Many of the familiar laboratory test rooms have been filled with vegetative life, making for a much darker and more detailed version of the world we were introduced to back in 2007. However, hundreds of years have passed between Portal and Portal 2, so this setting now shows significant signs of decay. The mysterious Aperture Science Laboratories facility is back as well. Unlike the Weighted Companion Cubes of the first Portal game, Wheatley can actually talk and interact with Chell. Chell has a new robot buddy named Wheatley to help her out of jams and provide companionship. The characters Portal players have come to love and hate (and possibly love to hate), Chell and GLaDOS, are back to reignite a rivalry that has been dormant for hundreds of years. It is not hard to believe that Portal 2 promises to be significantly longer than the original.

When you combine all these elements together and add them to the portal mechanics, the possible amount of puzzles is truly overwhelming. Blue gel will make a bouncy surface, useful for getting up into those hard-to-reach places, while orange gel will enhance your speed. Another exciting new feature is the addition of gels that can be painted on floors and walls to give them new properties. There is the Thermal Discouragement Beam, a high-powered laser that can be redirected using prism-like cubes the Pneumatic Diversity Tube, a vacuum tube that can suck up objects and hurl them into other areas and the Aerial Faith Plate, a catapult-like tile that launches objects or players into the air. While the portal gun (technically called the Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device or ASHPD) remains virtually the same, quite a few new physics elements have been added to make Portal 2 more interesting and possibly more challenging. In order to please long-time fans, Portal 2 must not only include all of these elements, but must also expand them in a logical and satisfying manner.

The key to the original Portal's success was the perfectly executed combination of innovative portal-based gameplay, interesting setting, richly nuanced characters, and intriguing storyline. Can this much-anticipated sequel truly live up to the hype? It was pretty much made as an experiment and packaged with Half-Life 2's Orange Box, so there wasn't really a lot of pressure to make an amazing standalone game.Ī cult fan base, over a million downloads, several awards, and plenty of bootleg Weighted Companion Cube merchandise later, the pressure is on to make sure Portal 2 is a superior product.

In fact, not even its creators expected it to be so successful. Part first-person shooter, part puzzler, Portal took the world by surprise back in 2007 with its unique gameplay style.

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