Portal 2
This week I decided to play Portal 2, one of my favorite video games of all time. In Portal 2 you play a human guinea pig who is forced to participate in a serie of tests for the Aperture science centre a corporation run by an evil robot called Glados. All these tests revolve around a new invention called the portal-gun, a device that shoots portals that connect one space to another. The basic premise of these portals is that if you go in one, you come out of the other. This may seem simple, but it makes for some mind bending puzzle’s.
The game starts with simple puzzles, where you have to get on top of something by shooting a portal above it or you have to knock something over by placing a portal behind it. But very quickly new elements get introduced, like jump pads, laser beams and companion cubes. Before you know it, you’re flying through the air while shooting portals and avoiding laserbeams.
The gamedesign in Portal 2 is near perfect. Throughout the game you learn new things and new elements get added until the very end. This makes the game very engaging and rewarding. The puzzles all have that satisfying “eureka” moment, where you get stuck for a few minutes and then suddenly realise what the solution is. This combined with a fun and smartly told story makes for a great puzzle game that almost everyone can enjoy.
However I didn’t even mention my favorite thing about Portal 2, multiplayer! You can play Portal 2 with two players at once, where you each control a testing robot of the Aperture science centre. Both players are equipped with a portal-gun which means, double the fun! If you thought 2 portals could be mayhem, wait until you have 4 of them. I played all the levels together with my brother and after a while we worked together like a finely tuned machine. The multiplayer requires really close cooperation and coordination. For example, in one level one player has to fall down an endless loop of portals to build up speed, after which he gets launched in the air by the second player who shoots another portal. It is immensely satisfying when you solve a really hard puzzle together and when you perform all the necessary steps perfectly. Even if you’re not really into video games give this game a try, it is in my opinion the absolute best the medium has to offer.