Portal 2 is a puzzle game masquerading as a first person shooter (that gun-like object your silent protagonist is totting shoots portals, not rockets), made by the company responsible for the Counter Strike, Half-Life, and Team Fortress games: Valve. Just in case you have never heard of them. Which I sincerely doubt, as these are some of the biggest titles on the planet. Portal 2 picks up many years after the end of the first, with the main character awakened from stasis by an AI named Wheatley (whose voice actor you may recognize from the Ricky Gervais show) desperately trying to escape the dilapidated facility and unwittingly awakening GLaDOS in the process. As GLaDOS was your main nemesis in the last game, a sociopathic computer with an addiction to testing, this is bad. You spend the rest of the game trying to escape the facility, and to survive the testing you are forced to do.
The Good:
The Writing - This game is funny. Not "weak chuckle" funny, but "I'm crying and I can't breathe from laughing all at the same time" funny. The writing is absolutely superb, and never gets stale, and JK Simmons (J. Jonah Jameson from Spider-Man) is especially funny as the CEO of Aperture Science, the company for whom you are doing your testing. Notable funny moments in the game: GLaDOS' opinions on your parents abandoning you at birth, and when you discover more about Wheatley's past and purpose.
The Mechanics - The first game was excellent, and this one is as well. Fixing what was broken, keeping what wasn't, and adding only sparingly to the dynamics of the first game, there really are no flaws in the set-up of the game. Jump in portal, jump out of portal, get to end. Sounds simple, right? Wrong. Some of the puzzles will frustrate you, and then further make you angry when you figure out how simple the solution was. On the other side of the coin, you will feel like a genius when you are on a roll. But really, you're not. Or you are, I have no idea.
The Pacing - Never at any point in this game do you feel like you are spinning your wheels and accomplishing nothing; you're always running, subverting, or avoiding a threat. For the approximately 12 hours I got out of the single-player campaign, it was interesting from start to finish.
Two Campaigns - Enough said; there is a cooperative campaign for two players, either split-screen or online, and the single player campaign. That's a lot of portals, and the more the merrier, I say!
Co-op Campaign - This is a totally different storyline, set after the end of the single-player campaign, and it is equally as fun; P-Body and Atlas, the two playable characters, look like they belong in a Pixar movie (I'd watch it if they were!). Figuring out puzzles with friends is a lot of fun, and there is an entire gesture and marking system to curb the difficulty a little, mostly because screaming "OVER THERE YOU IDIOT" generally is not terribly effective or informative.
The Bad/The "Why?":
Co-op Campaign - Because face it, other people are idiots.
The Engine - Still running on Valve's Source Engine, the same one they have been using since 2004's Half-Life 2, the visuals of Portal are beginning to show their age. While still looking pretty good running on a seven year-old engine, some textures and particle effects are fairly low-res. This is an issue with several developers currently; many do not wish to update their engines due to high sales in their products (namely the developers of Portal and Call of Duty).
Replayability - Unless you REALLY wanted to go back and play everything again, once you finish the game, you are done. In a market with games that are often $60 a pop, you want a game you can play multiple times. While this is not one of those games, you do have two fairly lengthy campaigns to play through, definitely giving you your money's worth.
My Score: 9.5/10
This game is absolutely brilliant. The often-dark humor will have laughing so hard you're gasping for breath and yelling for your roommate to "get out here" to listen to the next bit of funny dialogue from the various computer AI's and from the Aperture CEO. With puzzles that are as inspired as they are difficult, and a well-paced story that throws a couple semi-unexpected curve balls, Portal 2 is a hilariously fun and challenging game, whose quality should come as no surprise to anyone who has played a Valve game before.
My recommendation: Buy it.
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