Portal 2

WHOOPS. Just realized that I have a draft of this review saved, but never actually posted it. Better late than never right?

The first Portal was easily one of my favorite games. The brilliant mixture of puzzles and humor never got old despite multiple playthroughs, and despite how short it was (if you know what you're doing you can finish it in half an hour), it also felt like just the right amount of time to be in this mad world of mind-bending physics and homicidal computers. It was short, but oh was it sweet. So after last year's E3 conference when Gabe Newell came out and said "Not only is Portal 2 coming, it's going to be awesome, and the PS3 version is going to be the awesomest," I could not have been more excited. They were promising a longer adventure, a separate but integrated co-op campaign, the introduction of tons of new puzzle elements, and of course the return of our favorite calmly insane AI GlaDOS. So did it live up to expectations?

You bet your ass it did. Portal 2 is easily one of the most intellectually stimulating, well crafted, and hilarious games ever released. I don't think I've ever laughed so hard throughout a game.

Portal 2 picks up maaaany years after the events of the first game. In the funniest tutorial ever made, you wake up in a basic room from induced hibernation with a voice over an intercom telling you to do things like look up at the ceiling as exercise, walk over to and stare at a portrait to be intellectually stimulated, and then go back to sleep. Years later you awake once more to find the room looking quite dilapidated, with a panicked voice at your door. You open it up only to find Wheatley, an AI core that looks like a blue eyeball who is promising to help you escape. Before you know it, you find your trusty portal gun, and through a series of errors by Wheatley, wake dear GlaDOS back up again, who promises to test you for the rest of your life. That is, until she takes up a hobby...like reanimating dead tissue. From there, I dare not reveal any more, as the secrets hidden deep in the Aperture Science facility are all too wonderful not to discover on your own.

As for the gameplay, if you've played the first Portal, you'll breeze through the first few puzzles and find yourself quite at home. But it isn't long before GlaDOS starts throwing in lasers, light bridges, aerial faith plates, and many other new inventions that make the puzzle side of things all the more interesting. Now, I know that I, like many others, was quite perplexed looking at trailers for Portal 2 and wondering just how in the hell we were going to be expected to solve these ridiculous puzzles with all these new inventions. But here's the thing. While Portal 2 has many things going for it, possibly its greatest achievement is its level design and progression. Early puzzles are easy enough to get you understanding the new mechanics while still being challenging, while later puzzles make you use that training to your full advantage yet never seem so challenging that you can't eventually figure out what to do. And once you do, and start pulling off some quite awesome stunts, the satisfaction of completing that puzzle is great. Basically, it's never too easy, but it's never too hard either. It finds the perfect balance throughout. And despite the first Portal being short and that seeming to be the right length for it, the longer campaign here constantly switches things up enough to remain interesting throughout and paradoxically once again, seems to be the perfect length for what it is.

Of course, this is all helped by the fact that humor remains a central component throughout. Wheatley is a wonderful new addition, as is the brash voice recordings of J. K. Simmons as Cave Johnson, founder of Aperture. Between the gleeful menace of GlaDOS, the wild panic of Wheatley, and the gruff Americanism of Cave, there's a lot of comedy to be found here, and Portal 2 takes every opportunity to use it.

Now, I haven't touched co-op yet, but am more than excited to get my hands on it as the story of robots Atlas and P-Body very obviously ties in strongly with the main campaign but provides a new perspective.

In short, and I know this may be trite, but...this was a triumph. I'm making a note here: HUGE SUCCESS. It's hard to overstate my satisfaction.

Portal 2 gets a 10/10.