Portal 2

Portal 2

Portal 2 has been tearing up the pre-order charts at retailers like Amazon for good reason. Portal was an under-the-radar smash puzzle/sci-fi/FPS hit.  But after Portal 2 game designer and manufacturer Valve let me play it for 45 minutes (on PC) recently, I could care very little for any buying incentives. It is a steal of a deal at twice the price. But if you already planned on buying Portal 2, and want to discover its ingenious play by yourself, stop reading. For those of you still reading, let’s see what happens.
Enter you, Chell, in a hotel room, with a calm, even-tempered, male voice-over (not GlaDOS) explaining you are part of an important experiment, and that your well being is so important to them, the experiment controllers. You know what always happens when someone says, “This is for your own good.” Yeah, it’s never good.
You drift off to sleep, then reawaken in a grimy room, where your are recorded-voice told that “you have been in suspension for 999999…” followed by the English accented male voice of Wheatley, a leftover from GlaDOS, the wrecked entity who tried to kill you in Portal. He is lonely, very chatty, and wants your assistance. So far so good.
You realize you are back at Aperture Science (AS), but it is in a state of disrepair. As your room continually moves, you see more and more, and see holes (portals) in walls everywhere, giving you glimpses of the enormity of AS. The old, familiar Portal Gun appears, and you hear birds crying and see tangled vines in the over-run AS. The tutorial blue-portal shooting ability of the portal gun is all you have here, and you are taught the complexities of the portal puzzler immediately. Three puzzles in and I am already banging my head and cursing.
The detail and visual scope is amazing, and PC is where Portal 2 needs to be. I am warned of an impending Animal King Takeover, a deadly puzzle has smooth jazz playing to totally throw you off, and 2 characters are introduced. The aforementioned Wheatley introduces himself in Portal 2 , and then GlaDOs herself greets you again after all these years with, “We’ve both said a lot of things you’re going to regret” and throws you into an incinerator room, promising that you will relive her death over and over, and over, and … well, you get the point. But the tutorial is now over, and you’d better be on your toes, because GlaDOS is pissed, and there is hell to pay.
Amazing graphics, enthralling, “what is next” storyline, new characters, bigger Aperture Science, more deaths (yours) than a Rambo movie and ticked-off GlaDOS … what’s no to love? Available 4-19.
Portal 2 for PS3:  Buy Now at Amazon for $54.99 and get a Pre-order Bonus $20 Amazon Credit
Portal 2 for Xbox 360:  Buy Now at Amazon for $54.99 and get a Pre-order Bonus $20 Amazon Credit
Portal 2 for PC/Mac:  Buy Now at Amazon for $44.99 (you save $5 with the pre-order discounted price)

Portal 2