Ok I am going to admit something here. As a huge fan of the Portal series since Portal originally hit the shelves back in October 2007 I might have fired up Portal 2 with an already enthusiastic and rose-tinted view. What I found only confirmed my expectations.
Portal 2 is a first person shooter (FPS) puzzle game which carries on from its predecessor Portal. Based on the concept of the manipulation or reality through portals which preserve linear momentum. If that sounds complicated, watch this:
That is the teaser trailer for Portal, as you can imagine the game play is innovative and refreshing from other FPS's which I am not so much a fan of.
The story of Portal 2 revolves around your character from the original game; Chell. After being subject to numerous rounds of testing in the Aperture Science Computerated Enrichment Enviroment, and almost being murdered several times by the psychotic testing mainframe AI known as GLaDOS, Chell eventually finds her way out of the laboratories and to the surface which is where Portal leaves us. Portal 2 Is the continuation of that story, where you find out after losing conciousness from the final fight with GLaDOS in the previous game, you are returned to the Aperture facilities to recuperate (This was later ret-conned in a patch, the ending was added with an ambiguous robotic voice approaching Chell from behind and dragging her back into the Aperture underground-complex before she lost conciousness.)
You are woken from suspended animation by a personality core called Wheatley and emerge from your chamber into the now-destroyed and decaying Aperture facility. Wheatley helps you stumble through the labs in order to escape, but in doing so you inadvertently reactivate GLaDOS, the passive-aggressive and completely insane facility control AI, who appears somewhat bitter about the fact that you killed her...
Without giving away any of the story, what follows is a slightly jilted round of further testing ala: Portal with a which quickly changes in a surprise twist! In Portal 2 the game goes deeper into the story of Aperture Science Laboratories, it's history and it's founder Cave Johnson.
The best feature for me is in the middle of the game where you learn about GLaDOS and where she comes from, and the secrets to why she is so bent on testing. GLaDOS received numerous awards from gaming magazines and websites such as 'Best Character' and 'Best New Character' from GameSpy and X-Play respectively, and Game Informer named her one of the 'Characters who defined a decade' in terms of storytelling. Most are citing her humour which is a form of passive-aggressive speak which actively changes in tone and intensity throughout the series (in both games.)
One of GLaDOS' unique qualities is her voice, which is synthesised from the voice acting of one Ellen McLain (who also has the Half Life series and Team Fortress 2 under her belt) through an auto-tune to give it that robotic and maniacle tone (here is a sample, from wikipedia). GLaDOS is by far the best reason to play Portal 2 besides the game play.
Another quality to Portal and Portal 2 is the complete mind-fuck of gameplay. We have seen this sport of manipulation of the game world in games such as Prey, but never has it been used in such a way as to encourage problem solving on the scale Portal has set. One comment made by GameSpy when awarding GLaDOS 'Best Character' was that the game could have got by without a story, which while in itself is pretty definitive of a lot puzzle games in the industry, Portal sets itself apart from the others such as Myst or the Professor Layton series as being almost exclusively character driven while not taking emphasis away from the mind-bending puzzles of physics and lateral thinking. Not to mention how much of an impact Portal made on internet culture creating such memes as "The cake is a lie" and the emergence of the Companion Cube.
Something which I am yet to experience but I highly anticipate as being another redeeming quality of the game is the incorporation of co-operative mulitplayer. You take one the duties of one of two co-operative testing initiative bots...
Atlas and P-Body are the two robots featured in the video above, which is something I cannot wait to try!
For anyone who is interested in puzzle games, FPS games or simple fancies a good bit of storytelling, seek out Portal 2 but I urge you not to do so until you have played Portal. A criticism which I am quick to offer of both games is that they are too short. I completed both Portal and Portal 2 in the evening of buying them, but their replay value is acceptable for fans of the game, but it may be worth waiting until there is an offer on to purchase both games, and certainly purchase them online through supplies such as gameplay.co.uk or play.com. On the PC, both games are available for purchase and repeated download through Steam which is a service available to PC which binds many PC games to a single account where you can purchase said games and download them over and over again which is handy if you are apt to losing your original disks.
It is my hope that the series continues in some form, though Chell's story recieved a definitive ending in Portal 2 I am certain Valve can come up with a way to continue the franchise which is so highly regarded in the gaming community.
The story of Portal 2 revolves around your character from the original game; Chell. After being subject to numerous rounds of testing in the Aperture Science Computerated Enrichment Enviroment, and almost being murdered several times by the psychotic testing mainframe AI known as GLaDOS, Chell eventually finds her way out of the laboratories and to the surface which is where Portal leaves us. Portal 2 Is the continuation of that story, where you find out after losing conciousness from the final fight with GLaDOS in the previous game, you are returned to the Aperture facilities to recuperate (This was later ret-conned in a patch, the ending was added with an ambiguous robotic voice approaching Chell from behind and dragging her back into the Aperture underground-complex before she lost conciousness.)
You are woken from suspended animation by a personality core called Wheatley and emerge from your chamber into the now-destroyed and decaying Aperture facility. Wheatley helps you stumble through the labs in order to escape, but in doing so you inadvertently reactivate GLaDOS, the passive-aggressive and completely insane facility control AI, who appears somewhat bitter about the fact that you killed her...
Without giving away any of the story, what follows is a slightly jilted round of further testing ala: Portal with a which quickly changes in a surprise twist! In Portal 2 the game goes deeper into the story of Aperture Science Laboratories, it's history and it's founder Cave Johnson.
The best feature for me is in the middle of the game where you learn about GLaDOS and where she comes from, and the secrets to why she is so bent on testing. GLaDOS received numerous awards from gaming magazines and websites such as 'Best Character' and 'Best New Character' from GameSpy and X-Play respectively, and Game Informer named her one of the 'Characters who defined a decade' in terms of storytelling. Most are citing her humour which is a form of passive-aggressive speak which actively changes in tone and intensity throughout the series (in both games.)
One of GLaDOS' unique qualities is her voice, which is synthesised from the voice acting of one Ellen McLain (who also has the Half Life series and Team Fortress 2 under her belt) through an auto-tune to give it that robotic and maniacle tone (here is a sample, from wikipedia). GLaDOS is by far the best reason to play Portal 2 besides the game play.
Another quality to Portal and Portal 2 is the complete mind-fuck of gameplay. We have seen this sport of manipulation of the game world in games such as Prey, but never has it been used in such a way as to encourage problem solving on the scale Portal has set. One comment made by GameSpy when awarding GLaDOS 'Best Character' was that the game could have got by without a story, which while in itself is pretty definitive of a lot puzzle games in the industry, Portal sets itself apart from the others such as Myst or the Professor Layton series as being almost exclusively character driven while not taking emphasis away from the mind-bending puzzles of physics and lateral thinking. Not to mention how much of an impact Portal made on internet culture creating such memes as "The cake is a lie" and the emergence of the Companion Cube.
Something which I am yet to experience but I highly anticipate as being another redeeming quality of the game is the incorporation of co-operative mulitplayer. You take one the duties of one of two co-operative testing initiative bots...
Atlas and P-Body are the two robots featured in the video above, which is something I cannot wait to try!
For anyone who is interested in puzzle games, FPS games or simple fancies a good bit of storytelling, seek out Portal 2 but I urge you not to do so until you have played Portal. A criticism which I am quick to offer of both games is that they are too short. I completed both Portal and Portal 2 in the evening of buying them, but their replay value is acceptable for fans of the game, but it may be worth waiting until there is an offer on to purchase both games, and certainly purchase them online through supplies such as gameplay.co.uk or play.com. On the PC, both games are available for purchase and repeated download through Steam which is a service available to PC which binds many PC games to a single account where you can purchase said games and download them over and over again which is handy if you are apt to losing your original disks.
It is my hope that the series continues in some form, though Chell's story recieved a definitive ending in Portal 2 I am certain Valve can come up with a way to continue the franchise which is so highly regarded in the gaming community.
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