Wednesday 8 June 2011

Portal 2

I've recently had a 5 days Portal 2 marathon. I rented the game from Blockbuster as spur of a moment and had to concentrate on it to try and finish it.

If you have played the original Portal game from Orange Box or Portal arcade game then Portal 2 will not be a novelty for you. If my memory serves me right it looks very similar and the gameplay is more or less the same. Even though I have not played Portal for couple of years, when I started Portal 2 I was a bit disappointed they have not changed it a bit more. But as I started solving the puzzles I realised that there are plenty new types of puzzles so the game started to bewitch me as the original game did.

In total there are two sets of maps, one for single player and the other for co-op game mode.

The single player maps can be played during the story mode or with developer commentary, which is a great touch. Story mode is great. You get brilliant puzzles to solve using all sorts of chamber features (won't give any details as it might spoil it for someone), the story is interesting and Glados is as funny as it was. You can also choose to play the game with developer commentary which is the same as the story mode except you can't save and you get comment bubbles here and there to open the developer's commentary.

Co-op section does not run as a story but you do have to play it sequentially the first time you play. You get one learning chapter and then another 5 chapters with different types of puzzles to solve. The puzzles are absolutely brilliant, simply work of a genius. You can play co-op on split screen or via xbox live. If you play over xbox live you can play with friends or any random dude. You do get a reminder from developers that the game is best played with friends and there is a reason for that. Communicating during puzzle solving is great part of the gameplay. Not just in working out how to get form a to b, but the banter around it is priceless. You can create traps for each other and laugh your head off with comments from Glados and the different ways you can die.

I had to take it back but will definitely buy the game to finish the remaining 2 co-op chapters.

9/10 from me :D

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