Preview :: Portal 2

The original Portal is up there with Shadow Of The Colossus and Metal Gear Solid as one of my favorite games of all time. It’s the reason I bought The Orange Box and one of the main reason’s I couldn’t stand Gabe Newell’s stance on the PlayStation 3. At E3 this year Newell – with the help of GLaDOS – announced that Portal 2 would be coming to the PS3 and would be “the best console version”. With that megaton of an announcement, I was even more eager to check out Portal 2.

Valve’s Doug Lombadi explained, before the presentation began, how Portal 2 was a bigger and better experience than it’s predecessor. At around 3 hours long, Portal was not all that hard to get through, so this was something I was happy to hear. The demo opened on a pretty messed up test room and the player was greeted by a chirpy voice from the North of England (a good sign in my book. Sadly, he’s not the final voice actor).

As the player progressed through the rooms, it became clear that there would be a lot more exploration to be done this time around. Of course, the puzzles were still there and the game definitely has a few more tricks up it’s sleeves. Aside from the regular portal shooting and use of forces, there’s new platforms that will propel you through the air, a gel that pushes things through the environment and a liquid that can be poured onto surfaces to make the player move faster. These were all welcome additions. They added new depth to the gameplay and gave us Portal fans something new to look forward to.

The gameplay was great in Portal, in fact, it was only outdone by the tremendous writing and voiceacting. I’m happy to report that the fantastic dark humor from the first game makes a return as does the fine voice work of Ellen McLain (GLaDOS). As funny as the writing is/was there’s definitely a haunting quality to it that will never get old. I’m paraphrasing, but this GLaDOS’ line sent a shiver down my spine and made me laugh at the same time: ‘We’ve a lot in common, you and I: You helped me, I helped you. You killed me, I ki…oh no. Well, that’s food for thought’. There’s not many games that have an effect on me like that.

Look for Portal 2 in 2011.

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