Dammit, I need to try Portal 2!
Yes, you do.
How awesome is it?
Portal 2 delivers. It is brim full of refined win. Haven't tried the coop game yet but I am keen to
When I saw the teaser trailers. I wasn't sure about the new characters they've added, but actually the little management bot "Wheatley" is quite funny and not present for quite a lot of the game (at least as much as I've played so far).
GlaDOS is back and she's fairly miffed about your having killed her but she doesn't make an appearance immediately. From what I can gather, somehow your escape in Portal 1 was not entirely successful and you were taken back. You wake up in a "suspension room", which looks like a very cheap hotel room whilst a male voice instructs you that you've been in suspension for 50 days and you are being waken as part of a mandatory physical and mental well being protocol. It's rather amusing. The "gymnastic" portion of your exam basically requires you to look at the ceiling and floor, then for your mental reinvigoration you are told to stare at an artwork on the wall (with the typical portal clock noise ticking in the background). All this is punctuated by loud irritating buzzes. The dark lab-rat comedy of the first is definitely back in abundance. After this, you have no option other than to go back to bed.
You then wake up an unknown, but presumably quite long time in the future. The same voice reports that you've been in suspension for "nine nine nine..." before breaking down and your room has clearly undergone some serious entropic decay. Then there's a knock at the door, and when you open it, you are greeted by the aforementioned maintenance bot who basically is here to break you out, along with a few comments about the shape you appear to be in. As he does so, it becomes clear that your suspension room is basically like a freight container and as he navigates it through some huge cavernous space of similar containers, bashes it around , until only the metal frame is left. In the end, he crashes it through a wall and you are in what appears to be the ceiling space above the test chamber you woke up in in the first game. Only now, the entire place is a wreck and filled with vines.
The first couple of levels are deja vu as you go through the same test chambers, but the test circuit quickly diverges. Not very far into it, you, or rather Wheatley, accidentally reboots GlaDOS. You watch as she pulls her broken parts back together in her lair and she recognises you immediately. She crushes Wheatley with a pincer and throws you down the incinerator chute. You wind up in the very bowels of the facility, where she directs you to the dual portal device. After collecting it, you are back to square one, navigating the various test chambers (all in varying states of disrepair). There are several new testing elements, such as the euphemistically entitled "thermal discouragement beam" (a high wattage laser) and "aerial faith plates", panels that throw you into the air. I haven't encountered them yet, but there's also some new thermodynamic-defying fluid substances, "propulsion gel" which thanks to some sort of anti-friction property makes you faster when running on it and "repulsion gel" that likewise increases your kinetic energy when bouncing off it. All the while, GlaDOS delivers her usual taunts only this time they appear to be a lot more personal.
Visually, the game looks a treat. The neat, clean testing chambers of old look suitably corroded and run down, with detritus everywhere, malfunctioning platforms and other signs of long abandonment. Compared to the first, the visuals also look higher definition, the models seem to be more detailed and the lighting engine seems to use that nifty soft shadow technique that's all the rage these days.
So far, I really have no complaints.
