Portal 2 is just for you. YAY!
So, video games. Hmmm.
I've played a fair amount of video games, I feel comfortable calling myself a gamer (though I don't define myself by that label) and I would also like to think that I have relatively good taste in games. Anyways, onto business.
I viewed the original Portal as merely a fortuitous inclusion in the Orange Box. I was actually quite excited for HL2 and the included episodes 1 and 2 (like plenty of gamers, i'm poor and have to wait a while to buy games). I was pleasantly surprised when I played Portal. More appropriately, It Blew My Freakin' Mind Out My Earholes. And so I joined the ranks of people wondering if we would ever see any more cake, companion cubes, GLaDOS, Chell, etc etc etc.
I'm sure that's enough background for you to understand my anticipation, and near frantic excitement, when i popped Portal 2 into my 360's disc tray. I'm sure you can also understand how i didn't rejoin the normal human world for a number of hours afterwards.
Simply put, i thought Portal 2 was tremendously successful in a number of ways. i loved the new characters. i loved the new elements such as the gels. I thought overgrown broken aperture was engaging (revisiting the test chambers from the first game was awesome). Old aperture was engaging as well. Cave Johnson, wow what a guy. I can't speak Highly enough of the new puzzles, which to say the the least were puzzlers. The new characters were fun companions and the new takes on old characters were just as fun.
i could go on and on with praise, but i won't. Suffice it to say i loved everything about the game but this (and i reallly had to dig deep for this criticism) : i felt that the puzzles were, in a few cases, too simple. I only mean in a few cases. those cases being the top tiers of each of the learning curves, such as flinging, gels, faith plates etc. This is a difficult criticism to bring up because i'm sure valve removed the really sinister puzzles for good reason. I just hope i can race down a corridoor of smash plates on orange gel, shoot out the floor into the air, hit a button, and beat the puzzle (or be smashed to bits for failure.)
short story, good game.
