Portal defied expectations. Some three and a half years later, Portal 2 has done the same.

Game: Portal 2
Publisher: Valve
Developer: Valve
Genre: First Person Puzzle
Price: $59.99 Console, $49.99 PC/Mac
Verdict: An incredibly built game that perfects the formula presented in Portal.

Purchased by Reviewer

The meteoric rise of Portal from its humble beginnings as a student design project to a release which garnered a Call of Duty-esque ad campaign is truly remarkable, but even more surprising is that Portal 2 proved to be every bit as remarkable as the original. Every idea presented in Portal was perfected and iterated upon to create an interactive experience that is hard to define as “just a game.”

It is a difficult proposition to review Portal 2 without fawning over the single player narrative like a 13-year-old girl who just got into Twilight, so I’ll leave it at this: each and every piece of dialogue and environmental set-piece in Portal 2 feels important with absolutely nothing left to waste.

The slightly elongated development time between releases didn’t just see the series narrative evolve, as Portal 2 is a drastically better looking game then its predecessor. Although the Source engine is definitely beginning to show its age (especially when compared to the likes of id Tech 5, CryEngine 3 and the updated Unreal Engine 3), Portal 2 proves that the old girl still has a few tricks up her sleeves. Improved lighting and shadows feel organic, and larger environments that the first game seemed to only hint at are fully realized in illustrating the sprawling and truly absurd nature of the Aperture Science facility.

In true “If it’s not broke, don’t fix it” form, the actual game play of Portal 2 remains relatively unchanged. New mechanics are introduced throughout, but as soon as you manage to get comfortable with a given mechanic, the game quickly switches gears to something completely new and equally perplexing. The thrill of launching yourself through the environment is as invigorating as ever, especially when coupled with some of the more cavernous areas of the facility.

The puzzles of Portal 2 are assuredly more difficult then the original, but not to a point where they cause undue frustration. Some puzzles will make you feel incredibly smart upon completion, while others will make you feel dumber than a rock after realizing that there was a much easier solution that was staring you directly in the face… and laughing the whole time. It’s evident that Portal 2 was play-tested like crazy as no solution feels cheap or ill designed. Your only barrier to success is an unwillingness to think outside the box.

In addition to an expansive single-player campaign, a completely separate and similarly ambitious co-op mode rounds out the package. Comprised of the same baffling puzzle designs (designed with four portals in mind instead of two), the only criticism I can hold against it is the relative lack of narrative ambition when put side by side with the single-player campaign.

While analyzing the actual “guts” of Portal 2 is worth noting in a review for setting/confirming consumer expectations, it will always come off as disingenuous for the simple fact that Portal 2 doesn’t provide a quantifiable experience. Certainly it checks a number of boxes that one would expect to be on the back of a box, but trying to accurately describe it brings the proverb of “A pictures is worth a thousand words” to mind, with Portal 2 making the case that it is worth 10 billion.

GrE Grade: A

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