Portal 2

When the first Portal was released it was conveniently released along with Half-Life 2, its two expansions and Team Fortress 2 forming the award-winning Orange Box. It was the only unreleased piece available, it could be said that it was safe with heavy hitters like the ones mentioned, still, it ended up one a highlight of the package.

It was simple really, a few puzzles where a portal gun was required to bypass them, a filler main character, an out-f-the-ordinary main villain, a light story and a brief campaign. The concept of a portal gun capable of creating two portals that would automatically be connected dimensionally to each other would be the primary force behind it all. The idea was just too good, and the possibilities endless.

The rest is history well known, Portal was critically acclaimed by both the critics and the general audience, it turned out to be solid enough to withstand games like Half-Life 2 and Team Fortress 2 and make a name for itself. It was all valve needed to know it would be a huge success in a way or the other. It was just a matter of time before a sequel should surface.

This is a problematic situation in the industry, more so than others media, games are expensive and since it is so developers tend to focus on well-known franchises, the quality might not be there but the name is, and for some the name is just enough to justify a purchase. Many publishers/developers have addressed the problem of grinding old series instead of trying to craft new ones. Even recently created franchises, once proven worthy, have gone through a process of non-stop new content, relatively new franchises like Assassin's Creed have endured this issue.

Valve should not have this problem. Running Steam, the most famous and lucrative online game provider on the planet, solid names behind it all, it should be rather tranquil for them to push a new series onto the public's approval. It's not entirely but the advent of recent big new releases like Portal and Left 4 Dead indicate that if there's someone out there capable of reaching the lowest degree of failure percentage is Valve.

After all, Portal was simple, yes, but it was also beloved by gamers who quickly assimilated the game's lack of pretentiousness. This apparent lack, however, was never misunderstood with sleaziness. Valve's new game was well-crafted with its brief story, focus on puzzle solving, clever mechanics, good replayability by introducing challenges to more accomplished gamers and its humor.

Portal 2 had a difficult task in front of him. Move the series forward and transform it into a full-fledged release. Sure it is difficult because any path you might decide to tread can possibly be the wrong one. Overdoing it is just as much of a problem as under-doing it. The simple story had to be reworked, the main character had to be re-imagined.

This second installment is much longer than the first one, they managed to keep someone talking during the whole game. It's either Wheatley, a new robot ball you find during the playthrough, GlaDos or Cave Johnson -- the creator of Aperture Science. Listening to them talk is never boring, though Cave Johnson's speeches are pre-recorded messages to testers, so the main character never really interacts with him.

For the single player section it would be extremely unwise to go deeper into what the roles of each of the important characters are, each of them is essential to the story developing and the twists happen frequent and unexpectedly. The humor that marked the first Portal is present, sometimes you might get the impression it's overdone a little, but that's because if it weren't for these constant lines from third-party characters, nothing would go on and it would stand as a simple gigantic puzzle.

The scenarios you traverse are immense and absolutely detailed. Most of the time there will be a room or set of rooms where more complex puzzle solving will take place, everything that happens in-between is mostly navigating through the complex of the Enrichment Center. Tests will be presented in various forms, from isolated, abandoned test chambers to chambers that will take form as you go. All depending on what is going on with the story at the moment, which is never easy to predict.

The first one had a nice set of items, environmental occurrences or robot-enemies to try put your success in jeopardy. Portal 2 augments this arsenal in a way that surprised me, many new gameplay features enrich the experience. Some of them aren't back from Portal 1 but that's never a problem. For instance, the bouncing electric force-ball that the player had to maneuver to make it reach its destiny and make something happen is something you won't see in this new installment.

Early in the adventure you meet the catapult, that does exactly what a catapult does, except with the player. Clever portal placement will retain the momentum gained with the boost. Later new stuff like a gravity tunnel that can traverse through portals and go back and forth upon pressing buttons. Every new mechanic item can go through portal, actually, which makes things a lot more interesting.

Another examples are the light beam and light bridges. The beam is used to send electricity to specific modules to opens doors or perform any task needed to advance. The beam can be deviated by optic cubes, which are another new feature. The light bridges form bridges that are manipulated by portal placement. These devices are solid so they can perform other tasks like stopping high-speed bodies, for example.

The last set of new gameplay features available are the gels. There are three kinds of gels available and each perform a new unique task. This is probably the aspect that Valve used the most in constructing the puzzles in Portal 2, especially because they are found later in the game. Gels are thick colored liquid found in many places of the Aperture Science Enrichment Center through a major web of tubes scattered around. Once the liquid reaches a surface it sticks to it changing its properties permanently or until it's "washed out".

There are three colors, the first one i blue and it's the bouncing gel. Any surface with this gel encrusted onto it will have bounce properties, bouncing objects or people around. By pressing a button the player can stop bouncing if so he likes, or use it to reach high places. It's important to note that the height you get from bouncing is equivalent to how much momentum you have at the time, higher speeds result in higher distances or heights.

The second colored liquid is orange and it's the high-speed propulsion gel, it give the player a speed boost if the oil-like gel is spread across a surface, the propulsion only lasts for as long as the trail of gel does, though it can be used with other methods like portals or even the bouncing gel top achieve different, better results. Like all the gels it basically has a tube that drops it that can be found in different spots around the complex, it's up to the player and his portal device to dispose it whichever manner fits best.

The last one is the white gel and it simply makes a surface eligible to portals. Even if you've only played the first one you're well aware that not every surface can be used to create portals. In Portal 2 it happens more frequently in the end where the player must use the gel to create portal-enabled surfaces to advance. There's one more liquid found in Portal 2 and that is water, I mentioned early that the only way to make the gel go away if you spatter it somewhere is by washing it, well, the water serves that purpose.

The single player mode is fine and all. After the main plot you can try going against the clock or finishing each chapter with the least amount of portals formed. The multiplayer, however, is where half the fun lies. Presuming you have a friend willing to play with you this game mode will assemble a whole new adventure with two new characters, Atlas and P-Body. Their adventure is different than the one experience by Chell (main game silent heroine) and the puzzles are even harder.

It seems Valve feels more comfortable putting two players in bad situations than only one. The single player offers good challenge but nothing out of the ordinary, if you've played through the first game nothing will really stand in your way. In multiplayer, even though having two people at the same time might cause more problems just because of that fact alone, the overall difficulty of the challenges is increased, nevertheless.

There's also a customizing aspect to it that ultimately fails. It's much like Team Fortress 2 with the exception that there's only a few items available and trading is pretty much dead. Not everything that worked with one game will work on the other. Still, if you want to play multiplayer with style changing the aspect of your character of choice or placing a nice hat to make things much more fashionable, you can buy items from the store. There's aren't many but it's better than nothing, right.

It's important to point out that not only online multiplayer is available, you can have two people playing locally, one with mouse/keyboard and the other with the X-Box 360 controller, for example. It seems that these days local multiplayer gaming is getting rarer and rarer, it's good to see it implemented in a game like this for a change.

If you get absolutely addicted to Portal 2 and see no way of stopping you don't need to keep replaying levels until the end of civilization, steam workshop will keep you armed with newer player-made challenges to be downloaded and tried. If you think you can do a better job, why not go ahead and face the test chamber editor to make your own test chamber and impress the world with you test-chamber making skills. Girls love it.

You know what else girls love? Portal 2, because it's a great game that improves greatly upon its predecessor, including making hard decisions to change the overall feel of the game to a more story-oriented one that ultimately succeeds in so many aspects that it's hard not to compliment valve for, once again, their good work.