Besides Team Fortress 2 and Half Life, there is another Major IP for Valve, Portal.
I'm not a fan of Half-life, I never played Team Fortress 2 and this is the only Valve game I ever played, the first one was a masterpiece, but can the second be the same?
Story and Characters:
In single player, you take control of Chell, the protagonist of the first Portal game alongside her new companion, Wheatley(voiced by Stephen Merchant) as they must pass each segment on the apperture science program by GlaDOS.
However, as more the game progresses, Wheatley reveals his evil side and takes over the Apperture Science.
As GlaDOS and Chell must cooperate to end his reign.
The story was written by Chet Faliszek and Erik Wolpaw, writers of Old Man Murray site.
To be fair, I wasn't much of a fan to the story, it didn't add much elements to it and you don't interact very much with the characters.
Wheatley, he was a nice addition, he added humor to the game and Cave Johnson(J.K Simmons) showed more about the Aperture Science's past.
Chell doesn't speak nor show her personality, so there is nothing to say about her and GlaDOS, kinda reminds me of HAL from 2001: A Space Odyssey.
She is dark, cruel and cold, but when she cooperates with Chell, she shows that she also has a good side deep down her mechanical heart.
Gameplay:
The gameplay is one of portal's charms, it's a first person puzzle game, in which you must reach the exit of the stage by avoiding Turrets, doing portals and other obstacles.
You have the portal gun, a gun which can make two portal: Blue and Orange, as you must do portals to reach the exit, but you can only shoot at white landscapes, as the won't work in grayish landscapes.
A new addition on portal 2's gameplay are the gels, there are three types of gels: The Repulsion gel(blue) which can make you jump far heights; the Propulsion gel(orange), that makes you run really fast and the Conversion gel(white) which transforms the grayish landscapes into white landscapes.
There is also water, to clean up the gels, if you messed something up.
Another addition is Multyplayer mode, in which you can play local and online, the players controls the robots: Atlas and P-Body, who must complete certain tasks at Apperture science, It was very fun playing in two player, it's an interesting mode, and it's very enjoyable, I played with my family and they loved it, but, my friends on the other hand are "too hardcore" and didn't enjoyed playing it.
And for those who got the PC version, you get an interactive trailer of Super 8(the J.J. Abrams and Steven Spielberg movie).
There isn't much to say about it, since you just explore a devasted landscape, and nothing more.
Audio and Graphics:
The graphics in portal are actually really, really good, kinda like titles such as Castlevania: Lords of Shadows and Enslaved, they look really well on all systems, especially the PS3.
The water effects weren't so realistic and looked more like saliva, but the rest looks great, especially in the ending.
Audio is very good, with the voices of J.K. Simmons and Stephen Merchant doing an excellent job in their roles.
Wheatley was funny and his characteristics fitted the character and Cave Johnson kind of reminds me of Andrew Ryan in Bioshock.
And voice actor Ellen McLain did a great job at voicing the robot characters such as the turrets and GlaDOS, the beast herself.
It may sound annoying at first if you're new to Portal, but then you will like her as the game progresses.
Overall:
Story and Characters:
Story wasn't very important, but the Dialogue was nice and the characters were cool and interesting.
Gameplay:
The gameplay from Portal 2 is a much better experience than the first game itself, it adds lots of new things and chalanges
Audio and Graphics:
The graphics were very beautiful and looked perfectly on all the consoles, the dialogue and audio were very well done with Top notch voice acting.
Rating: 9.5/10
