Portal 2 Review

 (Originally published to Glitchwave on 7/16/2022)

[Image from glitchwave.com]

Portal 2

Developer: Valve

Publisher: Valve

Genre(s): 3D Platformer, Puzzle

Platforms: PC, Xbox 360, PS3

Release Date: April 18, 2011

Valve’s titles to each respective IP never seem to get it right on their first go. Either that or they’re the video game company that benefits the greatest from the inherent second wind of a sequel. The first Team Fortress was merely a tech demo of an employee’s lark of an idea seemingly fabricated in a day. However, Team Fortress 2 was a generation-defining multiplayer FPS whose rabid cult following still keeps the game relevant. Half-Life was a monumental achievement for the FPS genre and influenced so many successors that aped its pioneering properties. Yet, no one speaks of it unless it's about the sequel, a game often declared the Mount Rushmore of video games. Left 4 Dead 2 wasn’t leaps of quality over the first one, but the marginal improvements it made over its predecessor eclipses it all the same. Gabe Newell and his team at Valve have no concept of a “sophomore slump,” or they are so familiar with the term to the extent that they exercise everything in their power to avoid it. The last of their major IPs not to be graced with a sequel was Portal, the game that arguably needed a sequel more than any other Valve IP. The first Portal was funny, inspired, creepy, and breathed new life into what I thought was the then recently deceased 3D platformer genre with puzzle-latent ingenuity. Everyone was praising Portal for all of these admirable qualities, but the short length and minimalism had me unconvinced of its overall quality. All Portal needed was more content to elevate its status in my mind, and what better way to do this than with a sequel cranked out by the most exceptional sequel makers in the industry? Portal 2 was a logical step in fleshing out the first game’s core attributes, and the game succeeded almost entirely.

Familiarity is a natural aspect of a sequel that wavers in necessity. It’s important to expand upon the gameplay, mechanics, and some sense of artistic direction, but developers often overshoot. They unnecessarily extend the arcs of the narrative, setting, and characters that were not open for continuation for the sake of banking on familiarity. Portal 2 is guilty of oversaturation, but I reached a point of clemency after some consideration. Aperture Laboratories was destroyed after the climactic events of the first game, so the facility wouldn’t be active unless they got a construction crew with beaver-like crafting abilities to restore it in a short period. However, is there anywhere as claustrophobic and sterile as Aperture Laboratories to use something like the portal gun? With this technology, the sky's the limit, but the vast potential wouldn’t make for an invigorating puzzle platformer game. Portal takes place in the same lonely laboratory as the first game, but now the player can revel in the destruction they’ve created. Appropriately, the clever, titanium-heeled Chell returns as the main protagonist, for she is the sole person who could relish with the player in what they’ve done. The second go around the compressed enclosure of Aperture starts similarly to the first game. Instead of a glass room with nothing but the bare necessities of living space, Chell finds herself in a more spacious hotel room. Another voice echoes from somewhere outside of the room, signaling that it’s once again time for the player to test their mettle in the courses of what remains of Aperture. Suddenly, half of the hotel room is obliterated, exposing the perilous heights the hotel is situated on. A British-sounding, spherical droid anxiously beckons the player to escape Aperture with him through the broad fissure created in the hotel room. The opening lulls the player with that sense of familiarity but subverts their expectations with a more bombastic set-up. It gives the impression that Portal 2 is a high-octane beast that deviates from its minimal predecessor.

Soon enough, we learn that this is merely a half-truth. While Portal 2 does offer far more than circuitous tests using the portal gun, extended sections of the game are dedicated to numbered courses where the puzzles get progressively more difficult like in the first game. The difference is in the way that Portal 2 paces itself. My biggest grievance regarding the first game was its uneven pacing. Valve split a short game into two thematically different parts: the test chambers and the arduous trek up to GLaDOS. Due to the game’s short length, the test chambers felt like an elongated tutorial to prepare the player for the second act. The most awkward aspect of Portal 1’s transition is that the second half is the same duration as the tutorial section of the first half. The overall experience felt cramped due to not giving the game enough legroom. Portal 2’s pacing is more erratic, but all ten sections are as long as either half of the first game. Lengthening the game is an obvious method of offering more content, and Portal 2 certainly satisfied me in doing this. Chapters involving both the test chambers and untethered platforming endeavors are interspersed throughout Portal 2’s playtime. Doubling the playtime and shifting the layout and focus of the puzzles every so often may have proved to be a bloated experience, but the strength of the narrative holds the mold of Portal 2’s progression.

Sequels to puzzle games tend to feel unnecessary because there is little discernibility from the previous titles. As much as whoever churns out the sequels to Tetris attempt to fool us with graphical overhauls and flashy dancehall visuals, none of this distracts from the fact that they’re still offering the same black and white, Russian-developed game from the mid-1980s. Portal 2’s mission is to expand upon the elements of the first game like any promising sequel would, including the properties of the puzzles. Portal’s puzzles obviously involve more than connecting one color portal to another one on the other side of the room; otherwise, the puzzle aspect of the game would be diminished entirely. Portal 2 adds a myriad of tools to the puzzle sequences for the player to work around. Springboards will make the player leap into the air if a sizable cliff isn’t available to jump off of. Light bridges also provide an alternative traversal method, but the true genius behind these incandescently blue bridges is using them as shields to obscure the turret's line of fire. Lasers replace energy balls as rogue sources of electrical power, and the new “discouragement direction cubes” will often accompany their presence to direct the path of the red hot beams. Vortex beams will carry the player in a single direction with their gravitational pull. My favorite of the new features is the colored gels. Globs of paint drip from the ceiling like a leaky faucet or gush out broken pipes like a sieve. The paints come in three different colors, all with their own attributes. The blue gel will bounce the player like a trampoline, running on a path of red gel will accelerate the player, and a splatter of white gel will allow the player to deposit a portal there regardless of the material the gel is coating. Incorporating each of these gels separately makes the puzzle-solving process all the more dynamic, but the highlight section of this entire game, in my opinion, are the tests that implement all of them at once for one buoyant puzzle sequence. This level of quality also concerns puzzles that involve multiple uses of all of the other features, as their collective presence provides a multifaceted challenge that wasn’t present in the first game.

While puzzles are the crux of Portal’s core gameplay, the first game wouldn’t have garnered the same praise and rabid internet following without its comedic tone and the vacant atmosphere. I’m happy to report that Portal 2 excels on the former of the two ingredients. I don’t know whether or not it’s due to the voicework of Stephen Merchant playing Wheatley, but Portal 2 has made me realize that the games have a very British sense of humor. Dialogue is consistently wry and carries an aura of deliberate silliness behind its deadpan delivery like a Monty Python skit or an episode of Black Adder. This description applies to GLaDOS from the first game, but now she isn’t the only voice in the franchise. Wheatley’s manic manner of speaking, which sounds like he wears every emotion on his sleeve, is delivered exceptionally by Stephen Merchant. The borderline improvised-sounding delivery of the latter gives so much expression and character to what is a featureless sphere with a wide, blue retina that blinks occasionally. His eccentric monologuing with Chell never grows tiresome, but his banter with GLaDOS is especially entertaining. Attempting to best GLaDOS in a match of wits exposes him as a fool without GLaDOS rolling her eyes and sighing at him, but he’s more of a British definition of a comedic oaf than the crass, cloddish American trope of one. Every line spoken by J.K. Simmons as the former Aperture CEO Cave Johnson is pure gold, especially his angry, subversive line about a certain adage regarding lemons. The developers knew that they had to expand on Portal’s character roster beyond GLaDOS and the mute protagonist of Chell, and each new character is as quippy as she is.

Portal 2, however, lacks the same unnerving, cramped atmosphere of the first game. Until I played the first Portal again to review it, I hadn’t appreciated the subtle yet effective way the game conveyed the harrowing malaise that permeated through the vacuous environment of the Enrichment Center. Danger felt eminent, and the player learned that the calm, albeit condescending voice of GLaDOS was not to be trusted. Of course, Valve could not have achieved the same effect in a sequel considering the walls of Aperture had been figuratively and literally torn down, exposing the secret of GLaDOS and destroying the threat accordingly. Holding the same sequence of tests in a different laboratory with a different protagonist wouldn’t have garnered the same effect. Valve had to slightly stray from the existential angle, but they found something as effective. Because the doors of ambiguity were demolished, Valve uses the sequel to expand on the lore of Aperture to unlock a new perspective on the scientific facility unseen from the prison-like walls of the Enrichment Center.

From the first sequence, when half of the hotel caves in, the player sees more of Aperture from a literal standpoint. Portal does not incorporate fall damage, but the wide chasm that signifies the massive size of the facility and the fruitlessness of escaping it is a constant hazard in Portal 2. The ground supporting the player's weight will frequently be the flimsy steel rail platforms. The player will explore vast areas outside the Enrichment Center, like the turret manufacturing plant and the outside borders that serve as Memoriam of Aperture’s CEO Cave Johnson. We learn in this section that Aperture was in an apocalyptic state of ruin before Chell defeated GLaDOS in the first game. The company was founded to compete with the scientific achievements of Black Mesa (yes, the same one from Half-Life), but several foolish business decisions caused its downfall. One of these blunders resulted in Cave Johnson poisoning himself and wishing for his secretary to carry on Aperture's business via inserting her brain into an artificial intelligence apparatus. GLaDOS has a moment of clarity and realizes that she used to be Carolyn and that she’s been conducting these tests on unfortunate subjects like Chell to prolong Aperture’s legacy. Due to the confined scope in the first game, we assume that Aperture is a force to be reckoned with, but more information reveals that we should somewhat pity Aperture and GLaDOS’s everlasting efforts to preserve it.

We also assume from the first game that GLaDOS is a cold, calculating sociopath with an irrevocable role as a villain. Once Chell fails to exterminate her permanently with Wheatley and she subjects more tests on her, we infer that Portal will be another excursion in defeating the mechanical monster. During one of the tests, Wheatley destroys the foundation of another of Aperture’s walls as they both make their way down to GLaDOS’s lair. Because of some sabotage efforts, Wheatley usurps GLaDOS’s power and takes over the facility. GLaDOS informs us that Wheatley was designed as a parasitic tumor meant to dilute her urge to kill and that his presence as the core will eventually destroy Aperture with an explosion. Wheatley isn’t doing all this maliciously, but rather from his insecurities and ignorance about the impact of his actions. Even so, Chell and GLaDOS, in an inconvenient potato form, must stop Wheatley before his hubris gets the best of everyone. After failing to stump Chell in a series of tests he created, Wheatley tries his best to kill her in an attempt to stop her from dethroning him. Encountering Wheatley in his lair results in an exhilarating battle against the clock while neurotoxins slowly seep into the room. Fighting Wheatley is a lot like the GLaDOS fight at the end of the first game, only with the added gel features to spruce it up. The five-minute time limit proves too tight, and in a last-second attempt to stop Wheatley, Chell shoots the portal gun exceedingly past any parameters it has ever been shot before: the moon. Space’s gravitational pull sucks Wheatley into the empty void of space as he regrets his actions leading up to that point while floating aimlessly. Wheatley’s boss fight does not have the same weight as the duel with GLaDOS, but the resolution to Portal 2’s falling action involving GLaDOS is substantial enough. GLaDOS seems healthy and good-natured after stopping the threat of Wheatley, and she sheds the grudge she harbored against Chell. As a token of her warm feeling of friendship, she releases Chell from Aperture and even belches up the singed companion cube from the first game as a bonus. Anyone who played the first game would be outraged at being friends with GLaDOS, but the organic time spent with her by your side in Portal 2 results in a bittersweet and conclusive ending.

Portal 2 was under extreme pressure before the game was released. Video game sequels have a less checkered history than film sequels due to different aspects, so no one expected Portal 2 to fail. However, Portal 2 was under the connotations of a “Valve quality sequel” with soaring expectations that it also had to be one of the greatest games of all time. Portal 2’s result was not perfect as it couldn’t exude the same cold, nihilistic tone as the first game because the mystery of Aperture Laboratories was already spoiled. Fortunately, video games have other aspects of development than narrative and tone like a film. Portal 2 left no stone unturned in fixing every little nitpick I had with the first game. The puzzles are more intricate with new features, and the game’s content is long enough to exude the sense of a full, finished project. All the while, Valve tapped into Portal’s lore and managed to give more intrigue to its world and characters even though I figured they didn’t need it. Expecting a game to be spotless is ludicrous, but Portal 2 leaves with a sensation that the first game didn’t: utter satisfaction.

Portal Review

 (Originally published to Glitchwave on 2/24/2022)

[Image from glitchwave.com]

Portal

Developer: Valve

Publisher: Valve

Genre(s): 3D Platformer, Puzzle

Platforms: PC, Xbox 360

Release Date: October 10, 2007

Remember when Valve was once the Daniel Day-Lewis of the video game industry? They didn’t churn out games annually like other triple-A developers, but the titles they did release once in a blue moon became some of the best of their generations. Nowadays, Valve is more like the Apple of gaming, a giant gaming conglomerate known for digitizing video game commerce. Steam has become Valve’s most significant priority for quite some time now, leaving them no time or incentive to put any effort towards developing video games anymore. Since Valve has shifted its focus and priorities, many gamers have been clamoring for their triumphant return in the realm of developing video games. It’s a shame that such an esteemed developer has decided to ascend to broader horizons, from a gamer’s perspective at least. Above all else, the core principle that made Valve the juggernaut game developer was their strides in innovation. Half-Life may not have invented the 3D first-person shooter, but the seamless cutscenes and 3D ragdoll physics changed the genre forever. Its sequel expanded on these aspects to significant effect and arguably still stands as the greatest FPS of all time. Portal carries this same point of innovation but far beyond the realm of the FPS genre. The FPS, 3D platformer, and puzzle genres are three wildly different video games with polar audiences. Valve presents Portal with this pitch: why not make a game that includes all of them?

I claimed that the 3D platformer died in 2005. I wrote about this heavily in my review of Psychonauts, which I claimed was the creative peak of the genre that could efficiently lay the long-winded genre to rest. Since it came out, I’ve been familiar with Portal and never spoke of it in the same breathe as Psychonauts or any other 3D platformer. The game didn’t include any of the genre's tropes that I had come to affiliate it with, such as collectibles, varied worlds, or even a double jump mechanic. Portal, by comparison, is more minimal and restrained than the often vibrant 3D platformer game. I forgot that the core fundamental of the 3D platformer was jumping on platforms in a 3D space which makes up a significant amount of Portal’s gameplay. It’s interwoven so subtly with everything else in the game that even a 3D platformer connoisseur like myself couldn’t see it. This revelation unlocks a whole new layer of admiration I now have for Portal.

The aspect of Portal that threw me off initially was the fact that Chell, the silent protagonist, has the jumping ability of a dead jellyfish. If Portal is a 3D platformer title, Chell is the least aerodynamic protagonist possible. Nonetheless, she must find a way to get onto a series of platforms, similar to any platformer protagonist before her. This conundrum entails the puzzle ingredient to Portal’s eclectic gameplay recipe. In a traditional 3D platformer, the platforms or geographical land is used as terrain to get to the goal. In Portal, finding a way to get onto the platform IS the goal. Doors that lead to the next area are in hard-to-reach places and or locked by buttons that require a permanent weight on them to open. The player will also utilize energy balls, moving platforms, and velocity to place Chell on the desired course. The various numbered rooms that Chell completes one by one get progressively more challenging and integrate more of these devices. The difficulty curve of Portal is perfect, starting with the simplest solving of physics to multifaceted puzzles as the game progresses.

How does Chell achieve success with any of the various perplexities she faces? Why, with Valve’s successor to the Gravity Gun, the Magnus apparatus and namesake of the game: the portal gun. The first-person view naturally elicits the feeling of a first-person shooter, as Valve never developed a game that wasn’t in this perspective. However, Chell would be hard-pressed to make it through the halls of Aperture Science with bullets. Instead, Chell shoots differently colored portals that connect and serve as entrances and exits regardless of color. The player will start using the blue portal gun as the next few puzzle rooms will supply orange portals to work with accordingly. After that, the player will receive the orange half of the portal gun and alternate between the two colors. Offering the orange portal gun to the player should make things easier, but the lack of apparent trajectory makes things more complicated, and the player has to take some time to adjust. One might ask: wouldn’t have two portals that connect simply allow the player to shoot where the goal is from their location? Fortunately, Valve thought ahead of this predicament. The portals can only stick from a specific type of wall material, which the player will come to discern as the game progresses. The more solid-looking chrome walls will make the portals dissipate in a blast of color. Each puzzle in Portal has a precise method of solving it, and the player cannot cheese their way around it. Valve takes pride in their physics engine, and they’ll be damned if the player finds a way to exploit it for their gain.

Puzzle games typically aren’t narrative-based. They usually get more complex in small increments until the player has been bested. On the other hand, Portal puts the player in a science-fiction excursion disguised as a nightmare. The game never utters the protagonist’s name, and the name I’ve been referring to her is non-canon. Her name is but a complicated number like a prisoner, along with Chell wearing an orange jumpsuit. The player wakes up with Chell in a pristine-looking room with a robotic but feminine voice speaking to her about conducting some experiments (the various puzzles). The player is given no context as to where they are or why they act like a lab rat for this facility. All they know is that the place is called the “enrichment center,” and the robotic voice is a product of a corporation called Aperture Science. The “enrichment center” setting where the puzzles are conducted is eerily cold and sterile. The lack of context and the closed-off nature of the setting recalls a similar sense of existential dread seen in Cube or the Twilight Zone episode “Five Characters in Search of an Exit” that was an inspiration. They are two science-fiction stories that give little to no context to the “wheres” and “whys” to the setting or the characters. This type of story exudes a heavy sense of existential dread as the setting and ambiguity strip the characters of purpose and agency. The protagonist's identity would most likely be less clear if only the portal guns didn’t let the player see Chell. A reward of cake is given as motivation for the player, but looking through the center's deep crevices uncovers writing on the walls from previous subjects that repeatedly says “the cake is a lie.” It’s a creepy method of foreshadowing that gets under my skin.

While the protagonist of Portal lacks any character, the same cannot be said for Portal’s antagonist. The robotic voice that narrates the player’s progress through the center is a supercomputer called GLaDOS. She was a project developed by Aperture Science that became too powerful and usurped control over the entire facility. Her primary goal in testing these subjects seems not for research but her sadistic pleasure. She constantly berates the player in a condescending tone like a mechanical Nurse Ratched. She plays with the subject’s feelings of loneliness by offering a “companion cube” with a warm heart on its center, only to have the player dump it in an incinerator to progress. Her sardonic dialogue and passive, malevolent nature make her an entertaining villain. Once the player completes the tests, they go rogue and hunt down GLaDOS in a long section where the game will not hold their hands in the scope of a meticulously designed puzzle. It’s a long trek upward that utilizes the player’s ability to use both portals to progress. Once the player reaches GLaDOS’s chamber, they are treated to one of the most original final bosses in video game history, with a malfunctioning GLaDOS getting more and more discombobulated as the fight advances.

From what I stated about Portal’s aspects, one would expect this game to have blown me away. Sadly, something about Portal leaves me unsatisfied. Games of a shorter length do not deter me from playing them, but Portal’s pacing is the one aspect that slightly sours it. The two sections of the game feel uneven as a whole. Working the player outside the confines of the organized tests makes those tests feel like an extended tutorial, which is more than half of the game. The developers should’ve either offered a game with more tests or shortened their amount before setting the player loose on GLaDOS. As it is, the pacing makes the game feel unfinished. The extraordinary aspects of genre-blending, mechanics, and existential atmosphere make Portal a marvel. However, the “complete” product here feels more like a beta test and doesn’t unlock Portal’s full potential.

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Portal's credits song, "Still Alive," was an internet hit in the late 2000s after this game came out. The song was such a ubiquitous hit online that people knew the song before they knew the game. After playing it again and watching the credits, it sounds like the Broadcast song that Broadcast never wrote. Listen to "C'mon Let's Go" and tell me that it doesn't sound like "Still Alive."