Rating of
5/5
Huge Success!
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 02/10/12
“Portal 2” is the full-length sequel to “Portal,” a short but oh-so-sweet FPS/Puzzle hybrid that was included in “The Orange Box” multi-platform compilation by Valve. While “Portal” was more-or-less an introductory project by a team of new hires at Valve, whose senior project at DigiPen, a ‘game’ called “Narbacular Drop,” introduced the central portal-hopping mechanic, “Portal 2” is a fully-realized entry in the on-going narrative of Valve’s ‘Half-Life’ universe. But is it possible to successfully stretch a bargain-priced, 3-hour experience into a full retail game?
Presentation
“Portal 2’s” graphics are exactly what one would expect from a current-generation, polygonal FPS. The textures look good and there are no jaggies – there’s really not a whole lot to say about the graphics engine itself. However, the environmental designs are particularly well-done. The environments in the Aperture Science illustrate the enormous gulf of time between “Portal” and this sequel, as well as provide subtle clues about the fictional corporation and its past. The game engine uses lighting particularly well, casting unimportant areas in impenetrable shadows and keeping player attention focused on the tasks at hand.
Like its predecessor, “Portal 2” barely uses music, relying instead on voiceacting to both carry the narrative and immerse the player in the game world. The closing song isn’t nearly as catchy as “Portal’s” “Still Alive,” but lightning rarely strikes twice, as the saying goes.
The voiceacting is still exemplary, and one of the defining features of the series. The voiceactor for GLaDOS reprises her role as the psychotic AI, while a couple of other actors provide new voices and perform just as admirably.
Other sound effects, such as turret-fire and elevators, are recycled from the first game. But “Portal” isn’t that old, so videogame audio hasn’t improved noticeably.
Story
“Portal 2” features two distinct stories that should be played in order, but can be played out of order inadvertently. The single player mode is meant to be played first, as the ending introduces the main characters in the 2-player co-op mode.
The single player story in “Portal 2” is tied to the original “Portal” both by a ret-conned ending that was patched into the old game after the sequel was announced and by a free webcomic downloadable from www.thinkwithportals.com/comic/, called “Portal 2: Lab Rat.” While she was never called by name in the original “Portal,” our returning heroine is revealed as Chell [Redacted] in the webcomic. After defeating GLaDOS, the rogue AI controlling the Aperture Science Enrichment Center, in “Portal,” Chell was captured by another AI and placed in a cryogenic stasis chamber. Thanks to the loss of the compound’s central computer system, these stasis chambers no longer functioned properly, which would have resulted in Chell’s painless death, had the last surviving Aperture Science employee not jury-rigged the system in his last moments. As a side-effect of this jury-rig, the stasis chamber Chell occupies will never stop functioning, but will also never wake her up – it’s either the ‘long sleep’ or the Long Sleep for her.
Of course, ‘never’ is a very malleable word and seldom means what it means. At some point in the distant future, approximately 10,000 years after Chell was placed in the stasis chamber, the Aperture Science reactor begins to melt-down. In a panic, another AI, a new character named Wheatley, who looks like one of the corrupted cores that were attached to GLaDOS in “Portal” and sounds like a deranged Englishman, barges into Chell’s chamber, wakes her up, and asks for her help in escaping the doomed facility. After sneaking past the remains of GLaDOS in the potato-infested facility, Chell and Wheatley discover the elevator to the surface… but the breaker is tripped, so it doesn’t work. In the process of flipping the breaker for the elevator, the bumbling Wheatley accidentally flips ALL of the breakers in the facility, reviving GLaDOS in the process.
Chell and Wheatley find themselves separated again, as GLaDOS resumes the Aperture Science Handheld Portal Generation Device testing where she left off, only now instead of being passive-aggressive toward Chell, she’s just plain aggressive. After a few short tests, Wheatley reappears while GLaDOS is distracted by a malfunction elsewhere in the facility and details a plan for escape. The plan goes somewhat as expected, but at the last second a new antagonist appears and dumps Chell down a long tube into the deepest bowels of Aperture Science and the real game begins.
As Chell struggles to make her way up from the bottom to stop the new villain from destroying the entire facility, she learns the history of Aperture Science, erstwhile competitor to Gordon Freeman’s employer, Black Mesa. It seems that Aperture Science was founded by a blowhard shower curtain salesman by the name of Cave Johnson, who, in the 1940s, started Aperture Science in an abandoned salt mine with the goal of ‘throwing science at the wall to see what sticks.’ While Aperture Science originally used astronauts, Olympians, and war heroes in its testing process, the decline of the company’s fortunes, along with its ethics, is revealed as Chell makes her way through layers of corporate strata (it seems that Aperture Science didn’t believe in throwing anything away or upgrading, as each layer of the facility is a time capsule of obsolete tech). By the 1960s, Aperture Science was relegated to paying homeless people $60 to participate in its tests. Shortly after that time period, half the employees were replaced with AIs and the remaining human employees were required to act as test subjects along with their regular work duties.
As the single player mode draws to a close, the new antagonist discovers and deploys a pair of humanoid robots for the Aperture Science Handheld Portal Generation Device testing in lieu of the discarded Chell. These robots, named Atlas and P-Body, are the central characters in the 2-player co-op mode, and are tasked by their AI overseer to perform a variety of tests before assisting in the recovery of an incredible treasure locked away in a vault deep within the Aperture Science facility.
Atlas and P-Body return for more testing and another important mission in the free DLC, ‘Peer Review,’ in which they must stop a menacing and mysterious villain from taking over Aperture Science and filling the facility with an army of killer clones.
All three of these stories – the single player, 2-player, and DLC – are well-written filled with witty characters and bleak humor. The characters and mysteries that made the original “Portal” so engaging outside of its gameplay all return in full glory in this sequel. I greatly enjoyed and appreciated the subtle ways in which “Portal 2’s” narrative helps fit Aperture Science and the events of the series into the larger, over-arching ‘Half-Life’ story continuum.
Gameplay
“Portal 2’s” gameplay is identical to that of the original “Portal,” but with different puzzles, the addition of three kinds of gel that can be smeared on surfaces to provide specific effects, laser beams, tractor beams, and hard-light bridges.
The titular gameplay mechanic, the portals, are two colored rings that can be placed on smooth, non-metallic surfaces. When placed, these portals, no matter how far apart, act like opposite sides of a two-dimensional surface. This was a mind-bending mechanic in the original “Portal,” and is still interesting in this sequel. Using the portals, the player must manipulate space to move a variety of weighted cubes, light beams, gels, and Chell around each self-contained puzzle in order to unlock a door and take an elevator to the next puzzle.
The addition of the colored gels adds depth to the puzzles by changing physics in contained areas. Blue gel is Repulsion Gel that makes surfaces extremely bouncy (And is made of asbestos! Yum!), red gel is Propulsion Gel that removes friction and makes surfaces slippery (thus speeding up movement across those surfaces), and white gel is Conversion Gel that makes any surface a suitable target for a portal (It’s made of moon rocks and causes cancer! Double-yum!).
Like all Valve games on consoles, “Portal 2” allows full customization of the control scheme. This is a very important feature, as the default control schemes for PC games on consoles are always horrible. Customization is quick and easy, and in 3 minutes I had the same setup I used to play all of “The Orange Box” games and was quite happy.
The 2-player co-op mode is identical to the single player mode, except for the fact that both players must navigate to the exit in order to unlock the door to the next elevator. The puzzles are more complex, as they can now allow for 4 portals in all, as each player has a fully functional Aperture Science Handheld Portal Generation Device.
Overall
Whether alone or with a friend, “Portal 2” provides more of the same incredibly witty storytelling and brain-teasing gameplay as its predecessor. It’s also about 10 times as long as the original “Portal,” providing much more of a good thing. Anyone who enjoyed the original game can rest assured that “Portal 2” is just as great, despite the fact that it is no longer 100% new and fresh.
Presentation: 5/5
Story: 5/5
Gameplay: 5/5 Single Player, 5/5 Multi-Player
Overall (not an average): 5/5
