Portal 2 Review

The original Portal was an awesome albeit very short XBLA/PC/The Orange Box title. It saw you completing many puzzles in an abandoned facility (Aperture Laboratories) with no one but AI GLaDos helping you through. After the promises of cake went unfulfilled and instead you nearly get incinerated - it doesn't take much to realise that GLaDos is evil so you go into her laire and destroy her.



Portal 2 opens with you back in the facility after many, many years. Stephen Merchant is there to greet you and is suitably hilarious. Seriously, one thing I want to say now is that the writing is superb from start to finish. This is the funniest game on the market - that's a promise. You do the first couple of puzzles from the first game at the beggining - although those clean, glossy, white walls you'd expect from a laboratory have been replaced with a filthy building that's completely fallen apart with plants growing from everywhere!

The new overgrown Aperture...

I'm not going to spoil any story elements - because the story is incredible - but basically you get your portal device and get back to GLaDos's laire where she is accidently re-booted. Oh Fudge.

The game consists of some genius puzzles with loads of new elements such as gels, aerial faith plates, thermal discouragement beams and more. At the same time Valve manage to tell the backstory of the eerie Aperture Science facility. It's an awesome thing to see - going all the way back to the 60's and then back to present day. There are character developments along the way revealing things you wouldn't have thought of before... and that's all I'm going to say about the story.

The graphics aren't anything too breathtaking - Valve are still using the same old Source Engine - but honestly, it doesn't matter. portal 2 is a game that doesn't need graphics like Crysis 2 - it has far too many other winning elements!

After the Single Player there's the Co-Op - which is just as clever. There is the option to play splitscreen or online as the two robots. Atlas and P-Body. The two robots have a lot of character - it's hard not to love them. The best thing about the Co-Op is that you are so dependent on your partner. The puzzles are cleverly done so that if only one of you is doing the work - you just can't proceed. And there is a bit of a story to this mode to, although it's a bit more of a minor one.
Basically, I absolutely loved Portal 2, the writing is brilliant, and the story will keep you hooked until the climax. You have to get Portal 2, whether you get it on 360, PS3 or PC - that doesn't matter - Just get it!!!

10/10