Portal 2 - A masterpiece of lonely puzzling

Mike Bantick
Monday, 23 May 2011 08:44

Entertainment

Apart from the Australian version of Left 4 Dead 2, there are not many blights on the Valve release shelf.  Half Life and its applauded sequel spawned a puzzle project known as Portal in 2007.  This game became such a hit it was inevitable Valve would turn its considerable development techniques to a sequel.  Portal 2 adds more brain-bending physics puzzles and importantly, fleshes out the story behind Aperture Science.

It does seem odd to worry about dropping spoilers in a discussion about what is essentially a puzzle game.  But Portal 2 is a different kind of game, one that rouses passion in its fans beyond the substance of its game-play.

Portal 2
	Developer	Valve
	Publisher	Valve/EA
	Rating	PG
PS3, PC, Mac, Reviewed on Xbox 360

So we will keep this brief, suffice to say that Portal 2 is a brilliant empowering experience.

For those that don't know, the essence of a Portal game is a progressive series of puzzle rooms, played in first person as a mysterious female 'test subject' known as Chell.  Each room contains an exit, but the trick is how to first activate the exit door, and then secondly get to the exit.

These tests are all in the name of science, during the course of the game we find out much more about the history and intentions of Aperture Science, the corporation behind the immense complex of robotic test rooms as well as the focus of the Chell's only tool, the Portal gun.

The portal gun shoots, funnily enough, portals.  Shoot a blue one on the far wall, and an orange one at Chell's feet, jump through the orange and appear instantly through the blue portal.  Once your head is around the physics of portals (and as it says on the back of the games box, start thinking with portals) life will become easier.

Soon you will be using the portal gun not only for Chell traversal, but also utilising other introduced puzzle elements in concert with the portals to solve each test. 

Valve has seen fit to add a few new puzzle elements to the game (and dropped some from the original), thankfully however, in a bid to stop a global rash of brain explosions, there is never an overabundance of elements during any particular puzzle.  In fact, you could say Portal 2, despite the introduction of light bridges, gels and more, actually provides a less cerebral challenge than the original game.  Certainly, whist there are some, Portal 2's overall puzzle design is less reliant on timing and shooting accuracy and more on simply observing the situation and planning a route to the exit.

CONCLUDED by moving through the blue portal to Page 2