Portal 2 (Windows)

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Description

Portal 2 is the sequel to Portal and offers the same first-person puzzle-platform gameplay. Players continue the story taking the role of the young woman Chell, who defeated the artificial intelligence computer system GLaDOS in the first game. After the events of the first game, she was placed in stasis until eventually woken up again. The sequel still takes place at Aperture Science Labs, but it is now overrun by decay and nature. Much more than in the first game, Chell moves past the clean test chambers and explores the gloomy industrial setting of the laboratory.

Just like in the first game, the gameplay is based around portals. By shooting a starting portal and ending portal at suitable surfaces, certain uncrossable gaps can be bridged. Just like in the first game, there are also many test chambers where puzzles need to be solved, using cubes, turrets, platforms and special portal tricks to gain a lot of speed. GLaDOS makes a return to tease Chell and she plots revenge for her destruction, but there are a large number of twists that make her role very different from in the first game. Chell receives help from Wheatley, a small robot who opens entrances for her and provides witty insights about the environment.

New elements to the sequel's gameplay include light bridges, laser redirection and paint-like gels, incorporated through the work of the student project Tag: The Power of Paint. Gels provide extra speed, a jump or neutralize the effects. They can also be used with objects such as cubes or turrets.

The game’s two-player cooperative mode is entirely new and features its own entirely separate campaign with a unique story, test chambers, and two new player characters (Atlas and P-body). The PlayStation 3 version incorporates some elements of the Steamworks toolset and allows for cross-platform games against PC players.

Screenshots

Promo Images

Trailer

Part of the Following Groups

• 3D Engine: Source
• Game feature: Developer commentary
• Games that include map/level editor
• Half-Life universe
• Japanese PlayStation 3 games with full English support
• Physics Engine: Havok
• PlayStation 3 Essentials Range releases
• PlayStation 3 Platinum Range releases
• Portal series
• Protagonist: Female
• Xbox 360 Platinum Hits releases

User Reviews

Feels a little too much like the previous installment.	Asinine (1006)
Do not get the Windows version. Portal 2 on PC crashes a lot.	Pagen HD (145)

Critic Reviews

Gameblog.fr	Apr 19, 2011		100
Adventure Classic Gaming	Nov 15, 2012		100
XGN	Apr 27, 2011	9.7 out of 10	97
IGN	Apr 18, 2011	9.5 out of 10	95
Jeuxvideo.com	Apr 19, 2011	19 out of 20	95
YouGamers	Apr 27, 2011	92 out of 100	92
GamingEvolution	Jun 20, 2011	9 out of 10	90
Gamer Limit	Apr 27, 2011	8 out of 10	80
Mana Pool	May 09, 2011	7.8 out of 10	78
Rock, Paper, Shotgun	Apr 19, 2011	Unscored	Unscored

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Trivia

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 [email protected], 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.