This review contains spoilers
Portal 2 was a big turning point for me. Before Portal 2 I had only played Nintendo, Sega and weird little child friendly indies for DS, Wii and PS2. But one year I got an Xbox 360 with Kinect (kinect is great dont @me) to share with my brother and I was allowed to pick a game. I judged a game by its cover: omg i get to be a robot and go through a portal that sounds great why is this so dark and murky hmm somethings up
And i was right! I was never allowed like anything horror until this point, I had watched Coraline the year before and Monster House many years earlier but that was as far as it went. I was 11, my brother was 13 and had seen every classic horror under the sun and played Call of Duty: Black Ops Zombies with me on that Xbox against the rules so he could have help.
But Portal 2, was weird. Portal 2 was every little ArmourGames and AddictingGames and Newgrounds game I had played: it was a mind bending puzzler, but it was like Call of Duty (my first fps); It had.. graphics. I felt wrong playing it, like I wasn’t supposed to be there. I hadn’t played the first, so I didn’t know who anyone was. There was just this huge unease, the decrepit, destroyed sentient wall panels and this unending blackness all within Aperture Science property. And the NPCs…. they were rude! Sonic wasn’t rude! Eggman was a little rude but, nothing personal! And I was the ONLY human?!
Progressing through Portal 2 was tough as a kid but it deeply affected me, I had never seen something quite so eerie and off and like no one wanted me there, no one wanted me to play it, even the UI was barebones.
Portal 2’s puzzles are genius and I have played through the game so many times now but even before then, Valve teaches mechanics in such interestingly, clearly philosophised ways that just naturally build and build without ever holding your hand that they just stick, like forever. When levels combine every mechanic, you feel like a genius, you get so zen but Valve always give you more to learn through the whole experience, you’re never left to get too comfortable in its uninhabitable worlds.
Old Aperture turned me into an actual conspiracy theorist, learning about Cave Johnson and Caroline and the Borealis and who the heck is Black Mesa anyway. After completing the game I searched for hours, clinging to any modicombe of wider worldbuilding knowledge from Half-Life. I needed to know more, it was so bizzare, there had to be more, but there wasn’t. Everything that needed to be told in the story was and it was satisfying, I was just so in awe of the clear depth of this world hidden beyond reach
I loved it. I loved Portal 2, I love that every menial thing is inexplicably sentient, I love that everyone actually despises each other, wittily showing it, I love that turrets sing melancholic songs, I love that after Glados shows a modicombe of kindness we are chucked into an empty field with nothing to help us in the middle of nowhere, and with Half-Life for context, into a literal apocalypse. We are doomed, and its hilarious.
And i was right! I was never allowed like anything horror until this point, I had watched Coraline the year before and Monster House many years earlier but that was as far as it went. I was 11, my brother was 13 and had seen every classic horror under the sun and played Call of Duty: Black Ops Zombies with me on that Xbox against the rules so he could have help.
But Portal 2, was weird. Portal 2 was every little ArmourGames and AddictingGames and Newgrounds game I had played: it was a mind bending puzzler, but it was like Call of Duty (my first fps); It had.. graphics. I felt wrong playing it, like I wasn’t supposed to be there. I hadn’t played the first, so I didn’t know who anyone was. There was just this huge unease, the decrepit, destroyed sentient wall panels and this unending blackness all within Aperture Science property. And the NPCs…. they were rude! Sonic wasn’t rude! Eggman was a little rude but, nothing personal! And I was the ONLY human?!
Progressing through Portal 2 was tough as a kid but it deeply affected me, I had never seen something quite so eerie and off and like no one wanted me there, no one wanted me to play it, even the UI was barebones.
Portal 2’s puzzles are genius and I have played through the game so many times now but even before then, Valve teaches mechanics in such interestingly, clearly philosophised ways that just naturally build and build without ever holding your hand that they just stick, like forever. When levels combine every mechanic, you feel like a genius, you get so zen but Valve always give you more to learn through the whole experience, you’re never left to get too comfortable in its uninhabitable worlds.
Old Aperture turned me into an actual conspiracy theorist, learning about Cave Johnson and Caroline and the Borealis and who the heck is Black Mesa anyway. After completing the game I searched for hours, clinging to any modicombe of wider worldbuilding knowledge from Half-Life. I needed to know more, it was so bizzare, there had to be more, but there wasn’t. Everything that needed to be told in the story was and it was satisfying, I was just so in awe of the clear depth of this world hidden beyond reach
I loved it. I loved Portal 2, I love that every menial thing is inexplicably sentient, I love that everyone actually despises each other, wittily showing it, I love that turrets sing melancholic songs, I love that after Glados shows a modicombe of kindness we are chucked into an empty field with nothing to help us in the middle of nowhere, and with Half-Life for context, into a literal apocalypse. We are doomed, and its hilarious.