I am not normally the kind of person who sits in lines waiting for a video game to come out. However, with Portal 2 I made an exceptions. I watched all the promotional videos, was well versed in the happenings of the ARG and ran my computer to help with GLADOS@Home. What did I get for it? A letdown.

Don’t get me wrong, Portal 2 is not a bad game. It just doesn’t live up to the first one. It like how Star Wars episode one is a good movie in comparison to other movies but is subpar in comparison to other Star Wars films. Portal 2 came across to me as cluttered and confusing. Portal 1 was really good at delivering gameplay mechanics in a natural intuitive way. You had no idea about the world you were in but you didn’t have any trouble knowing where to go and what you were supposed to be doing. Sure you may not have known how to complete a puzzle but you knew what you were doing.

Portal 2 to me lost a bunch of its magic when you go into the underground levels. I didn’t know where to go, I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know what was going on and the characters in the game where little help. Cluttered environments do not play well in my mind with the game design philosophy of the first Portal Game.

I really felt like the Half Life team came across and did most of the work on Portal 2 and that pushed out the original game philosophy.

The story was interesting but did not have the great depth you would assume from the marketing campaign. You learn things about the history of Aperture Science but it really doesn’t change the way you viewed the world.

The biggest problem I had while playing the game was I always felt like there was a bunch of content I was missing. Portal 1 has a bunch of little rooms with painting and catchy phrases like, “The cake is a lie.” In contrast, Portal 2 had a couple of those moments but they were few and far between. You don’t know what you don’t know and I felt like that concept wasn’t properly used. I felt like there is a bunch of hidden rooms, chambers and insight hidden away beneath the clutter of the world.

The game is not bad. I feel like I paid for exactly what I got. Let me try and say that a little differently. Portal 1 felt like I was buying a Vespa but what I actually got was a Ferrari. I got something with history and a personality far beyond what I ever thought possible. On Portal 2, the marketing team made me feel like I was going to get that same feeling multiple times over. The ARG and the hilarious YouTube videos kept me awake at night excited and dreaming about what the game could contain. What I eventually got was a Ford Focus. There is nothing wrong with a Focus, it’s just not a Ferrari.

I played through the CO-OP completely and it was a great experience. I thought it to was two short. Why couldn’t Valve have gone out on a limb and done something crazy like make a algorithm to randomly generate Portal 2 levels. After all GLaDOS is at least part computer…That way I wouldn’t have withdrawal symptoms till some DLC comes out.

Now it’s time to put on my happy hat and say happy things. The comedy in the game is amazing. The difference in how the AI players treats you is refreshing. More times than not you have a NPC companion that will pick you up when you fall, give you a kiss, and tell you it will be alright. In Portal 2, if GLaDOS had legs she would kick you in the chest till you stopped feeling sorry for yourself and got back to work or you died from internal bleeding. I am undecided which she would prefer.

The new gameplay mechanics fit perfectly into the world. The light bridge is my favorite new addition. When it is shot so it’s vertical it reminds me of Tron.

In all the game felt very safe. It was just enough innovation so that Valve could add another money pool to their new studio. Go give a donation to the Valve money pool fund and enjoy about 18-20 hours of one of the best games of all time. As for me, time to go back to playing Minecraft.