Those of you who've followed me for a while probably know that when I'm not playing video games or pretending to study, I work part-time as a cleaner for my University's Students' Union. Yesterday morning, I was cleaning up the aftermath of a particularly messy night in the Union's underground nightclub. While scrubbing the floors in the toilets, I cast my bored eyes over the walls. These walls are tiled from ceiling to floor, and divided into three equal sections - the top third is covered in white tiles, the middle third in a white-and-grey checkered pattern, and the bottom third is tiled a greyish purple. Gazing absent-mindedly at these familiar patterns, I was overcome by a strange sense of deja-vu, and unbeknownst to my fellow work colleagues, I found myself thinking -
I wonder if I could put a portal there.
That's probably the most concrete example I can give of how Portal 2 has ingrained itself in my mind over the last ten days. It's very rare that I take the experience of playing a game away from the comfort of my couch. But since I ordered my copy as a self-reward for finishing off all my University assignments, it's spent a lot of time at the forefront of my mind. The blurry line between the Aperture Science Enrichment Centre and a nightclub toilet is an appropriate physical manifestation of the dominance that the game has had over my thoughts. The hilarious script, the brilliant voice acting, the mind-bending gameplay that piles sub-mechanic upon sub-mechanic to construct some of the most memorable puzzling I've ever done... Everything is about as close to perfect as you could hope for. Portal 2 expands on the greatness of its predecessor in every single way, not only delivering on my expectations, but totally shattering them in the process.
Prior to the release of Portal 2, I spent a lot of time talking about it with my game-playing friends. One of those friends falls into that rather dubious group that refer to themselves as 'hardcore gamers', but in actual fact play very little except for Call of Duty's online multiplayer and the latest instalments of select sports franchises. When I shared the promotional trailers for Portal 2 with him, he couldn't have been more dismissive:
" It doesn't seem that great. All you're doing is just going through portals. "
On the surface, my moronic friend is right. Portal 2 essentially boils down to a series of isolated rooms, each one a variation on "place one portal, place the other portal, reach the exit". But to look at the game in this way is to completely miss the point in a way that makes trivialising look... well, trivial. The best bit of the game isn't reaching that exit, but the journey that takes you to the exit - just like the best bit of a driving sim is the battle for first place, or the most satisfying moment in a team-based shooter is to formulate a strategy and then see it come together in action. The thrill of Portal 2 is inherent in the way it encourages and rewards exploration and experimentation. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the game's brilliant co-op campaign, which I'm currently in the process of playing with my non-gaming but ever-patient girlfriend. We approach every test chamber with fresh-faced inquisitiveness, seeking out portal-able surfaces and working out how to manipulate the sub-mechanics to our advantage through good old-fashioned trial-and-error.
Without a doubt, my favourite thing about Portal 2 is taking point, charging forward with reckless abandon and complete disregard for my robotic hide. As I'm falling into rotary saws, liquid goo, or an endless abyss, I'll spot where my portal needs to go, or realise how I can reach that weighted storage cube. At that point, the witty one-liners fromGLaDOS and the surreal thrill of seeing yourself in your own portal all just become window dressing. Nothing comes close to the immensely rewarding feeling of simply solving a puzzle, and no game comes close to delivering that feeling in the unique way that Portal 2 does. That's why, when the year comes to a close and Game of the Year talks begin, Portal 2 is going to be at the forefront of my mind, in much the same way as it is right now.
Dan
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Currently playing - Red Dead Redemption: Undead Nightmare (X360)
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