GAME REVIEW - Portal 2 (Spoiler-free)

Developer: Valve Corporation
Publisher: Valve Corporation
Director: Joshua Weier
Writers: Erik Wolpaw, Jay Pinkerton, Chet Falisek
Platforms: PC, Mac, PS3, Xbox 360
Genre: Puzzle-Platform
Age Rating: 12
Release Year: 2011

One of the most anticipated games of 2011! The best puzzle game I have ever played.

If I had a moan it would be: Why is this a 12, what?, how? if this were rated by movie ratings it would be below a U, it is that child friendly.

Now where to begin. The gameplay is: You are, in single player, a human who wakes up in aperture science, a testing place run by robots. Only you have over slept by a long time and the place is now falling apart. You and your robot sphere thing try to escape with the help of a portal gun. So the portals work so that when you shoot your portal on to a wall and the other on to another you then teleport between the portals when you go through it. This muddles with physics a little but you get used to it. In the game you get sent through many individual tests or puzzles which are sometimes difficult, I would say perfect. In each test there are many other obstacles and guff but I won't tell you what they are, that would spoil the surprise. They are very clever and well used. It is the simplicity and uniqueness of the gameplay the idea of the game that makes it such a hit.

Stephan Merchant

The game does have a story behind it. The writers have got the perfect balance of voice acting to gameplay and story adds lots of engagement to the game. Thumbs up, well done.
Now the voice acting. This game has won awards for its well scripted and incredible voice acting. All the characters are very funny. The three main characters for voice over are: Wheatly (your robot friend) voiced by Stephan Merchant, GLaDOS who is voiced by Ellen McLain and Cave Johnson voiced by J.K Simmons. Here is some voice acting from the start of the game when GLaDOS awakens. It has Wheatly and GLaDOS voice acting. It has no puzzle answers in it. Very funny watch it :D. J.K Simmons also has some top notch quotes, but I wont spoil them.

The game also has a Co-Op mode. This is very good and online is via steam and cross platform. Thumbs up valve. However you do have to connect with friends and using the network of that platform would mean we could play with anyone, which I would prefer. So in mode you play are robots, I love the characterising if them they are very likable and you can make them do cool stuff like high 5 or hug. This mode also has the added advantage of being able to be reassembled, so dying doesn't mean you have to start the level again, and I die allot. It has commentary from GLaDOS and is set after the single player ends. You work your way through levels in set chapters all cleverly reachable from the main hub in a fancy way and you can choose what level you want to repeat in each chapter. It is indeed double the portals double the fun.


This game has won many awards and it is defiantly the best puzzle game ever made, well maybe sudoku but shh that's not a computer game.


10/10


Now watch the credits and the amazing GLaDOS song, it is spoiler free (well ish):

Kieron :O