Portal 2

1001 Video Games

Portal 2 appears in the book 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die by General Editor Tony Mott.

Awards

• 4Players
  • 2011 – Best Game of the Year
  • 2011 – Best Multiplatform Game of the Year
  • 2011 – Best Dexterity Game of the Year
• GameSpy
  • 2011 – Puzzle Game of the Year
  • 2012 – #3 Top PC Gaming Intro
• GameStar (Germany)
  • 2011 - #3 PC Action Game of the Year (Readers' Vote)
• PC Games (Germany)
  • Issue 01/2012 - Best Game in 2011 (Editor's Choice, together with Batman: Arkham City and The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
  • Issue 01/2012 - #2 Best Action-Adventure in 2011 (Reader's Choice)
• Steam Awards
  • 2016 — The 'Villain Most In Need Of A Hug' Award — Won
• Xbox 360 Achievements
  • 2011 - Best Story

Publicity

In the build up to the game's release, Valve released the Potato Sack Bundle on April 1st, which included the following 13 games:* 1... 2... 3... KICK IT! (Drop That Beat Like an Ugly Baby) * AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!!: A Reckless Disregard for Gravity * Amnesia: The Dark Descent * Audiosurf * The Ball * Bit.Trip Beat * Cogs * Defense Grid: The Awakening * Killing Floor * Rubik's Puzzle Galaxy: RUSH * Super Meat Boy * Toki Tori * The Wonderful End of the World

These games had received updates three times. The first added potato-themed objects with hidden cryptic clues as to what the next update would be, specifically 13 cyphers which formed a 13-letter word.

The second added an Aperture Science login to the Steam overlay upon completing certain in-game tasks within each game, which provided players with an archive of Portal 2 concept art for each game that contained data chunks that could be combined into a single archive password-protected by the aforementioned 13-letter word.

The third update added Portal-themed content to the games, as well as a task that, when performed, took players to an Aperture Science page where GlaDOS speaks a peculiar sentence alluding to two locations in the city of Seattle, WA whose combined names spell 'nelipot', the name of a group on Steam where players could find Portal 2 screenshots and a QR code that pointed them to a page on the Aperture Science website.

The page, a spoof of distributed computing projects called GlaDOS@Home, contained a countdown to the release of Portal 2 as well as counters indicating the number of players who completed each task for each game, which earned them potato icons on their Steam account, suggesting that players could release Portal 2 early by completing these tasks enough times. The combined efforts eventually saw the game unlocked on Steam at 21:29 on Monday, April 19, nine and a half hours earlier than the scheduled release.