Portal 2

On a note related to this post, I have updated the backlog post a LOT lately, with new purchases (why oh why do I keep making this harder on myself) as well as a few completions - including the topic of today's post.

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I'm just going to go ahead and say it - buy Portal 2. Now. If you haven't bought it yet, you're a damn fool.

Also, you're committing sacrilege if you have not played the first Portal. I'm serious here. I learned today that one of the guys at work had never played it, so I took matters into my own hands and bought him a copy on Steam. I like to think of it as making the world a better place, if only marginally.

I want one. Now.

For those who don't know the premise of Portal, you are given a gun that shoots portals. Certain types of flat surfaces allow you to fire said portals into them. You can fire a blue portal and an orange portal - when both are laid down, physically entering one will result in you coming out of the other one. The kind of teleportation portals we all wish existed in real life.

Your task is to use the aforementioned portal gun, as well as your brain, to solve a bunch of physics puzzles, that all involve getting you to the other side of a room safely. While this sounds utterly boring when I describe it, that's because, well, I don't describe things well?

It's a first person exploratory puzzle game, if that makes any more sense. In the first title, you are a test subject for a company called "Aperture Science", and your not-so-friendly robot test supervisor GLaDOS offers you... well, less guidance more snarky comments as you progress through the lab. Eventually you escape the confines of the test rooms to try and break out of the lab.

In the sequel, the storyline begins somewhat similarly, in that you are kind of thrust back into the lab test rooms, although they are now badly damaged and gradually get repaired as you continue through the game.

The puzzles originally consisted of mainly buttons, boxes, platforms, the cutest gun turret robots you'll ever meet, and the like. In the sequel, some more elements are added, such as light bridges which can be extended to different parts of the room via portals, goo that makes you run really fast when you walk over it, and a sort of swirling blue antigravity field thing that carries you in whatever direction it is moving.

In addition to all of this, a coop mode has been added, and it is brilliant. There is a certain satisfaction to be had in completing a puzzle, and that is only doubled when you manage to complete a puzzle with the aid of another player. All of the coop puzzles are designed in a way that both players need to get involved, so if you have a player who simply refuses to work with you then I can see how it could very quickly descend into chaos, with the players trying to portal each other into the water (which kills you). Luckily, the game also warns you when you try to look for a coop partner randomly online (it flat out tells you its more fun with a friend rather than some random).

All in all, if you haven't bought it yet, or planned to buy it yet, I doubt I've done much to convince you. However, buy it buy it buy it! It's an entertaining, intelligent game with quite a funny plotline. And the ending to single player is simultaneously hilarious and awesome.