Portal 2 Review

19 Apr 2011 at 10:01:00 by John Robertson
Systems used to review this title: (360)

“Not bad, I forgot how good you are at this,” says GLaDOS. “You should pace yourself though, we have a lot of tests to do”.

It’s this line, uttered early on in Portal 2 by the first game’s Genetic Lifeform and Disc Operating System antagonist, that near perfectly sums up the experience offered by this sequel. GLaDOS may have forgotten how good we are at using Portals but I’d forgotten how good Valve is at creating environments/puzzles for them. GLaDOS may want us to pace ourselves but Valve have nailed the pacing for us.

Combine the puzzles and the pacing with a compelling story (populated with wonderfully funny and genuinely interesting characters) and you’ve got a game that doesn’t just meet expectations, it shatters them. Portal 2 improves upon the original in almost every way. If you’re already a fan of portals, test chambers and companion cubes then that’s all you need to know. Stop wasting your time and go order your copy now.

For anyone still in need of convincing… it starts, middles and ends with the portal gun. Of course, that’s hardly surprising but, this is what makes Portal 2 so fantastically satisfying; it doesn’t try to reinvent itself, it ‘merely’ iterates upon itself. One portal still leads to the other, cubes still hold down switches and lasers still activate power nodes.

It’s this parity of fundamental mechanics between the two games which allows anyone already familiar with them to navigate the opening areas with ease, get back into the space-bending mindset afforded by your ownership of the portal gun and then, once back in the groove, start getting to grips with Portal 2’s new toys. As I said, the pacing is spot on.

Initially, I objected to the presence of these new toys. I saw the repulsion, the light bridges, the propulsion gel et al as gate crashers on a party that was already perfectly enjoyable. However, once the shock of the new had subsided and I had learnt to properly use the new tools, I found myself excited and eager to test the possibilities they afforded. After all, Portal has always been about opening your mind to new ways of thinking.

As has been said before, good game design is often about providing appealing tools, teaching players to use those tools and then rewarding them for mastering the tools. Portal 2 excels in all three steps. The tools are ingenious, which makes you want to master them; the successful completion of each puzzle and acquisition of the next narrative-bite acting is more than even reward for your hard work.

‘Teaching’ is handled with equal finesse and confidence. Rather than highlight the upper limits of what each gel, force field or set of laser can accomplish, you’re only given a glimpse – just what each one can really do is something that you need to work out for yourself through experimentation and lateral thinking. As with all the best games (be it puzzle games or otherwise), arriving at a solution to a problem via methods that you’ve implemented completely off your own back is immensely gratifying; combining multiple tools to solve the game’s latter, brain-burning conundrums provides enough videogame induced gratification to last an entire console generation.

Like the original, environments are loosely split into two main types – test chambers and the inner workings of Aperture Laboratories. Unlike the original, the two areas are now intertwined amongst one another – one moment you’ll be solving a puzzle in a test chamber, the next you’ll navigating through the metallic corridors of the laboratory/factory and then you’ll be back in another test chamber.

This new set-up provides a much more cohesive feel. There’s greater freedom for the implementation of narrative elements, resulting in an experience that is altogether more rewarding and meaningful; combining the satisfaction of earning a new chunk of story with the satisfaction gained from solving the puzzles themselves. Plus, Portal 2 also manages to pull that rarest of videogame feats – it’s funny, really funny. Its dry, sarcastic humour is the perfect accompaniment to the dry, minimalist locations you’re tasked with escaping from.

For those that may be turned off by the increase in narrative focus in Portal 2, there’s no need to be. This is still a puzzle game through and through, whether you’re in a test chamber or wandering through the factory, everything is a puzzle – the difference is merely the environment in which the puzzle is housed. What’s great about the stronger story elements is that the puzzles are driven by something other than just your own desire to best them. Portal as a series has gone from a great puzzle game with a quirky story to a bloody great puzzle game with a fully-fleshed out quirky story.

Anyhow, if you decide you don’t like the story, the dialogue or Steven Merchant’s voice acting for new character ‘Wheatley’, it’s perfectly feasible for you to play with the sound off and still acquire that same sense of self-satisfaction to be gained by besting the designer’s challenges.

That self-satisfaction is carried through to Portal 2’s co-op mode. Almost entirely devoid of any real narrative (although, thankfully, GLaDOS still chimes in with ‘her’ characteristic sarcasm – often praising one player while mocking the other), co-op is squarely focused on getting you and a friend solving puzzles together. Each player (taking on the role of robots, Atlas and P-Body) has the standard setup of two portals each, giving a total of four between you. You can only travel through portals that have been shot by the same player – while you’re free to travel through each other’s portals as you like, you cannot, for example, enter through one of your own and then exit through one belonging to your partner.

It takes a short while to get used to the new freedom afforded by having access to double the usual quota of portals but it quickly becomes second nature – once again highlighting Valve’s skill in taking simple mechanics but utilising them in complicated ways. And boy, do things get complicated. Not only is co-op concerned with the correct placement of portals, it features many more instances in which you must time your moves accurately. Be it to launch your partner through mid-air at the exact right time to catch a falling cube or shoot portals to give your partner a chance to escape some impending doom or other, timing (as well as thinking) is crucial.

Having played through co-op mode in splitscreen mode, I have reservations as to its viability as an online mode. Despite the nifty please-put-a-portal-here tool that generates a target reticule at the push of a button, co-op puzzles require an immense amount of teamwork and communication. Even if you’re playing with a lifelong friend, voice chat and target reticules alone are insufficient communication tools for the task at hand. If you have the ability to play via splitscreen or system link, that’s what I’d recommend you do.

Both single player and co-op are brilliant examples of how to transform a simple set of game mechanics into something engaging, addictive, challenging and immensely satisfying. Portal 2 manages to take the ideas that made the first game so great and improve upon them even further without distorting the original ideals. By threading the puzzles with brilliantly funny dialogue, likeable characters and just enough of a story, Valve have succeeded in making us care about the outcome of a game rooted in a genre that typically treats narrative elements of any kind as superfluous (a hinderance, even) to design.

An early game of the year candidate and one that will take some beating. Masterful.

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