Portal 2

Box art.

Portal 2 is a first-person shooter puzzle video game developed and published by Valve and released in 2011-04-19 for Macintosh and Windows and then ported to other platforms. The game is the second in the Portal series and, like the first game, you play the mute character Chell who ends up having to go through all sorts of portal testing sequences devised by GLaDOS. The game is built using the Source Engine.

Personal

Like Portal, I didn't buy Portal 2 until long after it had been released when it was on sale in Steam.

I own this game on Steam and have beaten the one-player story mode. I currently have 29/51 achievements.

Review

10	9	8	6	9

Best Version: Windows

— This section contains spoilers! —

Good

• Like the first game, Portal 2 has an amazing story and it's utterly hilarious all the time.
• The characters are fantastic. It's nice to learn more about the origin of GLaDOS and Doug Rattmann. And Wesley and Cave Johnson are both fantastic new additions.
• The new mechanics including the surface paint, rebound and acceleration gel, water, light bridges, and gravity tubes are all really clever and fun additions.
• The travel back in time down the pit is a really exciting story arc.
• The two-player cooperative levels are a lot of fun.
• Jonathan Coulton composes another wonderful song for the ending.

Bad

• It doesn't make sense, from a technological standpoint, for Aperture to have such amazing technology back in the 1950s, even surpassing that of what they have in the first game.
• The physics for the portal gun being able to hit the moon, though fitting with the story, seems implausible.
• The jokes about Chell's weight get pretty repetitive.
• Some of the achievements are oddly made, and they missed the boat to award one in the stage where the emancipation grid is broken, and it's possible, though difficult, to bring a companion cube through.

Ugly

• Nothing.

Media

Wallpapers

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  The characters.

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  Atlas and P-body in action.

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  Atlas and P-body are friends.

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  Character collage.

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  Ominous GLaDOS.

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  GLaDOS rebooting.

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  Seems legit.

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  Old Aperture logo.

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  At the bottom of the mine.

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  The apartments.

Fan Art

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  What is a god to an unbeliever?

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  What is a god to an unbeliever (alternate)?

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  The ending, by Avionetca.

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  Chell falling, by Lorena Azpiri.

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  Punk Chel fan art.

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  Describing alignment using Portal 2 characters.

Gallery

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  Honest title.

Videos

Interesting facts about Portal.

Leadhead - Is everyone in the game a moron?

DidYouKnowGaming? - Cut content.

DidYouKnowGaming? - Potential sequel.

Game Theory - Would Chell survive the ending?

Boundary Break.

Easter eggs.

Longplay - 1 player.

Representation

Strong female character?	Pass	Chell and GLaDOS are both strong characters.
Bechdel test?	Fail	No females ever speak to each other.
Strong person of color character?	Pass	Although her race isn't described, Chell's facial model has a Brazilian-American father and a Japanese mother.
Queer character?	Fail	There are no queer characters.

Links