Valve's Portal 2

I first heard of the game Portal through a few of my friends, who were unbelievably excited for the release of the sequel. After watching SeaNanners (probably my favourite YouTuber… ever) play a couple of levels, I downloaded the Steam interface to the computer and bought the / pack.

Portal 2 is a game that combines wry intelligence and black humour to create something that is entirely different from anything else on the market. Most games that stock the shelves of game stores now are full of sub-machine guns and explosives – Portal breaks the mold. Minimum cutscenes and a gun that shoots portals (obviously) as opposed to bullets means that the game is less story-centric, but still with that element which keeps you guessing.

The game begins with Chell, the silent heroine of the games, being awakened by Wheatley, a chirpy personality sphere voiced by Stephen Merchant. The premise of the game is to escape from the dilapidated Aperture Laboratories with Wheatley in tow, but eventually the antagonist of the games, GLaDOS (Genetic Lifeform and Disk Operating System) is woken up. Chell is submitted to more tests that are reminiscent of the first game and, using her ASHPD (Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device) she must navigate her way to GLaDOS in order to destroy her once more.

The game takes a completely unexpected turn for the worst, and this particular plot twist left me almost heartbroken. The story is developed and Chell’s character is silently expanded on – the game developers have decided to keep her silent. And indeed, Chell is a revolutionary character, in that you may play through the whole game without seeing her face once. The only reason I realised she was in fact a woman was through walking through one portal to see her disappear through the other.

The witty intelligence of these games is also given in the form of chirpy songs performed by GLaDOS at the end of both games. The song from the first game, ‘Still Alive’, is possibly my favourite, and my friends and I often burst out into impromptu renditions of it in random places.

The game has to be seen to be believed. Portal was a mere shelf-filler, and so can take less than three hours to complete in full, but Portal 2 is much longer and more padded-out. There is the customary humour – GLaDOS and Wheatley are given excellent lines, but the character that left the greatest impact on me personally was the founder of Aperture Science himself, Cave Johnson. His famous ‘lemons’ speech is still with me to this day, and I can quote it word-for-word any time.

“When life gives you lemons, don’t make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back! Get mad! I don’t want your damn lemons, what the hell am I supposed to do with these? Demand to see life’s manager! Make life rue the day it thought it could give Cave Johnson lemons! Do you know who I am? I’m the man who’s gonna burn your house down! With the lemons! I’m gonna get my engineers to invent a combustible lemon that burns your house down!”

Besides the single-player mode, you can also play a Co-Op game with a friend, which involves two robots, Atlas and P-Body. GLaDOS presides over these tests, and it is a way to expand on your knowledge and have fun in the game without having to worry about Chell or Wheatley. If you get yourself a Steam account, you can even play cross-platform, PC to PS3. Xbox users can also play the Co-Op campaign but only with other Xbox users.

Portal 2 is an innovative and wonderfully created game that stands alone from the rest of Valve’s – and indeed, most of the modern game developers’ – creations. You can spend an hour puzzling over a test and how to solve it, and when you eventually do solve it, you gain a sense of pride in yourself that you genuinely don’t gain from other games.

Based on the characters, the plot and the interface, and the introduction of Co-Op gameplay, I have to say that Portal 2 is probably one of the best games I’ve played, and I’d give it a rating of 10/10, purely because of its originality.