Portal 2

I make it a point quite often in my (so far rare) game reviews that I'm what's often referred to as a "Jaded Gamer". I don't often get the same joy out of titles, that others do, and along with a redistributed budget as I've grown into my mid-20s that informs a lot of how I react to games in general. There was a time in my life where I couldn't wait to play the newest, hottest thing, but that time is not now. None of this is particularly relevant to the words I'm about to type, but I felt it poignant for myself to start with that, if only because I just recently bought Portal 2 for $14 on Playstation Plus (normally $20, for those who may come across this review later wondering where the deal went) pretty much entirely on the strength of the enthusiast community's delight over the series. While I never played the original Portal (having never played Half Life due to a Mac lifestyle and general distaste for first-person gaming), I really can't express my gratitude to Sony enough for making this game such a steal.

Because the storyline is so essential to one's initial enjoyment of the game (at least, in my case it was) I might as well brush over it and get right to the gameplay. Portal 2 is a game that builds on the foundation of its forebear in a quite intriguing way, one which allows players like myself who've never played the first to essentially relive it before the real meat and potatoes (I almost deleted "potatoes" strictly for word count until I realized that was the best joke I may ever write in a review, video game or otherwise...and then this aside happened) comes to the table. This might be a little tedious to those who come from the first game, but I found it very enjoyable as the puzzles weren't difficult in the slightest, Stephen Merchant was along for the ride and now legendary villain GLaDOS was fleshed out just enough to know she wasn't to be messed with.

What happens next in the storyline was the real draw for me, despite having had it spoiled for me ahead of time by listening to the Bombcast's deliberations over GoTY 2012. Having that spoiled didn't ruin the game for me, in fact it allowed me to focus more mental capasity on grasping the game's systems. And let me tell you, as someone who plays puzzle-focused games rarely (even at my gaming zeitgeist, the Resident Evil series was probably about as close to out and out puzzle solving as I got), this game pretty quickly cranks the dial from disturbingly easy to maddeningly difficult. Much of the middle-third of the game seems self-explanatory as hell as you enter into the various tests, and yet in practice they can be downright infuriating. Mostly this is a good thing, though I did personally find a few of the tests (and, in one instance, a non-test involving environment traversal towards Aperture's headquarters) too smart for their own good. The one that will probably stick out in my mind forever as baffling is the one involving three different types of ability-enhancing gel and a tower that ends in an air shaft. This is the longest puzzle in the game, and although it saves in multiple instances there were many times I'd find myself near what I knew was another checkpoint only to tumble down the tower via a mistimed jump (if anything is amiss mechanically in this game, it's the jumps) and have to recreate various tests just to get back where I was.

I admit that at that point I used a walkthrough for four, possibly five sections following. Partially because I wanted to see where the story was going and get more of Portal 2's amazing humor, partially because I was just mad at the game for making me feel so dumb. But even in those moments, I felt like the game was fucking with me in ways I could appreciate. Almost always, without fail, the next test would appear daunting for the first five/ten minutes and then something would click, I'd breeze through it, and receive an achievement. The timing was often so perfect that I couldn't help but mutter a reserved "fuck you..." at my TV, as if the antagonistic tone of the game's A.I. systems had been translated to their easier (ie. automatic) trophies.

All in all, it was the needing of walkthroughs at those certain moments that made me not feel like this game was perfect. But the concept is so sound, and the whole experience of it so smart right down to the end credits and change of main menu background/music, that Portal 2 is almost impossible to hate. It's a game that makes you feel incredibly smart 90% of the time, and mind-numbingly dumb 10% of the time. Which is really a throwback to a time when games didn't hold your hand through every moment, anticipating that you might not get what's going on. Portal 2 not only anticipates that you'll get stumped, it banks on it. And only once or twice did it feel like it was the game's fault I was stuck in that limbo. Even having had to reach out for help at a few points, I find it hard to argue against Portal 2 being one of this generation's crowing achievements. It's a game that could have conceivably been produced at any point in the 3D era, and that alone makes it relatively flawless.