, but had the quiet confidence that something truly innovative and good would be rewarded.

This game took the mysterious and ominous theme that made the first one so good and then attempted to give the player a bunch of answers and universe building which stole the imagination from the players. It also took the beautiful simplicity of the first one and added more complex mechanics in the form of colored goo. This was a major bother to me as I much preferred the simple game design of complex puzzles that could be solved by getting creative with portals. Overall though, it's Portal, and Portal is awesome as hell.

GLaDOS is my comfort character >:)