Portal 2

The original Portal - bundled as part of Valve’s exceptional Orange Box, and later as a stand-alone title via Xbox LIVE - was a masterpiece of puzzle platform gaming. Perfectly structured, elegant in design and execution, it was a gleaming example of Valve’s creative capabilities. Critics bemoaned the bite sized campaign, but by making it so short, Valve avoided any chance of the core ideas being worn thin. The result was an exquisitely balanced puzzler which ended long before it outstayed its welcome. In contrast to the concise and focused nature of the original, Portal 2 is a grand exploration of the elements that made the original Portal great. Vast and riddled with new depth in both narrative and gameplay, this is the main event to the original’s supporting act.

Portal 2, as with its predecessor, is close to impossible to describe effectively to someone who hasn't seen the physics-based mind-bender in action. To say that it’s a puzzle game which makes clever use of portable portals to navigate increasingly complex test chambers just doesn't do it justice. Instead, I like to think of Portal gaming as a brain tonic. Think of it like sending your mind to fat camp, shedding layers of cerebral flab until you emerge triumphant, mentally lean and mean.

With the original garnering almost universal acclaim, it’s no surprise that Valve kept the core elements firmly in place for Portal 2 - from the basic gameplay elements to the setting and characters. The story starts off with Chell, Portal’s ever-silent test subject, woken after what seems to have been years in a deep sleep state. The Aperture Science labs are in a state of severe disrepair, to the point of collapse, and all signs point to Chell being the only surviving human around. In the absence of human life, the role of guide and potential rescuer from the disintegrating science facility falls to robotic personality sphere Wheatley (magnificently voiced by Stephen Merchant, co-creator of Ricky Gervais’ The Office).

Before long Chell is back inside the test chambers which made up the entirety of the first game. Escape is the modus operandi, and before long Chell has found another portal gun and things are looking promising. With no sign of the sadistic test administrator GlaDOS who teased and tormented Chell throughout the original, Wheatley and Chell work their way through the chambers and ‘backstage’ areas in search of an exit. Without giving too much away, Wheatley unintentionally reboots the damaged and dormant GlaDOS. In short, she’s back and she’s pissed - after all, it was our heroine who shut her down in the first place.

Driven by a thinly veiled thirst for revenge and for the good of science, GlaDOS is soon pushing our girl through an all new battery of fiendishly clever portal-based tests. The narrative reveals itself at a steady pace through the campaign, but to get into much more detail would be to spoil it for the rest of you. And while the plot behind Portal was anaemic at best, Valve has carved a rich and multi-layered storyline for this sequel which doesn't let up until the very end. Be prepared to delve deep beneath the surface this time around, both literally and figuratively as you explore the length and depth of the Aperture labs in search of an escape.

Expanding the narrative aspect does a lot to keep Portal 2 moving along briskly, but it’s the magnificent physics-heavy gameplay that makes this sequel shine as brightly as it does. Portal’s ace up the sleeve was that it came out of nowhere - the whole portal-slinging concept was unique and in many ways astounding, leaving gamers and critics reeling from the mental effort integral for success. Valve knew that they wouldn't have the critical surprise element, so to make the same impact would require serious innovation. Leave it to the team behind Half Life - a game which defined a generation - to accomplish the near-impossible. That’s right: Valve has injected enough new gameplay mechanics into the already incredible Portal formula to make Portal 2 a vastly superior physics-based puzzler.

The core portal gun gameplay is still as tight and lethally precise as we all remember it to be, and this still forms the basis for most of the puzzles throughout Portal 2. Also present and accounted for are the weighted cube/pressure plate combinations and turret drones, but it’s the newcomers which really spice things up. Now you have light bridges, or walkways made of light which can be redirected through portals; laser-based switches, which use laser refraction cubes to focus the beams on their targets; and aerial faith plates - basically jump pads - to send you reeling up to new heights.

The elements which most revolutionize Portal 2 though are the gels, in their blue, orange and white variation. Spewing from wall or ceiling mounted nozzles, each adds a different property to the surfaces they cover: blue makes Chell bounce into the air, orange speeds her up and white creates a portal friendly coating. Added to the already complex tool set, these allow for previously unimaginable puzzle scenarios. At some points I did feel somewhat overwhelmed by all of it, especially since I really enjoyed the simple yet innovative style of the less cluttered original, but there’s no denying that these new elements add new depth to the classic Portal gameplay.

Having all of these new toys to play with is one thing, but they would be nothing without the devilishly brilliant test chambers to use them in. On the whole, level design is, as with the original, pure genius. It all starts off slowly, giving those new to the Portal idea a chance to get to grips with a whole new way of thinking, and the test chambers grow increasingly challenging. The learning curve is just about perfect, with each new element being gently introduced before being incorporated into more complex scenarios. There is a new sense of scale here this time too - there are still enough small, claustrophobic test rooms, but this time there are also colossal open areas to navigate. Many of these are found outside of the boundaries of the usual test chambers, in the murky bowels of the facility, with a totally different visual palette which changes the atmosphere completely.

The first Portal had a spartan visual style, a stunningly stylized look reminiscent of the Bauhaus and De Stijl movements, which made it really stand out from the crowd. This follows through in some part for the sequel, but mainly just for the sections that take place within the confines of the testing chambers. Across the game world there is an almost organic element this time, with hydraulic arms and twisting machinery adding life to the previously clinical science facility. While Portal was quite simple and somewhat experimental in its visual approach, Valve has taken huge strides here by creating a far more complex world for Portal 2.

Such a vast and diverse game world takes time to explore fully, and as such Portal 2 is a substantially bigger game than its predecessor. After the short and sweet original, this time around the single-player campaign clocks in at around 10 hours of mental acrobatics. In practice that’s a long time to bend your head around the absorbing world of Aperture Science, and some might struggle to keep their concentration peaked during some of the more drawn out sections. Regardless, the puzzles that make up the bulk of Portal 2 are cleverly crafted and will have most players sucked in to the very end. Finding a solution to a section which has had you tearing your hair out in frustration is a deeply satisfying feeling. What’s more, each time you find yourself baffled and possibly annoyed, you can be sure that it’s something you are doing wrong, not a fault on the side of the impeccable game design.

An unfortunate consequence of these brilliantly constructed puzzles is that once you've solved them there is very little to entice you to play through them again. Unravelling a particularly devious section results in a great feeling of achievement, but only the first time. While this obviously negates just about any replayability and limits longevity, Valve has been kind enough to include a little something special to add weight to an already hefty package, in the form of a co-op mode. We often see developers heavy-handedly forcing multiplayer components into their games to improve sales, but rest assured that this isn't the case here. Instead Portal 2’s co-op mode is possibly the most intuitive and relevant implementation of co-operative play we’ve seen. As one of two robots - P-Boy and Atlas - gamers work through a series of advanced test chambers set up by our merciless hostess GlaDOS, custom made for co-op play.

Valve could easily have just reworked some of the single-player levels, but instead we get a full campaign to play through, either via Xbox LIVE or with the slightly confusing split-screen, testing players’ abilities to communicate effectively and to... well, co-operate. The puzzle creation options opened up by the introduction of two more portals - orange and yellow for one player, and blue and purple for the other - are immense, and as such the co-op mode feels more difficult than the single-player game. Then again, that is quite heavily dependent on your team-mate. To get the most out of it you should avoid playing with someone who has finished the co-op tests already, as that's like playing Trivial Pursuit with someone who has read all the answers. Playing with someone who has no idea how Portal works, on the other hand, is bitterly frustrating.

Central to Portal 2, and it’s forbear, in both single and multiplayer guises, is that it requires a mental investment on the part of the player. Like the best kind of puzzle games, Portal gaming demands a new way of thinking, a new way of looking at things. To the uninitiated it can seem nonsensical, like some kind of secret language understood only by dedicated followers. Get over that initial barrier, and it becomes second nature; suddenly the whole thing makes sense. It’s rare that a ‘simple video game’ will tax your grey matter in such an intense and unrelenting way as this, and it does so with such style.

Like a finely tuned machine, every part of Portal 2 has clearly been refined in severe detail, and as such Valve rarely puts a foot wrong from start to finish. The sublime gameplay is accompanied by intricate level design, an impressively diverse visual style and a truly hilarious script delivered with enthusiasm and professionalism not often seen in a game. By enveloping this most cerebral of puzzle games in a warm layer of narrative, Valve has put together an amazing sequel to one of the best games ever made, making Portal 2 a serious contender for game of the year.

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