Portal 2

Holesome.

Although the developer will always be known as the house of Half-Life, it's Portal that increasingly looks like the quintessential Valve game. It's both clinical and funny, like a shaggy dog story told by Stanley Kubrick, and its complex folds wrap geography and narrative together so tightly that they become two sides of the same object. Its ingenious puzzles are peculiarly action-packed, and if Gordon Freeman's adventures served to make realistic physics an indispensable part of modern videogames, the GLaDOS saga shows you the fun that can be had with entirely bizarre physics, too.

On the surface, then – and surfaces are always a tricky proposition with this particular game – creating a sequel to Portal sounds a little like creating a sequel to the Rubik's Cube: why bother when the blend of form and function already seems insurmountably balanced?

Valve responded to this concern at its E3 presentation last summer, of course. Portal 2 will add more stuff: featurey kind of stuff like co-op, which we'll get to later, and mechanical stuff like gels that boost your speed or send you bouncing through the environment, tractor beams, and trans-portal physics allowing you to thread air currents from one part of the room to the next. During a recent chance to play through the single-player campaign's opening, however, not much of this kind of thing was on display, but that only served to illustrate the point that a sequel to Portal is already on pretty safe ground, if only for the sole reason that the basic game is so clever and engaging that more of it is inevitably a good thing by itself.

Portal may have hinged on one central joke, but it was a brilliant one, contingent on the ugly collision between nasty intentions and the sterile euphemism that passes for speech within large corporations. Portal 2 quickly proves there are more laughs to be wrung from this during a cheerfully brutal opening sequence, which has Chell waking up, seemingly in a motel room, and being put through some basic orientation tests. Hundreds of years pass, everything goes creatively haywire, and she's dumped back into the Perspex cell in which she started her last adventure.

It's astonishingly slick stuff: an endless stream of uncomfortable witticisms undercutting apocalyptic spectacle, as Chell's prison starts to fall apart around her while the designers bury a basic movement tutorial under quips about art appreciation and brain damage. It serves to make you feel right at home from the very start.

But although the basic structure of picking your way through devious and deadly test chambers with the aid of a transdimensional hole-punch remains largely the same as it ever was, even early on in the sequel much has changed. For one thing, time has not been kind to the labs, and the stark and frosty gauntlets you ran in the first game have deteriorated into a spooky mass of rubble, twisted girders, and hanging creepers.

This being Valve, however, the environments are a lot busier but they're still just as readable, with those matte white tiles quietly guiding your eyes to useful spots, and a pinch from Left 4 Dead allowing you to see the placement of existing portals as glowing on-screen icons regardless of whether you're in a different room or not.

You're not alone, either. You never were in Portal, obviously, as the ominous doublespeak chatter of GLaDOS echoed through the game's mazes, but here you're joined, initially at least, by somebody entirely new: the benign and flustered Wheatley, a roving mechanical eyeball voiced – wonderfully voiced – by Stephen Merchant.

Unlike GLaDOS, Wheatley just wants to help – failing that, he'll do his best to ensure you get a decent burial – and he makes for a lovely, warm-hearted counterpart to the slick salesmen tones of the facility's pre-recorded emergency messages, which are disarmingly eager to prepare you for life in a world where animals may have come to rule the planet or where meteors may be incessantly pounding the earth from above.

In amidst the jokes and the post-apocalyptic intrigue, however, the tutorial levels, which terminate in truly terrifying – and spoilerish – form, provide a real insight into how much fun there is still to be found with even the game's most basic toolset.

The initial test chambers may only let you use one half of the Portal Gun's powers – and may restrict other gadgets to cubes and the occasional switch – but they manage to cram a surprising amount of mind-bending puzzlement into the action as they weave you through reintroductions to everything from platforming, navigating impenetrable walls, and the way that mass and velocity combine with portals to allow you to move about the environment in a surprisingly gymnastic manner.

With the tutorial done with, it's up to a brief tour of the separate co-op campaign to introduce a few of the game's new ideas – the first of which, obviously, is the fact that there's now a separate co-op campaign. Focusing on the Laurel and Hardy duo of Orangebot and Bluebot, the new adventure may depend on the same puzzle pieces as the single-player content, but it manages to make them feel entirely distinct.

Wheatley may just be an eyeball, but he's animated with a real sense of personality.

For one thing, this is co-op of a far more intimate and co-ordinated kind than you might be used to in an FPS or RPG. Levels may be quick to separate you from your buddy behind a sheet of glass or a gap in the floor, but you absolutely have to work together to get to the exit, whether you're passing cubes back and forth through slots to activate a series of pressure plates, or simply doubling up the numbers of portals you can fire to thread a beam of light across a room full of obstacles.

New gadgets, such as a lens cube, which allows you redirect laser beams, seem bubbling over with potential for triggering switches, taking out turrets, or just singeing your partner for the heck of it, and a new pointer device provides an easy way for you to direct your accomplice's portal placement, or highlight new objectives. Brilliantly, there's even a range of gestures, activated on consoles via the d-pad, which let you wave, high-five, or beckon to each other. It feels like an implausibly brainy reinvention of ToeJam & Earl at times, and because there's two of you muddling along, things can go wonderfully awry.

An hour messing around with Portal 2, then, is enough to change it from a pleasant prospect to a truly unmissable one. With some promising new ideas and some great old ones, Valve shouldn't have too many troubles enticing people back to its mean-spirited geometrical playground. Maybe after that, the team will get to work on reinventing the Rubik's Cube after all.

Comments (38) Latest comment 1 year ago

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  • Zomoniac #1 1 year ago

    This will be the best game ever. I've never been more confident of anything in my life.
  • SixFootHalfling #2 1 year ago

    Obligatory Episode 3 please comment

    Not sure about the co-op campaign, but that's mainly because I have shit friends, but this is still a definite day 1 purchase.
  • AcidSnake #3 1 year ago

  • StooMonster #4 1 year ago

    Portal 2 is due to be released 21/04/2011 on PC, Xbox 360, and PlayStation 3.

    And on Mac too.

    Been waiting so long for Portal 2, I can barely contain my excitement.
  • arcam #5 1 year ago

    Sounds like it will be a better game than Portal, but I don't think I'll love it as much as the original. It was such a surprise and so utterly unique, that I don't think it's possible for the sequel to have a similar impact. It's my favourite game of all time.

    I couldn't bring myself to read past the first couple of paragraphs - if Portal 2 is still capable of surprising and delighting me (and I don't doubt that it is - this is Valve), I don't want to do anything to jeopardise that.
  • Chufty #6 1 year ago

    Game of the year?
  • Skith666 #7 1 year ago

    Making a note here...HUGE SUCESS!

    Knowing Valves sense of humour, I wouldn't be at all surprised if, at some point during the game you saw Gordon Freeman running through a room, followed by several Combine guards shouting something like "Come back, we have to do Episode 3!"
  • Ultrasoundwave #8 1 year ago

    Portal 2 not only has the potential to be one of the best games this generation, but also one of the best games of all time. Absolutely no doubt in my mind.
  • arcam #9 1 year ago

    Actually, discovering how the Portal story connects to the Half-Life universe is one of the things I'm most excited about for this game.

    I wouldn't be surprised if, after finishing Portal 2, we know a lot more about Episode 3 than we did before.
  • andywilkie35 #10 1 year ago

    Holy fuck, I need to get a new xbox in time for this badboy
  • GAmbrose #11 1 year ago

    I was thinking 2011 was going to be a bit lacking in quality games

    But with this, Deus Ex, Uncharted 3, Gears of War 3, L.A Noire and more on the way I think it's going to be a good year!
  • smithdown #12 1 year ago

    Sounds brilliant and makes me want to replay the orginial. I had this in my calendar as being released next week, was gutted to find out it won't be released until April!
  • darc #13 1 year ago

    Can't wait. And am I the only one who very nearly ran out of the office and sped home to replay Portal 1 just now?

    edit: whoops smithdown beat me to it.

    @Gambrose, I'll add Dark Souls, Skyrim, ME3...
    Edited by darc at 04/02/11 @ 15:14
  • Mayhem64 #14 1 year ago

    My only concern will be value for money. Then again, the original was worth much more than its asking price...
  • kinky_mong #15 1 year ago

    For the love of good do not delay this. I've got a week and a bit off work thanks to all the bank holidays and I need this to entertain me!
  • PixelPirate #16 1 year ago

    Sounds like it will be a better game than Portal, but I don't think I'll love it as much as the original. It was such a surprise and so utterly unique, that I don't think it's possible for the sequel to have a similar impact. It's my favourite game of all time.

    Not wanting to be little what Valve achieved, they did/are doing/have done great things with Portal and 2 looks to be even better.

    But it wasn't an original idea. They bought it off a student who wrote the initial game for free called Narbacular Drop and then turned it in to Portal.
  • will. #17 1 year ago

  • arcam #18 1 year ago

    @PixelPirate

    I don't think they just bought the game, they gave the original developers a job and access to Valve's resources. But yes, you're right, although I hadn't played Narbacular Drop by the time Portal rolled around.
  • figgis #19 1 year ago

    It's going to be shit.



    Joke.
  • evild_edd #20 1 year ago

    Didn't read the full text for fear of spoilers, just the summary paragraph which was enough to get me excited all over again.

    In Valve I trust.
  • Krusty #21 1 year ago

    Colour me excited!

    Best. Game. Ever. (along with the HL series)
  • iago71 #22 1 year ago

    I've read as little as possible (like a few others on here) as I dont want anything to be spoiled.

    Co-Op with a good friend?

    Quite frankly - I just cant wait!
  • f00b_inc #23 1 year ago

    Sounds awesome!

    + Episode 3 :-)
  • fizzyfish #24 1 year ago

    Argh! Right, okay then, THAT was the last Portal 2 article I'm going to read between now and release. No, really. I mean it this time.

    I didn't have the experience with the original game that I should have done because I had gotten wind of every scene, joke and meme beforehand. I felt like I was mentally ticking them off a list as I encountered them. Then again, it was my own fault for not getting around to buying it for 3 years. I won't make the same mistake this time: a launch day purchase if ever there was one.

    And no article is going to spoil a single second (more) of it for me :)


    And in case anyone even breathes word about it in my vicinity, I'm going to be listening to <a href=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mD3v1B_aXw0>this</a> through headphones at full volume until April...
  • randompanda #25 1 year ago

    STEPHEN MERCHANT! :D
  • Timotei #26 1 year ago

    Is the squirrel relevant?
  • spekkeh #27 1 year ago

    Is it splitscreen coop? I'd like that, it's been ages since I last played a splitscreen game.
  • weebl #28 1 year ago

    Probably the only game that I'm truly excited to think about playing this year. I want it to meet my expectations so much it hurts!
  • Kanjin #29 1 year ago

    It sounds... perfect.
  • CaptainKid #30 1 year ago

    Played the demo of the first one and decided it wasn't for me.
    So this probably isn't either which is a shame because I like what Valve is doing lately (L4D series and TF2)
  • jstar #31 1 year ago

    Portal may have hinged on one central joke, but it was a brilliant one, contingent on the ugly collision between nasty intentions and the sterile euphemism that passes for speech within large corporations.

    WHAT THE FUCK DOES THIS MEAN PLEASE SOMEONE TELL ME
  • DrStrangelove #32 1 year ago

    "You're not alone, either. You never were in Portal, obviously, as the ominous doublespeak chatter of GLaDOS echoed through the game's mazes"

    How on Earth could you forget Companion Cube?? :( you heartless monster!

  • Caimbeul #33 1 year ago

    Looks very good but where the fuck is Episode 3? seriously - I'm not just having a rant but am genuinely puzzled by the complete lack of info. It is like they have completely forgotten about it. It has been years for what was supposed to be episodic content, im still hanging off the cliff from a few years ago (2007).
    Edited by Caimbeul at 05/02/11 @ 09:21
  • Duallusion #34 1 year ago

    Making sure all those elaborate puzzles with so many different elements and permutations aren't in any way "broken" must have been a huge part of the development process..

    Anyhoo, can't wait! Although I'm a little worried that, by not having anybody for co-op, I'll only get to experience half of what's on offer.
  • Rack #35 1 year ago

    @jstar Bit overwritten wasn't it? But it means Portal's writing was a one-joke wonder where they mixed up sterile corporate non-speak with an evil agenda. "Any contact with the chamber floor will result in an "unsatisfactory" mark on your official testing record, followed by death. Good luck!"
  • BigHal #36 1 year ago

    Didn't really get into the first one. Will give this a go - part of the interest lies in the steam offering for PS3.
  • Sanya #37 1 year ago

    Oldschool game,gameplay with humor it's very rare
  • Timbercottage #38 1 year ago

    Buy the PS3 version, get it on PC for free = WIN.

    Trade in the PS3 copy after you sync it with your Steam account. Valve get money, you get the game for (almost) free! :D