Game Review: Portal 2 for the Xbox 360

Three  years after the release of Portal, Valve puts its successor on the market for some new, mind-bending entertainment.  Portal 2 presents thought-provoking puzzle solving inside the Aperture Science Facility.   Chewbacca reviews the game for us.

Story Score: 80 out of 100
Several years have passed since the defeat of GLaDOS, the robot mastermind and villain, in Portal. The lab rat, Chell, who was forced to run tests with portals, finds herself in the Aperture Science facility once more.  The main goal is to escape the facility by performing a series of tests in the name of science.  This time though, you are not on your own. A rather helpful robot AI, named Wheatley, and a rather mean and sarcastic GlaDOS, who survived the first game, will help you in your quest.

Gameplay Score: 91 out of 100
In the single-player campaign, you play Chell through a first-person-perspective. Chell must navigate through the Aperture science facility and do puzzle based tests once again – similar to the ones from Portal.  

If you didn’t play the first game, don’t fear. The game instructs the player right from start in the required techniques to advance through the trials: how to use/pick up objects, the use of the portal gun and other useful things.

The Portal gun works like it did in the first game. You can either shoot a blue or an orange portal. Then a portal on the wall will be highlighted by its personal color, so finding it again is much easier. Once again, there are some walls which cannot be used to shoot portals at. But it isn’t at all the same puzzles you need to face to escape. The player encounters new toys - like colored gel which makes the player bounce around, new testing materials, catapults and so on - to play with to get to the next puzzle.  It`s really fun to experiment with the new additions. In addition to the new invented courses, the tools force the player into tactical thinking.  

There have been added variations to the environments in Portal 2. In the first game, there were many sterile white rooms. It didn’t offer much variation for the eye to see. In Portal 2, there is uncontrolled, overgrown vegetation, debris scattered all around as well as structural decay in the areas the player is passing through. You will still get the white rooms, but the facilities construction is more varied.

The single player campaign can be completed in about 7-8 hours, but afterwards there is not very much replay value except the extra material in commentary from the developers or to experience the witty humor once again, and of course, achievement hunting.  

When you are finished with the single-player campaign, you can jump right into more hours of puzzle solving with friends or others in a co-op mode. If the player has not played, or completed, the single-player game yet, they can go straight ahead playing the co-op mode. The co-op story has some ties to the single-player campaign, but is playable seperately.  In this mode you and another player take control of two robots – Atlas and P-body – each with a portal gun, who must solve several puzzles. It is much easier to play if each player uses a headset to communicate, but Valve chose make the mode accessible to all player with incorporated commands. These commands tell the other player where to place a portal or when it is time to do a combined time event.  The cooperative mode can either be played via splitscreen or online.   

Graphics Score: 79 out of 100
Portal 2 uses Source-engine - the same engine used in Half-life 2 and Portal. Environments look better than before, water effects looks more realistic and the general scenery is refreshing. Animations of both Wheatley and GLaDOS is well executed.

Voice Acting Score: 95 out of 100
Similar to Portal, the dialog in Portal 2 is well-written, endearing, and, most of all, hilarious. British writer, comedian, and actor Steve Merchant gets his first taste in voice acting in Portal 2 as Wheatley, the eyeball robot at the size of a ripe watermelon. He will serve as the player’s artificial sidekick and give motivational support. Opera singer Ellen Lain returns in Portal 2 as the sarcastic robot GLaDOS. Both Merchant and Lain do a fantastic job in their roles, making the audio tracks one of Portal 2`s greatest strengths.

Conclusion
Portal 2 may look like an attempt to reproduce the success from the first game, but it’s definitely not that. It tries to move and evolve further from its predecessor. The single-player campaign is enchanting and has more meat on its bones than the prior game. Gameplay is still the same, but twice the fun with the new given tools to surpass them. Solving the puzzles on your own is very satisfying and one of the game’s major strengths.  The second entertaining aspect of the game is the humor in the audio. Witty and absurd humor is delivered tremendously well by the two robot characters.