Spoiler warning: this is not a review about whether you should play Portal 2. You should, go and do it now. Once you’ve played it, come back and read this.
There are three ways you can judge Portal 2: as a game in the broader ecosystem, as a top tier release by Valve, or as a sequel to Portal. From this perspective it is by turns a rampant success, a solid game, and something of a disappointment.
The Portal 2 story starts from an inconvenient launching pad for its writers. The original presented an abandoned research laboratory in which an insane AI attempted to test a series of subjects to death, who was in turn destroyed comprehensively by one of the test subjects (Chell). It was a delightful, self-contained and above all closed story. Portal 2 opens with a quirky AI core with a British accent who goes by the name of Wheatley rousing Chell from some type of suspended animation. He has a plan to escape from Aperture, the research laboratory, which requires Chell and a portal gun. All goes well until they accidentally wake up GLaDOS who apparently wasn’t destroyed by having all her component parts dropped into a furnace, a fact which is never dealt with in a satisfying manner. A series of events culminates in GLaDOS being replaced by Wheatley as the AI in control of the facility, and GLaDOS being put into a potato. Wheatley promptly goes mad and drops Chell through a waste tube that terminates in the old, abandoned part of the facility.
Chell, occasionally aided by potato GLaDOS, then spends her time making her way up out of the old facility back towards the test chambers above. This period is narrated by the founder of Aperture, one Cave Johnson, a man who was clearly not a hundred percent in charge of his faculties.
Upon returning to the main facility, Chell and GLaDOS take down Wheatley, whose ineptitude is threatening the continued existence of the lab. Wheatley gets blasted into space thanks to a portal placed on the moon (yes, seriously), and GLaDOS decides it’s not worth the effort of killing Chell, letting her go. Fin.
All your old friends are back, no matter how inexplicably
In essence the cast in Portal 2 expands from GLaDOS and the silent protagonist Chell in the first game to GLaDOS, Chell, Wheatley and Johnson. The dialogue is well written, funny and does a good job of providing useful game information in the guise of banter. The problem is that this good delivery is like having Ben Kingsley read Shakespeare at a football game: while you can’t fault the quality of the performer or the writing, it’s just not appropriate to the setting. In the first game GLaDOS was introduced as a quirky take on the “safety first” educational videos everyone has seen at work or school. As the game unfolded, it became clear that the references to death and dismemberment were not because the setting itself was off-beat but rather because GLaDOS was insane. Combine an insane AI with the emptiness of the labs and the complete control GLaDOS had over them, and although it had comedic moments Portal also had a definite atmosphere of creeping horror.
From the moment the automated recovery voice wakes you and commands you to appreciate art, to the closing turret choir musical number, Portal 2 is a game whose only thematic aim is comedy. The few places where music is used, it feels like yakety sax would be more appropriate than the tension inducing electronic score that is there. The feeling of isolation, apprehension and abandonment is gone and the standing of GLaDOS in the video game villain pantheon is greatly diminished. I don’t have a problem with her becoming an unwilling ally but the revised setting of the game changes the context of her personality completely. With the exception of Chell, every character in Portal 2 is amusingly demented and indifferent to human life. Suddenly GLaDOS is no longer a delusional psychopath, she’s just another member of the eccentric family.
It’s not that the story is bad, far from it. For game writing in general, it is excellent and for a Valve game it is what we have come to expect both in quality and in the style of delivery. It’s just that as the sequel to what was one of the most critically and generally acclaimed games of the last decade, Portal 2 is too different in theme and atmosphere from the original.
New mechanics that also can kill you
At its core Portal 2 relies on the same puzzle solving mechanics as the first and adds just enough variety to keep it fresh; lasers, light bridges, evacuation funnels, aerial faith plates, propulsion gel, repulsion gel, and conversion gel. Although this seems like a lot of new mechanics to introduce, there is some degree of functional overlap with the propulsion gel and aerial faith plates, to the point that the two rarely appear in the same puzzles. Similarly, light bridges and evacuation tunnels serve more or less the same function in the puzzles in which they appear.
It is an example of one of the many subtle improvements have been made to the gameplay that the sometimes infuriatingly slow energy orbs from the original have been replaced by instant laser beams. Even though both serve the same purpose of activating receiver plates and being able to take down turrets, the lasers provide instant feedback to the player on whether they’ve done the right thing. Having gone back to play the original after finishing the sequel, the jumping in Portal 2 feels more intuitive with regards to height and distance and the fall speed has been slowed down noticeably. Both tweaks reduce the necessity of fast reflexes and timing, thus focusing the gameplay more on figuring out the solution to the problem rather than implementing the solution. Despite the new puzzle elements, the way in which they are introduced means that it never becomes overwhelming to figure out which particular combination is required to solve a problem. Although I did get stuck a couple of times, it wasn’t on the same puzzles as my friends, so insofar as it possible to gauge puzzle difficulty I would say Portal 2 is pitched at a nice difficulty.
Then again, the first Portal had all the same sterling properties, and a few minor improvements should be the expected minimum for a sequel. The truth is that there seem to be a lot of introductory gel puzzles, and a number of situations where the actions you need to take are so obvious that it feels more like padding than a necessary part of the game. One of the great things about the first Portal was that it was exactly as long as its gameplay could bear; Portal 2 contains an hour or two of content that really doesn’t need to be there. The section in the old Aperture research facility especially feels as though it has been put together with length in mind. Despite the fact the area is falling apart and Chell has to find way just to navigate between the broken walkways, for some reason she still has to go through every single gel testing chamber to get to the exit.
Portal 2 looks great, but more thanks to art direction than engine quality
So, where does that leave Portal 2? It is well paced but maybe a little long, well written but perhaps not true enough to the original, good looking but unmistakably long in the tooth. It is an excellent game and example of what AAA should mean to all studios, but it doesn’t quite live up to the lofty heights of its predecessor.
