Will… not really a review, you all know its an impressive game, but I’m still gonna write about it anyways. I don’t think a game has made me chuckle so many times before, so grab a seat and read this Portal 2 Review, along with the thousands of other Portal 2 review I’m sure you already read. But this ones better cause I have an image of Wheatley staring down Ricky Gervais.

The Basics

If you don’t know the story to this game yet or haven’t played the first Portal game, WHY NOT? you should stop reading right now and go get Portal, and spent 3 hours of your life finishing that game first before starting this one. I will wait……..

Finished? Good! We can continue. The story continues a few

Things You Will Love

The A.I.

Portal 2 has probably some of the best A.I. dialogue and interactions, the script is fantastic and the voice acting is superb. GLaDOS taunts you every chance she gets, and she get really mean about it too. Think of it like two girls that used to be good friends, and one of them cheats with the other ones boyfriend. That is how bitchy GLaDOS gets while trying what ever she can to cause you extreme bodily harm or mental anguish.

What!?

You also have a new character in the Portal universe, a A.I. Core called Wheatley, who is voiced by Stephen Merchant, he is the tall looking one next to Ricky Gervais, he is British, and his voice and acting is hilarious,  even though he is a stumbling sick-kick character that crack jokes and do moronic stuff. He is very likable, unlike some other side-kicks who needs to die 20 minutes in, this one I don’t feel any anger towards, even when the big surprise comes around.

Yes, the big surprise in the game, I wont spoil anything for you, but you’ll understand what all this potato-loving craze that Valve is on. You’ll love this section, you get to find out about GLaDOS origins and Aperture Science’s origins. Actually is more like experience Aperture Science’s origins. This is the best part of the game for me, it introduces the new GEL systems: the white, the orange, and the blue, and the combinations you will have with these GELs will make the puzzles even more fun & challenging to solve.

The Testing Chambers

Speaking about puzzles… Oh did the testing chambers get a huge upgrade, each level are huge. Most levels in the original Portal were maybe a few small rooms connected together. In Portal 2 however, each room is big, huge, some require you to use special jumper devices. A lot of rooms now have several stories, some require you to shoot the portal gun from one side of the room to the other.

The puzzles have also gotten harder, puzzles now require timing between several objects/devices to complete, while some still have the pick up box from point A to point B. A bunch of new game-play elements, such as light bridges to block boxes so you can pick them up. The LaZZors and the new reflective boxes that are used to re-direct the focus of the beam, so you can destroy or activate lifts, or use the new tractor/deflector beam to grab/destroy objects. All of these devices along with the GELs and the portal create some really weird ways to get to that ending door.

These new devices coupled with the larger stages, and you can imaging what some really ingenious maps in the future Valve can come up with for the multi-player.

The game also breaks up the pace more, a few levels of testing chambers, and then changes to a few levels of exploration through the huge plant. There are more back-stories to the events before Portal 1 started, and all of this is told while you are playing. Just like a Valve game, there are very few instances where you actually lose control of your character as the story unfolds.

Things You Will Get Annoyed At

Not much, but the loading screens do come up after every stage, its only 2-3 seconds, but those 2-3 seconds add up you know, think about it, 3 secs  x 40 or so loading screens, and you get almost a whole 2 minutes of waiting. Okay, I’ll shut up, if you complain about the loading screens, you need to drink less coffee and pet more animals. Besides that, not much I can say that really pops up, no bugs have yet to services, or any glitches in the graphics. It is very well put together.

Overall the game took me 8 hrs to complete. Haven’t try to multi-player yet, so I bet that suck up another good 2-3 days of my life. So buy this game and enjoy a wonderful gaming experience. oh and ummmm… SPOILER!! The Companion Cube Lives