Portal 2 is pretty much like Portal.
Maybe that didn’t come across the way I intended. Let me try again:
Portal 2 is pretty much like Portal! Hurray!
If you liked Portal, you’ll like Portal 2. If you like ingenious physics-based puzzles wrapped in a fun, well-written story, you’ll like Portal 2.
This should come as no surprise. The same writers wrote the funny dialogue, and the same designers made the clever puzzles. The amazing Ellen McClain returns as the voice of the passive-aggressive computer antagonist GLaDOS, and several other great performers join the cast.
So Portal 2 is good, but is it worth 60 bucks?
Portal had the decency to leave before it wore out its welcome. It was only about six hours long, but as one of five games included in Valve’s Orange Box, it was a ridiculous bargain.
Portal 2 has more content to it. It includes a single-player campaign that lasts around 10-12 hours and a separate co-op campaign with a completely different set of challenges.
Once again, you play as Chell, the defiantly mute test subject who must navigate a series of increasingly difficult test chambers. Once again, pleasantly menacing computer intelligences (three or them this time... sort of) simultaneously guide you and threaten your life. Once again, there is far more going on than meets the eye.
The game mechanics are largely unchanged. You “solve” each chamber by getting the door to open. Your only tool is the amazing portal gun, which lets you make two "portals" at a time. Drop into one portal, you pop out the other, no matter where it is.
Portal 2 adds a few new wrinkles to the old formula. For example, some rooms contain blue repulsion gel, which lets you vault very high. Others contain orange propulsion gel, which lets you run at breakneck speeds. And finally, there’s white conversion gel, which lets you put a portal on any surface it covers. That last one spurts out in disturbingly Freudian geysers.
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