Portal was an amazing game, no doubt about that. But six years something happened. From deep within the offices of Valve came something that would improve everyone's lives forever...Another Portal game!





Graphics: 89/100
This game looks great! Yeah, still, there are all those white and grey walls like the first. But they have realistic signs of aging. And all the rusty old metal decks, the ferns and plants, , the bird, and even the few, but very memorable, robots look amazing!





Music: 90?/10
There is a lot more in this game, music-wise. From start to finish there's an amazing score of music. From electronic, to strings, and a few mixes of both. Which works pretty well. . It ends with another amazing end credits song (Want You Gone...Three guesses as to what the song is about. ), And the voices have improved too. GLaDOS' voice?is a lot less robotic,? which makes the game even easier on the ears.





Gameplay: 100/100


The gameplay is basically the same as the first. So are the controls. WASD to move, spacebar to jump, left click for your orange portal and right for your blue one, and the E to pick things up, but now, you can press buttons also! And also, this game has a few new mechanics. Besides the amazing buttons, there are platforms that fling you to a set location (Aerial Faith Plates), hot lasers that will burn you if you touch them (Thermal Discouragement Beams), and Gels. The gels are kind of vital to the story, so I can't go into too much depth with them. But the orange Propulsion Gel makes you go super fast when walking on it. And the blue Repulsion Gel is basically a trampoline. Only instead of a trampoline, you have what looks like blue paint. And the last...That one is the story-vital one. But Conversion Gel is pretty fun to use. 





There is a bit more depth to this game then the last one. Sure when you get down to it you're still going from chamber to chamber, but there are a few Rattman dens still laying around. And a hidden song written just for the game in one of the dens (Exile Vilify, it's actually pretty decent.) And even the sound code for a picture of the end of the game! There is one Easter Egg that Half-Life fans will find pretty interesting as well.





Difficulty...Again, the difficulty is progressive. But the later levels can be very, very difficult. The user-made levels can be pretty hard also.





The story is pretty interesting. So, assuming you beat Portal, remember the very end? That wasteland and ruins of the outside? Well, in the same comic that brought us Portal's story, it gives us the prologue for Portal 2 as well. Some robot arms drag Chell back inside. No good can come from that. So Rattman comes out of hiding, and heroically sacrifices himself to overwrite the program, and puts Chell into hypersleep. Fast forward 999...9...9...9...9 (That's all the game gives us, the speaker breaks pretty quickly) when Chell is awakened again. A little personality Core wakes you up, and plans to break you out of Aperture for good! Unfortunately, things go awry quickly, as you two reboot GLaDOS, who isn't too happy to see you after you defeating her in the first game. She continues her mission to send you through test chambers. But eventually someone else steps in, and changes plans a bit. And by "a bit" I mean a complete plot twist.?And you're plunged into the depths that Aperture started in. And while the nuclear reactor powering the whole place is going unstable, and threatening to explode. You are racing for a way back, while learning the origins of Aperture Science, the life of it's founder, Cave Johnson, and his assistant Caroline. And eventually, you learn a bit more about the psychotic, angry robot named GLaDOS as well...




Pros and Cons: 85/15
This is a all around fun, and intriguing game. The humor can get a bit dark in nature, and there are four times that characters curse. But that doesn't take much away from the overall experience.





Overall, I rate this game 93/100. It's great! But you need a pretty buff computer to properly play it. Or at least a PS3 or Xbox360. It's definitely worth a playthrough.