Nukezilla Review: Portal 2 (PC / Mac)

Spoiler Warning: This review talks about major plot points from the end of Portal, and touches on things that happen in Portal 2. As such, if you haven’t played the original game you shouldn’t read this, nor should you if you want to go into the sequel with as little information as possible.

Back in 2007, Valve released a little game called Portal. It was so little, in fact, that the only way to get it initially was to buy The Orange Box — a collection of games anchored by titles that fans were more likely to get excited about.

Nobody really expected that this game, which was kind of just thrown in with the rest of the collection, would become the reason many people bought the pack. Even less did anyone expect this unassuming little game would have people raving about and quoting it three or four years after its release. Now here we are in 2011, and Portal 2 has just fallen into some of the most eagerly-waiting hands the industry has seen in the last decade.

Incredibly — yet unsurprisingly — Valve have managed to not only top the original Portal with its sequel, but they’ve gone so far as to make the first game look like nothing more than an impressive tech demo. The difference in production, writing, voice acting, and just general fun between these two games simply cannot be overstated.

Years (possibly thousands of them) have passed since our silent heroine, Chell, outsmarted and destroyed the maniacal artificial intelligence system, GLaDOS, and briefly escaped the Aperture Science compound. This passing of time becomes inevitably apparent when we’re dropped into those old test chambers again; they’ve become so dilapidated that most of them have all but completely fallen apart.

You’re joined in your return to science by a personality core (like the spherical little guys from the end of the first game) named Wheatley, who is to thank for your awakening at the beginning of the story. He has a plan — at least, an outline of one — to help you escape, but it’s not long until a chills-inducing encounter with your old nemesis throws a wrench into it.

While Portal didn’t spend a lot of time outside the locked-down, structured test chambers of Aperture Science, you did get a glimpse of what the facility is like behind the scenes. That glimpse turns into a full-on expedition in Portal 2, with Chell and her newfound ally making their way through lots of different, unexpected places. Because of this, the game never gets to a point where it feels old or monotonous — after every batch of test chambers or puzzles, something happens that drops you into a different type of area (with its own set of unique properties and variables) which changes the way you play the game.

Later in the game, for instance, “gels” are introduced. Gels either directly affect the movement of the player or give you more flexibility in your portal placement. This keeps things especially interesting during a section of the game that is atmospherically very, very different than anything you’ve encountered so far in the Portal universe.

One of the most acclaimed qualities of Portal was its writing, and the voice acting that accompanied it. GLaDOS’ persistent antagonization of the player made for some of the biggest, most genuine laughs in any game, and somehow, Portal 2 manages to blow its predecessor out of the water. Ellen McLain returns as GLaDOS, and Stephen Merchant — one of the main forces behind the original UK version of The Office — takes on the role of Wheatley, the personality core mentioned earlier.

Considering that the majority of the dialogue in Portal 2 comes from two characters, it’s doubly impressive that it is some of the best a game has ever been host to. GLaDOS maintains her sarcastic, “Maybe I’ll kill you, maybe not” attitude from the first game, but over the course of the eight (give or take) hours you’ll be playing, her personality grows and evolves a lot based on the events that take place. By the end of it all, you’re dealing with a very different — almost sympathetic — character. Valve somehow pull that off without making the transformation feel forced or unnatural; if there’s a better way than that to prove their mastery of the written word, I don’t know what it would be.

Wheatley’s quasi-confident, “I’m going to try to make you think I know what I’m doing” schtick holds up for the duration of his role, and some of the greatest moments you’ll have here will stem from things he says or does. He, like GLaDOS, undergoes a major change in personality over the course of the game, and his evolution is just as seamless and natural as that of Chell’s reawakened nemesis. Wheatley’s lines are brilliant, and Merchant’s delivery is impeccable; I hope he ends up doing more voice-over work in the future.

Perhaps the most significant difference in Portal 2 when compared to its precursor is the sheer scope of it. So many things happen here, when all you did in the first game is run through a few test chambers, break out of them, defeat the malicious AI that had been controlling everything, and then watch the credits. This time around, it feels like Valve really put their creative might to use, rather than designing a few (admittedly brilliant) test chambers and calling it a day.

Speaking of brilliant test chambers, there’s a cooperative two-player mode in Portal 2! It’s a bit shorter than the single-player campaign, and the story is much more straightforward and less eventful, but with four potential portals available at any given time things can get a lot more confusing than even the most seasoned Portal veteran will be used to.

I played through the co-op campaign with the lovely Brett Parsons; it took us five or six hours spread out over three sittings to make it to the end. Jumping back into the game after a couple days away from it was a bit jarring — it took us some time to get back into our puzzle-solving groove, but once we found it we were unstoppable. Working together to solve these chambers works a lot better than I thought it was going to; not once did I feel like either of us was doing more or less work than the other.

To help keep things even, the test chambers are often split into different sections so that each player needs to solve their own section independently. This way, it’s not a problem if one participant is more or less adept at testing than the other. After each player solves their section, the pieces just seem to fall into place and everything clicks.

It’s an incredibly satisfying experience, and I really hope some of the downloadable content coming out this summer adds more to the co-op experience. The hub that leads you and your partner to new areas is very modular, so it only seems natural that they’d add more to it in the future.

I went into Portal 2 expecting to have my mind blown. I fully anticipated that it would be one of the best games I had ever played, and that, when reviewing it, I wouldn’t be able to say anything besides what a perfect example of a gaming experience it is. Predictably, that’s pretty much how things have panned out. Portal 2 is a triumph — and I’m not saying that just to reference the first game’s ending song, I really mean it.

A little over a year ago, Gabe Newell casually mentioned in an interview with 1UP that Portal 2 would be the best game Valve has ever made. While I can’t weigh in on this personally as I’ve only played a couple of their titles (shame on me, I know), once the credits rolled after the single-player campaign it became pretty clear to me that he meant it.