Note: This review is a part of my review for Portal: Companion Collection that covers the Portal games individually
After the absolutely cosmic success that the first Portal was for me, I headed into Portal 2 with sky high hopes and expectations, expecting strong feelings regarding the game and a perfect amalgamation of elements from Portal with a unique blend of new items to add to the mix, resulting in the quintessential puzzle gaming experience. So when I say that Portal 2 delivered, I mean that Portal 2 delivered, but only for the first part I mentioned. And that is because my emotions towards Portal 2 are of powerful disappointment and confusion, being one of the most frustrating puzzle experiences that I have ever had.
Portal 2 is essentially the antithesis of Portal, despite being a direct sequel. The reason that Portal works so well is also the reason that Portal 2 does not: Portal 2 flips Portal on its head, distilling the good elements of the original into lesser opposite forms. And just like with the vast array of positive points that apply to the original Portal, there are a generally equal amount of negative counterparts. Just like how I covered the good aspects of Portal, I will cover some of the negatives of Portal 2 likewise.
I’ll just address the elephant in the room first and foremost: the gameplay. Yes, I am very aware that the gameplay and puzzles of Portal 2 are hailed as some of if not the best in the entire realm of video games, and that most people would likely give me a very aggressive look suspecting incompetence for this opinion, but I first suggest that you hear me out. Considering that Portal and Portal 2 are essentially two diametrically opposed sides of the same coin, that means that the gameplay of the two games vary greatly as well. And this is true: the contained, sometimes claustrophobic test chambers of the original Portal are swapped out in Portal 2 in favor of an explorative traversal of the gargantuan, serpentine Aperture Science facility. But the concept isn’t entirely different: both games still retain the concept of the testing chambers, but there is a key factor that separates them and the gameplay concepts of the two games as well: size. In games, and especially puzzle games, size matters. Size is typically associated with difficulty in puzzle games: make a puzzle small, it’ll be easier to solve. Make it large though, and you’ll take a while just reading the instructions. And this is at the core of Portal 2's problems, just as how gameplay is the core of a game. I’m not saying that the difference in difficulty between the two games is the main problem, because it isn’t. But the biggest problem resides in navigation.
If you’ve ever played a game with an area considerably large, chances are it takes a while to walk around and take a good look at things. And when you consider that looking and processing things is one of the main processes of a puzzle game, you can see the problem that fundamentally resides in Portal 2: there is simply too much. Portal 2 isn't challenging, it's annoying. It simply happened way too often, time and time and time and time again that I would wander the map of almost godlike dimensions and look for where to go. And this problem led to endless, inescapable seas of frustration, as I looked and looked and couldn’t easily see where to go. Most test chambers are overwhelmingly larger than those in Portal, and the areas outside of the test chambers felt like entire oceans, drained of fluid and left in a bare, dry, helpless, befuddled state. I think that the feature most responsible for the abysmally titanic puzzle and level design was the zoom feature, the developers too often wanting to incorporate it and so turning every single puzzle into what felt like legitimate globe-trotting adventures, minus the fun and amplifying the pain. It’s not to say that Portal 2 is inherently responsible for this though; Portal taught the player to keep heading forward within the confines of the direct, linear, compact facility, while Portal 2's gigantic yet delineated puzzles backtrack on this taught philosophy by constantly requiring backtracking to be pieced together. This drastic conceptual difference leads to an overwhelming conflict between the two games; a sense of dramatic whiplash that never lets up. And it is this whiplash that defines Portal 2, whether it be the size of the puzzles, the scope of the story, or anything else. Speaking of the story, the key difference between the narrative of the two games is that one didn’t take itself seriously, mocking itself with blurted statements of insanity and foolishness such as the infamous “the cake is a lie,” while Portal 2's narrative struggles to emotionally invest me for a lack of the heart and humor that was so omnipresent in Portal, sacrificing all the dry humor and wittiness and self-aware degradation and heart and intellectual nuance for a generic buddy cop story of debatably epic scope of robots fighting each other to take control for a science facility, without any of the awareness of the stupidity of its own narrative present in Portal and with more half-hearted, indifferent jokes. And this perfectly sums up Portal 2: too serious and trying too hard for its own good, instead of taking itself in the fun, light-hearted direction that made Portal succeed so well.
After the absolutely cosmic success that the first Portal was for me, I headed into Portal 2 with sky high hopes and expectations, expecting strong feelings regarding the game and a perfect amalgamation of elements from Portal with a unique blend of new items to add to the mix, resulting in the quintessential puzzle gaming experience. So when I say that Portal 2 delivered, I mean that Portal 2 delivered, but only for the first part I mentioned. And that is because my emotions towards Portal 2 are of powerful disappointment and confusion, being one of the most frustrating puzzle experiences that I have ever had.
Portal 2 is essentially the antithesis of Portal, despite being a direct sequel. The reason that Portal works so well is also the reason that Portal 2 does not: Portal 2 flips Portal on its head, distilling the good elements of the original into lesser opposite forms. And just like with the vast array of positive points that apply to the original Portal, there are a generally equal amount of negative counterparts. Just like how I covered the good aspects of Portal, I will cover some of the negatives of Portal 2 likewise.
I’ll just address the elephant in the room first and foremost: the gameplay. Yes, I am very aware that the gameplay and puzzles of Portal 2 are hailed as some of if not the best in the entire realm of video games, and that most people would likely give me a very aggressive look suspecting incompetence for this opinion, but I first suggest that you hear me out. Considering that Portal and Portal 2 are essentially two diametrically opposed sides of the same coin, that means that the gameplay of the two games vary greatly as well. And this is true: the contained, sometimes claustrophobic test chambers of the original Portal are swapped out in Portal 2 in favor of an explorative traversal of the gargantuan, serpentine Aperture Science facility. But the concept isn’t entirely different: both games still retain the concept of the testing chambers, but there is a key factor that separates them and the gameplay concepts of the two games as well: size. In games, and especially puzzle games, size matters. Size is typically associated with difficulty in puzzle games: make a puzzle small, it’ll be easier to solve. Make it large though, and you’ll take a while just reading the instructions. And this is at the core of Portal 2's problems, just as how gameplay is the core of a game. I’m not saying that the difference in difficulty between the two games is the main problem, because it isn’t. But the biggest problem resides in navigation.
If you’ve ever played a game with an area considerably large, chances are it takes a while to walk around and take a good look at things. And when you consider that looking and processing things is one of the main processes of a puzzle game, you can see the problem that fundamentally resides in Portal 2: there is simply too much. Portal 2 isn't challenging, it's annoying. It simply happened way too often, time and time and time and time again that I would wander the map of almost godlike dimensions and look for where to go. And this problem led to endless, inescapable seas of frustration, as I looked and looked and couldn’t easily see where to go. Most test chambers are overwhelmingly larger than those in Portal, and the areas outside of the test chambers felt like entire oceans, drained of fluid and left in a bare, dry, helpless, befuddled state. I think that the feature most responsible for the abysmally titanic puzzle and level design was the zoom feature, the developers too often wanting to incorporate it and so turning every single puzzle into what felt like legitimate globe-trotting adventures, minus the fun and amplifying the pain. It’s not to say that Portal 2 is inherently responsible for this though; Portal taught the player to keep heading forward within the confines of the direct, linear, compact facility, while Portal 2's gigantic yet delineated puzzles backtrack on this taught philosophy by constantly requiring backtracking to be pieced together. This drastic conceptual difference leads to an overwhelming conflict between the two games; a sense of dramatic whiplash that never lets up. And it is this whiplash that defines Portal 2, whether it be the size of the puzzles, the scope of the story, or anything else. Speaking of the story, the key difference between the narrative of the two games is that one didn’t take itself seriously, mocking itself with blurted statements of insanity and foolishness such as the infamous “the cake is a lie,” while Portal 2's narrative struggles to emotionally invest me for a lack of the heart and humor that was so omnipresent in Portal, sacrificing all the dry humor and wittiness and self-aware degradation and heart and intellectual nuance for a generic buddy cop story of debatably epic scope of robots fighting each other to take control for a science facility, without any of the awareness of the stupidity of its own narrative present in Portal and with more half-hearted, indifferent jokes. And this perfectly sums up Portal 2: too serious and trying too hard for its own good, instead of taking itself in the fun, light-hearted direction that made Portal succeed so well.
2 Comments
Obviously
polarrism
1 year ago