Difficulty:

Just Right

Time Spent:

10 to 20 Hours

The Bottom Line:

"Instant classic"

Every now and then as an artistic medium grows into itself, inevitably it suffers an overabundance of parody. Street Fighter revolutionized the competitive head-to-head nature of video games. Call of Duty, Doom, and Half Life globalized it and made multi-player in video gaming a priority, not an add-on. While noone can argue the greatness of these games and their legacies to date, they are guilty of having open the floodgates of parody. They both are kingpins of the gamer's world, but the glut of imitators and developers that have stood upon their shoulders to take a sure fire formula and simply change the paintjob of the genre they fall under has been stifling sometimes. How many more first-person shooters are in development right now as we speak? How many fireballs under a different brand do you have to fling or sub-machine gun mods do you unlock before it starts to feel like video games are using the amazing technology they have at their disposal to merely just rinse-and-repeat? Offering "a truly unique gamer experience"? If it's post-apocalyptic, got Nazis/terrorists, zombies, or just big f**king guns, save your cash because chances are you've already played it in some way, shape, or form already. Much like comic books, the medium can be so much more, but the face of it has become only one type of game. Fast. Competitive, full of loud punches and bullets.

Enter a handful of Digipen technical students in 2005 with an independent came called Narbacular Drop. Valve takes a chance and hires them to develop a game that will be packed-in with the value packaged Orange Box. Even if the game flops, it's not an embarrassment to Valve since they've already given the gamer three Half Life 2 games as well as Team Fortress 2 that had been in development hell for years. Gamers got their FPS blood lusts satiated and Team Fortress had the great turn of not taking itself too seriously. All the bases had been covered for the Orange Box to be a success with some good games to be able to afford to throw in a game called Portal. But a funny thing happened...

Portal became the darling of the Orange Box. Team Fortress was wicked fun and Half Life 2 got to remind everyone why it was Game of the Year a little while back, but Portal...all of the sudden we were teased with what video games could be again. That sense of reward that we "figured it out." Lifelong gamers had a familiar feeling, the same one we had when we unravelled a puzzle in Zelda, relying on innovation rather than a dragon punch, fireball, or sniper rifle. This was something unique that promoted non-linear thinking. It was clever and witty and had clearly one of the most unique villains to date, a beguiling character that interestingly enough is not the end boss on top of the mountain, but a personality that was with you the whole way through the experience. The game was brief, and teased of delightful things a video game could be, with excellent level design and voice acting and humor, and then quickly it was over. We moved on and started blasting Nazis, aliens, zombies, and each other again with high powered plasma cutters online again.

Computer game designer Chris Crawford states that "If a challenge has no "active agent against whom you compete," it is a puzzle; if there is one, it is a conflict."

Portal 2 has the prestigious distinction of being both of these while not being defined by them. It is that rare video game that makes you feel delighted with your own gradual intellect and be reminded that a game can feel rewarding without ever having to pummel someone embarrassingly online or otherwise.

The level design is next to genius. And the only thing more precise in it's perfection is the build of the learning curve. No puzzle ever feels too beyond you and yet never feels like an easy walkthrough either. the satisfaction you feel in your gut after solving one of Glados' sadistic tests is quickly trumped by the burning desire to figure out the next one.

The art design and voice talent is perfection. Something so simple as a weighted cube and grey panels become your prison and salvation. Before GlaDos can exact her cold and calculated revenge on you and the game dare fall into predictablitity, it takes a twist and you learn way more about her and Aperture Science's past then you bargained for. It's a dystopian and cynical future where you are nothing but a silent and sterile lab rat. The people with the best jokes in the game are either robots or died hundreds of years prior to you waking up from cryo-sleep to run through the mazes of Aperture. Lots of new mechanics are added to have your neurons working overtime to integrate them into your plan to escape the lab with your portal gun.

The voice acting is spot-on. GlaDos is deliciously evil in the beginning, Wheatly the personality core is perfect comedically, and the ever devolving psyche of Aperture Science founder Cave Johnson is both funny and disturbing to listen to.

Sound effects are used in just the right places yet sparingly to accentuate the feeling of being isolated in all the right places at all the right times. The gameplay, well what can I say...is what the gameplay of more games should be. The levels make your brain really flex, but the feeling of futility never completely takes hold as that's the exact moment you discover the solution and move on to the next test. And that's the biggest compliment I can pay to a game developer.

Rather than gush about the praises of the game, I'd rather urge you to play it not just for being brilliant for what it is, but just as much to be willing to distance itself from what it's not. I was skeptical that you could really take such a particular concept as the portal gun and stretch it into a full-narrative, but it indeed does, and surpasses it's predecessor. You'll be disappointed at the end, simply because it's over. And that's the second best compliment I can pay to a game developer.

Do yourself a scientific favor: Blast a blue portal through your wall, and an orange portal through a video game shop, step through it and get this masterpiece. You'll feel a level of satisfaction with each step of completion you probably haven't felt since early NES days, and the weird world of Aperture Labs is unforgettable, immersive and tonally unique. You won't be gutting intergalactic tyrants with a laser cannon in this game, but my bet is after this, you'll wonder why you ever wanted to.

Portal 2's only flaw is that it leaves other games you play after it feeling shallow. Yes indeed. the cake is a lie.