Review by Bluesuit


Overall, I am thoroughly disappointed with the PC version of Portal 2.

-New gameplay elements like the lasers and light bridges
-Some interesting puzzles

-None of the puzzles were very challenging
-The environments feel very restricted. You can only shoot portals at certain walls. Unlike in Portal 1, where almost all the walls were fair game, the developers made most of the walls ineligible to be portalized. So in the end, the puzzles feel very linear. There is often only one set of locations where you can throw portals to progress through the puzzles and only one way to solve the puzzles.
-Short story mode (maybe 3-4 hours)

-Nice art design and good feel to the environment
-Can be run on low-end systems

-Graphics are not too spectacular. Feels basically like playing Portal 1.
-Environments can get bland

-The environmental sounds are good.
-Glados voice is nicely done.

-The Ricky Gervaisesque voice of the bot is annoying. If you like Ricky Gervais, then you will love this game. But if you hate him, then you will hate all the humor in the game. The main voice actor uses his exact comedy style, which makes for annoying dialogue. In Portal 1 I laughed the whole time. I didn't laugh once in Portal 2.

-Horrible load times. I'm not a technical genius, but it feels like the game was clearly meant for consoles with low amounts of RAM. Every 5 minutes, there is a 5-10 second load screen. This gets extremely annoying. This game should have been designed to load up large sections of the levels on the fly and also account for the standard 2-4GB of RAM in most modern home computers. I think that they could have eliminated most of the load times if they tried; but they didn't.

Worth a rental on consoles. Definitely not worth a PC version purchase. The game feels like a chore to work through. There is no creative thinking involved in solving the puzzles. They are linear and easy. The humor wasn't really cutting it for me. With no replay value and a story of only 4 hours, there is no point in purchasing the game. Play on a friend's steam account, or rent a copy for a console if you own one. It's a decent game, but it doesn't live up to the original.

Reviewer's Score: 5/10 | Originally Posted: 04/25/11

Game Release: Portal 2 (US, 04/19/11)

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