Portal 2 Review

If you’re even peripherally aware of gaming you’re already familiar with Valve’s Portal. The 2007 game made good use of its original titular mechanic to create unique puzzles and give the player new ways to hurtle around the ole underground lab. For what could have been a glorified tech demo it also had a great story and sharp humor. At the very least you’ve probably been exposed to the memes the game spawned often enough to get tired of them. As such I’m giving my word I’ll leave out any references to cakes or lies for the duration of this review. 

Valve has managed to find time between adding more hats to Team Fortress 2 and not finishing the next Half Life Episode to make us a sequel. I’ll be operating on the assumption you’ve played the first game, or are at least familiar with the basics of premise and mechanics. Portal 2 is also a very story heavy game, so I’ll do my best to minimize spoilers.

Thinking with sequels

That said you’re doubtlessly curious as to how Portal 2 starts, give that everything seemed to have exploded at the conclusion of the first game. As the game opens it becomes clear that you’re still trapped in the Aperture Science Enrichment Center from the first game, though an indefinite amount of time has passed and large sections of the facility have fallen into disrepair. It’s not too long before you get your hands on another portal gun and set out to escape once more.

A lot has changed since you last confronted GLaDOS.

The recently reviewed Borderlands had something to the order of a million possible guns. Portal 2 has only one, and the portal gun functions more or less the same this time around, with the minor welcome change of being able to see your portal through walls and obstacles. The portal gun is a versatile tool, but most of its abilities are dependent on what’s in the environment for you to work with.  

Valve’s single player offerings have always excelled at easing the player into learning new mechanics, sometimes without even letting the player catch on that they’re being coached. Portal 2 puts this to good use with a slew of new mechanics that it builds its puzzles and environments around. This is no mere map pack or expansion, recycling stuff we’ve already seen. As you work your way from test chamber to test chamber and beyond you encounter lasers, jump pads, and bridges of solid light, all of which you’ll need to use in conjunction with your portals to progress. You still get to put the occasional crate on top of a giant red button, so if that’s what you were looking forward to, never fear.

Lasers offer superior button pressing power though.

All the things we learned

Valve takes it’s time, letting you get familiar with each new device and all the ways they can be manipulated before “testing” you on what you’ve learned and letting you combine these devices in new and interesting ways. The standout is the colorful “repulsion gel”, which you can spray the walls and ceilings with, allowing you to move faster, jump farther and even apply portals to newly covered surfaces. Flinging and bouncing yourself through increasingly complex Rube Goldberg like setups is a joy. 

Many of the best puzzles force you to combine different mechanics.

The puzzles are immensely satisfying to complete, and can grow quite challenging later in the game. I only ever found myself stuck a handful of times, and it was usually because I hadn’t noticed some aspect of the environment or had forgotten something the game had already taught me. There’s so much new stuff introduced It’s even possible to find yourself stymied just because you’ve forgotten, for the moment, that you can shoot portals. You will die a number of times just through trial and error.

Loading times in Portal 2 feel just frequent and long enough to start to get on your nerves, but aren’t crippling. They’re definitely more of an annoyance than in the first Portal. Actual game performance and stability was fine. 

The science gets done

The first Portal was short, although you could argue that it was no longer than it needed to be. Portal 2 is significantly longer. There’s a clearly defined three act structure, separated by Valve’s signature first-person rides. These major changes in setting and tone were a good decision, because a whole eight hour game of nothing but test chambers could have started to wear. Portal 2 is extremely linear but it is tightly paced, largely thanks to its level design. You’re rarely unable to see where you’re heading, and the fun largely comes from figuring out how to get there. Areas and mechanics manage not to overstay their welcome. 

The Enrichment center goes down for miles.

The environments are more varied this time around. You will see your fair share of testing chambers, but you also get to spend plenty of time “behind the scenes” crawling around in the Aperture Science infrastructure. These excursions outside the ordered test chambers reveal the terrifyingly macroscopic scale and modular nature of the facility, only hinted at in the first game. Some of the most memorable environments can be found in the games second act, down in the forgotten depths of the Enrichment Center, along with plenty of tidbits of information about the origin and history of Aperture Science.

Some of these giant arenas feel almost wasted, given that you can cross them in seconds with the use of the portal gun. They’re not pretty in the conventional sense, but the sheer scope and scale of the facility never fails to impress. This wasn’t a place built with human frailty or limitations in mind and you will, unsurprisingly, need the portal gun to cover any ground. 

Doing what we must (Because we can)

For a game in which you are the only living human Portal 2 has great characters and hilarious writing. GLaDOS returns of course, though significantly angrier, sharper, and perhaps more human than you might remember. This makes sense given that you scrambled her personality cores in the finale of the first Portal and, as she’s never slow to remind you, did kind of murder her. 

Not that she's bitter or anything.

GLaDOS’s dialog drips with a level of terrifying, barely contained menace directed towards you personally, with more than a hint of mean-spirited sarcasm. While she’s the primary antagonist for significant parts of the game a lot about her personality and origin gets uncovered, and you may even end up feeling just a touch sorry for the homicidal AI. You get to see her react to some highly unusual situations, and it’s always fun when she’s threatening or addressing you directly. 

Wheatley, on the other hand, crackles with barely contained panic and frantic energy. The little blue AI sphere wakes you from stasis at the start of the game and serves as your guide and source of narrative exposition for much of the first act. Wheatley’s a constant stream of ideas, most of them bad. Sporting a British accent and an extremely expressive and lovingly animated eye he rarely stops talking, and everything he says is hilarious. 

What could possibly go wrong?

Rounding out the cast is a series of voice recordings left by Cave Johnson, the original founder of Aperture Science. His relentless enthusiasm and total lack of concern for safety or ethics makes his speeches at least as fun as the rest of the cast. It certainly goes a long way towards explaining how Aperture Science became the place it is today. He syncs perfectly with the rich vein of dark, at least slightly sadistic humor that runs through the game. And make no mistake, Portal 2 is consistently, deliciously funny.

Companions without cubes

The single player game is a complete experience in and of itself, with a great finale for the payoff. The ending song isn’t quite up to the level of the first Portal’s “Still Alive”, but what is? If you want more gameplay there’s a challenge mode where you compete on leader boards for speed and least portals used, but the best addition is the co-op mode.

Being able to see yourself through your own portals is as cool and disorienting as ever.

 

Portal 2 Co-op is definitely something you’ll want to do with a friend, rather than some random internet scrub. It’s as cerebral as the single player game, and good communication and cooperation is a must to make any progress. The little robots you control are endlessly reconstructed when one or the other of you inevitably dies, which helps keep the frustration to a minimum. The unlock-able animations of the robots interacting and GLaDOS’s constant heckling and commentary are more high points. You can do a lot of cool stuff with four portals and two bodies at your disposal, and the co-op campaign does as good a job as the single player campaign of educating you on the implications.

The part where I sum things up

In conclusion it’s hard not to recommend Portal 2. The game displays a level of wit and humor not often seen, while offering excellent mechanics and well polished puzzle gameplay. As much as I wish Valve would curb their hat-lust long enough to finish the third Half-Life episode, I can’t complain too much if games like Portal 2 are what they’re going to be doing in the meantime. It’s an extremely worthy successor to its predecessor while improving on the foundation laid by the first Portal in nearly every way. 

Reasons to Play: Hilarious humor. Top notch writing and great cast of characters. Deeply satisfying puzzle gameplay with a constant stream of fun new mechanics. 

Reasons to Pass: Slightly annoying loads. Extremely linear, for those who prefer more open games.

Articles copyright James Cousar, games and images copyright their respective owners.

The Ball Review

Before we begin a review of a game called “The Ball”, we are going to need to establish a basic level of trust. Let me give you my word we are going to avoid any sort of groin or gonad related jokes. For this review. It would be too easy. Although, I’d have gone with a name involving “sphere” or “orb” myself.

Anyhow, The Ball is a first person action/puzzler built on the Unreal 3 engine, the first release from the folks at Teotl studios. I imagine it owes its origin to a conversation something like this one:

Bob: Hey Steve, you remember the Weighted Companion Cube, from Portal?

Steve: Yes Bob. Everyone remembers the Companion Cube. It’s an Internet Meme. If you’re building up to a joke involving cake or lies I will be forced to hit you.

Bob: Hear me out. What if we did a whole game like that? Carrying around a giant physics prop as your tool and weapon?

Steve: Only if you can use it to crush monkeys.

Bob: Well of course. Why would you even need to ask?

And crush monkeys you will. The Ball owes much of its inspiration and heritage to Portal, while still being its own game. The designers learned the lessons about gameplay, level design, and communication with the player that Valve strives to teach. The controls are intuitive and quick to pick up. Very early on you find a “magnet-hammer” gun that allows you to manipulate the Ball artifact.  The right mouse button magnetically pulls the Ball to you, the left forcefully punts it away. There are a handful of other contextual commands, but that’s it really.

Doomsphere

By the way, we’re going to call the actual in-game Ball the “Doomsphere” from now on, to distinguish it from the game’s title and minimize confusion. I also like the word “Doomsphere”. Chant it with me.

As you have probably guessed by now, the core of gameplay is maneuvering the titular indestructible Mesoamerican artifact through an assortment of environments, physics puzzles, and light combat encounters. The Doomsphere is, of course, your primary tool. The levels are laid out so you can never get too far away, and there are plenty of gates and checkpoints where you need it with you to progress. Most puzzles involve figuring out how to move it to where you need it to go. The game quickly teaches you the “visual shorthand” you need to understand what doors will open, what you need to do to activate different switches, and so on.

Tetol studios have anticipated and summarily dealt with most of the problems you would predict for a game that centers on moving an object bigger than you are. The Doomsphere automatically turns transparent when directly in front of you, and you can force it to become so at any distance with the touch of a button. Your HUD tells you where and how far away it is, and another button automatically spins you to face it. Keeping track is never a chore. The Doomsphere also never forces you to move or knocks you around; no matter how fast it is moving.

Much energy has clearly been spent on making sure the Doomsphere’s rumbling weight, momentum, and inertia feel just right. It’s a visceral joy to shove it down inclines and send it smashing through obstacles and enemies. And what better to smash than priceless archaeological artifacts?

The Ball’s premise is that you are an archeologist investigating a dig site at a giant volcano in Mexico. You fall down a hole in the opening cut scene, which does not seem to inspire much concern from the rest of the dig crew. Rather than asking if you maimed yourself in the fall they encourage you to “Go explore”. I guess you owe them too much (or not enough) money for them to consider throwing down a rope.



There is a lot of life under the volcano. Can you spot the giant birds?

But who needs those losers when there are the ruins of an entire advanced Mesoamerican civilization to explore? Much of The Ball’s setting is vividly realized and beautiful to behold, although it tends to fall back on a series of square rooms and connecting corridors between the cool set pieces. You make your way through temples and pyramids and lush subterranean cities with a rich Aztec art direction while traveling deeper into the volcano.

The game has a strong sense of place, and the world under the volcano drips with ambiance. Lava rumbles far below, cobwebs and creepy-crawlies cover the screen as you move through dusty crypts, and frighteningly large avians circle overhead in the largest caverns. It’s reminiscent of the atmosphere found in the early Unreal games. The low background music enhances the environment without becoming distracting. Good ambience is like pornography. It is difficult to define, but you know it when you see it. This game has it.

Thematically The Ball draws from the best elements of the Indian Jones series, with vast underground chasms, primitive but lethal traps and mechanisms, and ancient secrets waiting to be uncovered. There are rushing subterranean rivers and searing lakes of magma to cross, and bits of the environment collapse or can be knocked down at the most dramatically appropriate moment. There is even a mine-cart ride, although it’s non-interactive. The late game vistas are especially impressive, and well worth playing through the slower earlier levels for.

Pacing is a little uneven. The first hour or two is dull, containing the most basic puzzles and the least visually interesting areas. A game with such an intuitive base mechanic really does not need a tutorial. Once you clear the extended training section things get more interesting, and the instant help button ensures you’re never stuck for longer than you have the patience for. The general balance between puzzles, exploration, combat, and the introduction of new elements is good, preventing fatigue at any one type of gameplay.

The pace picks up by the second half, as the more entertaining mechanics are introduced and the environments become larger. One of the game’s greatest strengths, especially past the slower introductory chapters, is that it is always showing you some cool new way to use the Doomsphere and manipulate the environment. Some puzzles force you to move it without being able to go near it; others have you infusing it with new properties like extreme heat or electricity. My very favorite parts turned the Doomsphere into a low-gravity field generator, allowing you to carry a bubble of moon gravity with you and effortlessly leap vast distances.

More ancient ruins need anti-gravity

While primarily a puzzle game, the Ball does have physics based combat. It is great fun to use the Doomsphere to squash the loping mummies and skittering bugs that guard the ruins. The survival levels that form an alternative to the main campaign let you bowl over waves of enemies and obliterate them with traps without any exploring or puzzle solving to get in the way. Back in the campaign you face off against a number of foes that are simply too big and tough to be crushed outright. Killing them by manipulating the Doomsphere and the environment makes for some of the highlights of the game. There’s nothing like luring a giant zombie ape into the path of a fiery exploding pinball.

You will get killed a lot. Enemy attacks do a lot of damage and instant-kill traps are common in the later levels. Checkpoints are frequent and well placed though, and everything you accomplished before you died stays accomplished when you re-spawn. This excuses the lack of a quick save, and makes death a minor penalty at most. A slowly regenerating health system would not have gone amiss, but the game keeps the action flowing and never becomes frustrating.

Mummies are a constant nuisance

The Ball is not a narrative heavy game, but there is a story to be had, told by the levels themselves. There are scores of abandoned weapons and reddish streaks on the ground, angry graffiti painted over the hieroglyphic symbols on the walls, and a creepy mummy priest/king patiently watching your progress from one step ahead. Something really bad happened to the civilization that built the world of “The Ball”, and secrets hidden across the levels contain scraps of well written text that flesh out the narrative.

I found the ending of the game an unfortunate letdown. I was looking forward to a cool and suitably epic puzzle boss like those battled earlier, but the ending is a bit of an anticlimax after all the awesome buildup of the final levels. I’m not going to spoil it, but the final puzzle doesn’t even make use of the Doomsphere.

            

             The game is technically sound and well polished. The program only locked up once, requiring a reboot. The actual Doomsphere itself also got stuck on the level geometry once, necessitating a restart from the last checkpoint. This only happened once each across an eight hour game though, and the game looks good and plays very smoothly. The Ball is only $20 on Steam, and provides a single player experience at least on the level of many full price commercial games.

Reasons to play: Excellent use of central mechanic, well realized and atmospheric setting, fun combat.

Reasons to pass: Slow start.

               

             If you enjoyed Portal, you will enjoy The Ball. Someone looking for a more traditional FPS or adventure game may not find it to their tastes, but there is a lot to like, especially for $20. The puzzles entertain, the combat is fun, and the world is worth the visit just to see.