Portal 2

Valve's newest title Portal 2 was officially released Tuesday. A game where you have almost total control over all the laws of physics, still manages to bring a few challenging puzzles that will keep you stumped. From the creators of other hit games such as Half-Life and Left4Dead, Portal 2 manages to keep up the trend with its lovable characters and the return of our silent protagonist from the first game. You can expect new elements that make puzzle solving a tricky task for even some quick minds.

So you start out the game in the sort of cheap motel looking structure where you are then awoken to do some quick aerobic exercises to keep you in shape while in your stasis. You then go back to sleep to later be reawakened in the same room but this time it is entirely broken down and looks terrible. There is a knock on the door where they introduce a new character. Wheatley is a personality sphere who was in charge of all the stasis "test subjects", he decides to try and escape with your help. So he takes your stasis pod and in attempting to take it to a docking stations manages to crash into every possible thing he can destroying most of the pod and revealing the mass of other stasis containers. When you finally get a chance to start really moving around he advises you to get a portal gun. After finding one you need to go through a couple test chambers in order to escape. These are all reminiscent from the original Portal with the first few chambers redone but with a much more rundown look. You later pass through GLaDOS's room where you see her inanimate and while looking for an escape pod Wheatley manages to turn on GLaDOS and this is where some of the more difficult tests come in.

The way that the game play works is that there is the standard portal device that you have throughout the entire game but there are new added elements  to the game. The first new added element is the "Aerial Faith Plate" these launch you into air where you can then make portals in order to launch yourself further. These reminded me of the man cannons in Halo 3, basically the same thing. This is however the first of many other new puzzle objects, and a couple returning such as lasers replacing the bouncing energy ball from the first Portal. There is also this gel that can be used to speed your character or bounce off of, and even a gel that makes what ever surface it covers a place where a portal can be placed. There are also light bridges and these tractor beams. There are a couple puzzles that took me up to twenty minutes in order to solve and it was really fun experience. What also gives this game re playability is the new Co-op feature that lets you solve a large number of puzzles with a friend by working together or a random online person.

Atlas and P-Body reporting for testing

The Co-op feature adds a good amount of extra content that you can explore with a friend working together to solve these bigger chambers. Where all the elements from the campaign are present and each person gets there very own portal device. This leads to several creative ways of solving the same puzzle. With you each playing as these test robots, Atlas and P-Body there are some silly emotes you can do along with your partner. There is even a store where you can buy gear for your robot and equip items allowing for some customization. So it is great to do this with a friend or if your lucky and get a competent person who has a microphone. It can be really difficult to do this if you don't have any voice communication. You do get some tools such as a ping and telling players some very basic things such as where to place a portal. However when the puzzles get a lot more difficult it can be hard to explain to your partner that he needs to catch you in the air with a light bridge while you then hit a button and drop a cube down, without getting it vaporized. All in all it will still be a fun task for all those up for the extra challenge of doing some more test rooms.

So the appeal for this game is pretty broad in that it is funny and clever. The story picks up and does give a lot of background story on Aperture Science. With a developer commentary mode added where you can listen to what the developers say about the development process. It is great for a little brain teaser but after you start thinking in the right mindset you can really fly through several tests. I would recommend this to everyone who is looking for a game that they can play casually and have a good laugh while doing so. It is also good for some more hardcore people because some of the puzzles involve some heavy use of the portals and some critical thinking. I would not recommend this to someone who is looking for 20+ hour game, it is about 8-10 hours depending on you pace and how much you get stuck. Some people who want the absolute most out of there money might not be entirely satisfied but the co-op does give it a lot of redeeming re playability.

So in my opinion Valve hit a home run, they were able to keep the hype up for this game since the first of the month with the potato sack ARG. The ARG is a alternate reality game where elements from the game take place in our world so the GLaDOS website and the hacked steam accounts helped push the hype. I think that this was a great move by them and by following up with the community pushed event to have the game get released early. With the help of everyone we were able to get the game released around 8pm -9pm on Monday. So this game is availble for Xbox 360 and the PS3 version includes a complete computer version of the game as well.