Portal 2

I've now played through it twice, found a couple easter eggs, read some reviews, and listened to the developer commentary. I thought it was worth writing a bit of a review for.

First of all, I loved it. I don't play many single-player games any more, and I whipped through this one, had lunch, then started a developer-commentary playthrough. I know it's up against some impossible expectations - the original Portal is very close to a perfect game. But my personal expectations were met.

**NOTE: SPOILERS AHEAD**

Some particularly high points:

- GlaDOS. The voice acting was absolutely dead on throughout. GlaDOS's delivery of "Oh. It's you." simultaneously made me giggle and sent chills down my spine. Her gradual humanization via not only dialogue but changes in the vocal distortions were subtle and effective. Her hilariously petty and stereotypical cattiness balanced beautifully with her very real and deeply threatening hatred. (The fat jokes, when it was established in the first two minutes that Chell is in fact emaciated, worked brilliantly - they were not funny because "hur hur fat chicks are funny" but because a computer groping for an effective insult so badly missed the mark.)

- The backstory. Many pixels have been spent praising how effectively the backstory is inserted into the game without ever distracting the player from the actual gameplay. I won't repeat the argument - I'll just establish that I agree. The carefully-crafted time warp through Aperture's history was as good or better than all the new mechanics that it introduced. Cave Johnson was a perfect fit for the founder of a company ultimately run by a monomaniacal AI, and the hints (never quite confirmation) of Chell's identity were just enough.

- The increased size and depth (pun sort of intended) of the game. Early on, I wasn't sure the mechanics would hold me through the six or eight hours of gameplay. As a pure puzzler, the original held some but not that much interest - I finished a couple of the challenge modes but eventually wandered away. But the added exploration component held my interest and provided a welcome break from the never-ending test chambers, and while I was generally terrible at the frantic escape runs, they were also a nice change of pace.

- The difficulty. I am not a shooter player (in fact, I get motion sick in most of them, and had to take both Portal games in two-hour-max chunks to avoid the same.) I have no twitch reflexes to speak of, and the fall-shoot-fall sections in the original drove me batty. There were a couple of those, but not difficult ones - all the tough puzzles were logic puzzles or tricky catwalk bits where it took a while to figure out where the live panels were. For me, this was perfect - I never got totally stuck, and made it through my first run at a pretty steady clip. I won't argue that some challenge modes would be nice, but hey, they're already promised - and for free!

- The music. Not just the ending songs, which were of course fabulous, but the music throughout. When I realized that more voices were added in as parts of the puzzle were completed, I was tickled absolutely pink.

Some "meh":

- Wheatley. While the voice acting was spot-on, he was a fairly predictable character and as such wasn't as funny as he was probably intended to be. I didn't loathe him, but nor did I really enjoy him. The "twist" was utterly foreseeable, to the point where I was looking around during the confrontation with GlaDOS looking for a less obviously bad choice. I also hated - HATED - being led around by him. I never could spot him without a false start, his flashlight made me nauseous, and twice I failed to understand him because of his accent. (Yes, I feel dumb. But I heard "Left! Left!" and took the left turn immediately available, and died, because he was saying "Lift! Lift!" but I wasn't looking for an elevator.)

- Catwalks in general. While I liked the exploration and it was nice to get out of the claustrophobic rooms, the wide-open catwalk sections both drove me crazy and exacerbated my nausea. This is probably more a personal gripe than anything, of course.

- The boss fight. I didn't hate it, and it annoyed me less than the Portal 1 boss fight, but it still failed to excite me. Partly it's because I dislike time pressure, partly because I loathe jumping puzzles (the one core swinging back and forth? HATE) and partly because I just wasn't very worked up about Wheatley in general. I mean, yeah, he was incompetent, yeah, he wasn't going to let me go of his own free will, yeah, yeah, reactor overheating and all, but I had no real personal gripe with him. He was just a fuckup.

Dislikes:

- Loading screens OMG. Probably at least partly my fault for running it on a computer that maybe came kinda close to the minimum specs, but still. OMG.

- Test chambers. Now this may be sort of a weird one. But I just found it jarring that of course the only logical way to progress from point A to point B was via test chambers. I mean, we know and see and explore all the area around and between them. There's seriously no quick route? I know, I know, if there was there wouldn't be a game, and wasn't I just bitching about the catwalk sections? But it just felt overused - and the progress screens (1/22! for the third time!) made me want to slit my wrists.

- No, that's... really kinda it. Not many dislikes.

So, overall - if you like video games at all, go get this one. (Get Portal first, if you haven't. It's $10, it's killer good, and you'll appreciate the jokes in 2 much, much more.) But seriously. Go get it.