Game Review: Portal 2

Portal was an incredible game which showcased the imaginative capabilities the developers at Valve had at delivering a truly unique concept.  It’s smart, puzzle-solving gameplay, intertwined with a simple yet all-together entertaining premise made for a really memorable gaming experience. With the critical and commercial success of the game, it was noted Valve knew there was a lot more potential behind the series which warranted immediate production a full-standalone sequel. It was all hands-on deck at Valve soon after, and the end result was arguably one of the best video games ever made; Portal 2.

Developed and self-published by Valve, Portal 2 served as a direct continuation of Valve’s work from the original Portal release. Portal was a smart and thoroughly memorable game, but its scale was limited due to it being a smaller technical experience to be included as a bonus with the release of their Orange Box compilation. With resources directed to a full-fledged sequel and an energized development team inspired to take part on working on the game, Portal 2 had all the right ingredients to become something truly special, and so it did. Releasing on April 18^th 2011 across PC, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Portal 2 was an instant best-seller, selling a total of 4 million units by May 2012. Critically, the game soared with a 95 aggregate score on Metacritic and collected a plethora of awards during 2011’s award season.

The narrative of Portal 2 to no surprise, follows on directly from the ending of the initial entry. After defeating GLADOS and finally reaching the surface, Chell is knocked out and dragged back in to the Aperture Science testing facility in which she is placed in a cryo-chamber and put into deep hibernation.  An unknown period of time later, after waking up Chell is greeted by a helpless but friendly personality core by the name of Wheatley, who explains to her the facility is losing critical power and wants her aid in escaping. Working together the duo must venture through the test chambers of the facility, utilizing the Portal gun once again to navigate their way to the surface.  Despite being destroyed, the lifeless body of GLADOS still remains and Wheatley ends up unintentionally booting the AI back to life.  With the facility back under its control, GLADOS is keen on putting Chell right back to work solving test chambers before she plans to kill her.  It’s down to Chell to survive the tests once again and hopefully find a means of escaping GLADOS and Aperture Science once again.

Valve did an exceptional job on building on the narrative foundations of the original game.  Instantly, the game captures and projects all of the same tone and humour but does a magical job in exemplifying it even further.  With Chell still being a mute character, it’s down to the secondary characters to get across a lot of the game’s story and personality and Valve could have picked no one better than Stephen Merchant, Ellen McLain and J.K Simmons to do that job.  Merchant as Wheatley plays the personality core with his trademark style, filled with so much bumbling optimism, his comedic timing is impeccable. Ellen McLain as GLADOS gets right back to it with giving the sinister AI a greater depth to appreciate as the story develops. J.K Simmons plays the founder of Aperture Science, Cave Johnson and while I won’t divulge too much about his presence in the story, it’s worth highlighting how much Simmons eats up the role and makes him an iconic character within such a short period of time. Between the character performances and the general progression of the story, Portal 2’s narrative does just the right amount to really build and deliver a worthy successor to the original games narrative.

While the fundamentals of the gameplay for Portal 2 are adapted pretty much from the original game, Valve did a great job in innovating with new gameplay ideas. While you’ll be playing through a number of testing chambers, all with familiar obstacles, there’s also a range of new obstacles and resources you will be taught to pull on. One of the new introductions in Portal 2 is repulsion gel.  Coming in three different flavours, the repulsion gel will allow you to manipulate surface environments for specific purposes.  Blue repulsion gel will allow you to bounce off surfaces.  Orange repulsion gel will allow you to speed up across a surface.  White repulsion gel will allow you to place a portal on any surface it’s applied to.  Valve utilize these gels in such an impressively smart way throughout the course of the game to really have you think about test chambers in more dynamic ways. A nice variation on the design is also the fact the game takes place outside the standard test chambers.  By circumstance, you’ll end up in the facility’s inner infrastructure as well as it’s deeper levels which require the player to be more considerate in how to progress further in a more-open environment.

It's not just the single player portion in which Valve innovated on either.  Valve in their pure genius also featured a special co-operative mode in which two players can take up the role of two Aperture robots called Atlas and P-Body.  Together you’ll be tasked by GLADOS to venture across several testing chambers which are designed specifically for co-operative collaboration with over 4 portals to play around with.  Introducing test chambers designed for more than one person increases the potential of these levels and helps imprint an impressive level of quality behind their design and respective solutions.

From a design perspective, the overall presentation behind Portal 2 really refines the already impressive blueprint established in the first game.  With updated lighting, rendering and mechanics, the game is capable of playing around with scale constantly and helps establish a sense of tension when the environment can be so easily manipulated in conjunction with the story. Mike Morasky also does a phenomenal job in composing for the game, his sci-fi score really blends into the overall style and tone of the game so easily and helps define its personality as much as the games other core components.

Portal 2 is a clear example of why you should never, ever underestimate Valve.  Even with the core foundation of the series already established in the original game, Portal 2 does so much and more to justify why it’s a sequel to the original release.  Its narrative is grander and holds more depth.  Its puzzles are smarter with so much more functionally to consider and utilize.  Portal 2 does everything in its power to deliver a seamless experience and in many respects, it does that and more.  Portal 2 isn’t just an exceptional sequel; it’s an exceptional game all on its own and deserves to be ranked amongst some of the very best games ever made.