I will admit that Portal 2 wasn’t high on my list of games to play this year. Picking it up—or rather, purchasing it from Steam—was something I did on a whim. I had exhausted all the fun I could get out of Crysis 2 and needed something else to play, and Portal 2 just happened to be around the corner. While the game was never a priority, it quickly worked its way to the top of my favorite games this year. Here are ten reasons why.
Note: I’ll try to remain as vague as I possibly can and not make any direct references to events in the game for readers who haven’t yet played Portal 2.
Those of you who played the original Portal will certainly remember memes like “The Cake is a Lie,” the Companion Cube, and lyrics from the game’s credits, many of which have worked themselves into our collective consciousness. Portal 2 has no shortage of memes—inadvertently created by the game’s memorable dialogue and humorous moments. Potatoes are going to be all the rage. Very few other games have managed to cultivate a cult following.
With exception to its predecessor, Portal 2 can’t be compared to any other game. There’s literally nothing else like it. What it offers is a unique experience told through intuitive gameplay and cleverly written dialogue, raising the bar set by the first Portal.
Most game developers shy away from developing for the PC, but Valve has reaffirmed their commitment to the PC gaming community by creating a flawless experience (barring one tiny reference to consoles) for the platform. PC gaming lives!
Portal 2 contains one of the best ambient soundtracks in recent years, featuring music that changes with the context of the player’s actions. The soundtrack’s ability to coerce thought into action and reward the player for making progress is simply sublime.
What would Portal 2 be without its memorable moments? It's clearly more than the sum of its parts, that’s for certain, but the cheeky naming conventions really add a little something extra. For example, “The Part Where He Kills You". Concise, yet charming!
Portal 2 tells a story without inundating you in volumes of text. Much of the story is told not just through the monologues delivered by the few characters who breathe life into Aperture Laboratories, but through the events that transpire within the game. It’s rare for any game to tell a story that isn’t delivered through some ham-fisted narrative device. Through masterful storytelling, Portal 2’s story will elicit an emotional response.
The experience of Portal 2 does not end with its single player campaign. It offers dozens of hours more thanks to its full blooded cooperative campaign, with support for two players who must combine wits and observational skills to solve puzzles that one person alone would never be able to overcome.
GLaDOS is back, and she’s meaner than ever. Despite her near-omnipresence, GLaDOS is a much more human character than most humans I’ve encountered in videogames. Her presence, and the added company of the ever-talkative Wheatley and the pre-recorded voice announcements of Aperture boss Cave Johnson pump blood into an otherwise cold environment of science and technology.
Aperture Science Laboratories is as much an integral part of Portal 2 as the characters who populate it with their eccentricities. The entire complex is brought to life by its modular structure, constantly changing to the whims of its controller and various automated processes. You get to experience the Aperture complex from the ground up—traversing through its earliest iterations from the 1970s up to the present.
If the characters are the heart of the game, and the setting its muscle and bones, then the puzzles are without a doubt its brain. They are difficult, yet intuitive—and overcoming particularly difficult challenges makes one feel like a boss. Not only does one have to think with portals—one must also master ramps, vacuums, and a variety of special surfaces. Portal 2 adds a number of new, labyrinthine environments that require the use of gels, light bridges and lasers, in addition to the old stuff.
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