Portal 2 Review
By MoxBornAgain
If you haven't played the original Portal, you should be ashamed of yourself and go play it right now! You can purchase Portal in disk form with The Orange Box and both on the Xbox Live Marketplace. Portal 2 offers much more of the same humor that the original brought to the big screen.
With this installment you meet a rather nice NPN named Wheatley. He brings a very lighthearted and easy going feeling to the opening levels of the campaign. You quickly move from the novice chambers into the "holy shit that just happened" chambers. Valve, the game developers, spent very little time bringing you up to speed on the games mechanics. Which is nice to see for a change. So many games now a days are very hand holding or follow the blinking arrow to win. It's good to see a nice challenge once in awhile.
Now the next thing that stands out the most is the environment. If you recall, the original Portal did very little to alter the overall environment. But with Portal 2 they really went outside the box. They give you a look at more than just the testing chambers. They show back hallways, assembly lines and destruction facilities for defective robots. On top of that some levels in the game take you completely outside the testing facilities and have you go rogue, another great addition to the games already outstanding level design.
Co-op has a great home in this universe as well, supporting 2 player local or over Xbox Live, you can team up and take the fight to GLaDOS. A wide range of additional 2 player chambers are available. These levels require team work and also encourage it with multiple team gestures that you can use on demand. The co-op also offers easy instructions for people playing without microphones over Xbox Live. A simple 3,2,1 counter for simultaneous puzzles; a place portal here option and a look over there icon as well. These are just little things that make the game more playable for everyone.
Overall this game is one that you should have on your shelf and pull out when you have guests over that love a good challenge or are big puzzle buffs!
Rating: System Seller: Multiplayer awesome, single player better and bigger than before, playability can't be topped
