![]() ![]() I’d been waiting just over a year to follow on from Episode One and no amount of hype or clever marketing was ever going to have me playing one of the other included titles first. A new multiplayer mode that tells the tale of a pair of robots who have become GLaDOS' most recent test subjects pairs players together to take on some frightfully challenging chambers requiring up to four active portals, split second co-operative timing, and loads of lateral thinking.When my copy of The Orange Box unlocked on Steam a little less than four years ago, I couldn’t have been any more excited to sit and play the next chapter of the Half Life 2 story. Party Down's Leonard Stiltskin into a perfectly pompous and maniacal personality.Īnd the puzzles and laughs don't end with the 12-hour single-player narrative. The Office's Stephen Merchant, as well as the facility's founder, played in a brilliant bit of casting by J.K. GLaDOS shares the spotlight with Wheatley, a stuttering, bumbling A.I. Happily, her inimitable brand of cruelty is back, and it is as riotously abusive as ever.īut she's not the game's only source of giggles. ![]() Voiced by opera singer Ellen McLain, her cheerfully passive-aggressive resentment of our ability to flummox her most difficult tests made her one of the more memorable characters in modern video games. Portal introduced players' funny bones to GLaDOS, an artificial intelligence driven by a relentless obsession to test, observe, and perpetually tease subjects with the promise of cake as a reward. Portal 2 satisfies our desire to feel smart (when it isn't making us bust a gut). Never mind that millions of others are playing the same game and coming up with the same solutions Solving puzzles of such unusual nature is a boon to one's ego. It’s essential gaming.įresh and imaginative ways to play with the space-time continuum come with each new chamber, and I revelled in my cleverness as I completed each test. The verdict: A strong contender for 2011 game-of-the-year, this spatial puzzler is as instantly addictive and engaging as its predecessor.The bad: That it eventually comes to an end.Challenging cooperative mode extends the story. Terrific writing and voice acting adds two new memorable personalities to the Portal cast. The good: New environmental elements including hard light bridges and super ability gels create fresh space-time-bending twists. ![]() Platforms: Windows PC (reviewed), Mac, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3. ![]() When confronted with a gaping crevice, I deployed portals to direct the flow of pumped ability gels that grant increased speed and verticality, coating the floor with both to create a runway to leap over the gap. Portal 2 relies on the same basic place-shifting mechanics, but adds a variety of new environmental elements designed to break our brains in unexpected ways.įor example, in a chamber with turrets and a luminous bridge made of "hard light" I used portals to redirect the bridge, turning it into a bullet-blocking barricade. For instance, in order to reach a higher platform, players would dive into a portal at the bottom of a hole, using the momentum gained from falling to launch out the other side at high speed. This outwardly simple concept proved extraordinarily engaging in the first game, largely because it forced players to think in strange new ways. ![]()
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