Valve Saved Science
I've been waiting to review this game until I finished multiplayer, and now that I have, I can give it the 5 stars it absolutely deserves. The single player campaign really warrants the rating by itself, as it is twice as long as the campaign from the original and features loads more story and humor. The voice acting really is utterly top notch. with J.K. Simmons making a very welcome appearance as the president of Aperture Science, and Stephen Merchant as the earnestly clueless Wheatley. The content is just staggering at times too. As mentioned in many reviews, Valve's approach to puzzle design is extremely effective in that they teach you new concepts quickly, and then require you to use them on an enormous scale. Some rooms will just blow your mind when you walk into them, requiring you to spot a piece of wall hanging high in the sky or devise exactly how to shoot yourself 500 feet across a yawning crevasse. It never feels unfair though, the difficuly curve is spot on, and I would urge everyone who plays to resist the temptation to hit up youtube or a walkthrough on some of the more difficult puzzles, as the pleasure of solving them yourself is really one of the great things about a game like this.
To touch briefly on the multiplayer experience, I would have to highly recommend it. While the load times can be a bit annoying (and really, this is one of the only complaints I have about the game as a whole), and it severely lacks a 'reload course / test chamber' option, instead forcing you all the way back to the hub if you make a mistake and want to start over, the interface is incredibly tight and the play is extremely fun and rewarding. Playing over XBL I never once suffered any sort of lag that interfered with anything, and some of the puzzles require very precise timing. I DID have a blast sending my partner flying into vats of goo and dropping him in front of turrets when he thought he was heading to safety. Seriously, if you play multi with a friend, there are enormous laughs to be had, especially when GladOS starts to try to turn you against each other as you continue to progress. Playing it with a single minded focus on solving puzzles quickly too will still be satisfying, as some of the puzzles toward the end will take a serious bit of thinking for most people to figure out, and it feels a bit more difficult on the whole than the single player experience.
The achievements are a varied and fairly fun lot, if that sort of thing is important to you. In terms of value, at $60 (what I purchasd it for) it rides the edge of being maybe overpriced, simply because puzzles games by their very nature don't have a lot of replay value. The game is long and varied enough that on a second play through some puzzles puzzles will still make you scratch your head for a second or two, but the majority of the challenge (and thus the enjoyment) will have been sapped. At $40 or cheaper, this game is a no-brainer, and you will be in for an absolute treat. Highly Recommended
