Rethinking With Portals

If testing is Portal 2's business, then business is very, very good. Almost four years after the original's release, and thousands of overdone "The cake is a lie" jokes later, a full-fledged sequel has been released and it does not disappoint. Developer Valve has taken everything that made the first game such a success and expanded it ten-fold creating an experience that is both familiar and new at the same time. 

One of the biggest things that has been expanded on is the story, which actually has some substance to it. You still play as Chell, the protagonist from the first game, however this time around you have a companion with you. The British robot, Wheatly, accompanies you through the now-overgrown Aperture labs which have become broken-down in the years since the first game. The narrative that ensues is very well done. It is paced very well and is interesting enough to make you want to continue. The classic Portal humor is also very apparent in the sequel, where almost every bit of dialogue is hilarious. Kudos to the writers for being able to put together such a consistently funny script. It helps that there are voice actors such as Stephen Merchant and J. K. Simmons who both provide excellent performances in their roles as Wheatley and Aperture's former CEO Cave Johnson, respectively.

    A few new features have been added to spice up the various puzzles. The two biggest additions are gels and lasers. There are three different types of gels - blue, orange, and white - and each one adds a new element to the puzzle solving. The blue gel acts like a trampoline, making you jump very high. The orange gel is a booster causing you to run at roadrunner-like speeds in order to jump over gaps or get from place to place faster. Finally, the white gel allows you to place a portal wherever it has touched a surface. I found that the puzzles that included these elements were the most fun ones in the game. The other feature, lasers, have come to replace those pesky balls of energy that had a bad habit of killing you if you weren’t paying attention. Along with them there is also a new type of block, one with mirrors on all sides used to redirect the lasers. These are used to get the laser into a pedestal of sorts that opens the exit door or moves a platform. While the concept is simple, when combined with everything else this element can cause the most problems. These, along with a few other surprises, add a fun twist on the portaling that occurs.

    However, single-player is only half the game this time around. There is also a co-op mode where you and a friend take control of two testing robots and work together to solve puzzles. There is very little story in this section, but the puzzles more than make up for this. Since there are now two minds working together, some of the puzzles become deviously difficult. There was one puzzle that my friend and I spent almost an hour and a half on, and for good reason. Many of the puzzles force you to think way outside the box and will strain that large muscle in your head. The satisfaction felt after completing one of these puzzles, though, is immense and many high-fives were had after a particularly hard one. Aside from that, it is also a lot of fun to sabotage your teammate whenever the opportunity arises. Just remember that the person you dropped into the death-water is sitting right next to you and may retaliate.

    Alas, even great things have their flaws, and Portal 2 is no exception. The biggest problem that I found with the game as a whole, and it is a pretty big one, is that the single player is just too easy. Now I’m not trying to brag about my intellect, but I really only found two or three puzzles that I had to spend more than ten minutes on. It seems as though the developers decided to sacrifice challenge for narrative, which should never happen. There are some fun puzzles, but there are stretches of the game that just feel bland because of the lack of difficulty. Rather than building the story around the gameplay, Valve did just the opposite. There are some cool moments in the story, especially the ending, but overall it feels just a bit lackluster. On the flip side, the co-op is perfect in this sense. There is still a story, but it focuses more on the quality of the puzzles which creates an overall better experience. Most of the puzzles are challenging, without being frustratingly so. Another problem with the game is that there is almost no replayability. The beauty of the first game is that, despite knowing all the solutions, it was still fun to play through multiple times if you wanted to kill an hour or two. With the extended campaign of this one it is rather difficult to capture that same type of enjoyment, and even co-op suffers in this field. If you play with someone who has never played before after you complete all the levels, it frustrates both parties since you don’t want to wait around for the other person to find the solution, and the other person wants to be able to work it out themselves. The co-op is a type of experience that, while nearly perfectly executed, was never really meant to be revisited after completion.

    Despite all this, Portal 2 is definitely a game worth playing. Because of the near-nonexistent replayability factor I would recommend renting it, if possible, or waiting to find it for cheaper than full retail. Overall you will get about eight or nine hours out of the campaign, and another seven from the co-op. This is by no means a bad game, it just could have been quite a bit better. Hopefully for the potential third installment Valve will deliver something that excels on all fronts.

8.5/10

Beginning of the End

     Spring, a time for flowers blooming, bees buzzing, birds chirping, and...heads popping? That’s right, this year Spring comes with the Gears of War 3 Beta, a highly anticipated event for anyone who has played the previous two installments. Starting on April 15th and running until May 15th, thousands of people across the world will be participating in order to vastly improve the Gears 3 multiplayer when the full game is released on September 20th. There are four maps and three gametypes available, each offering a different experience. 

    The new maps - Thrashball, Checkout, Trenches, and Old Town - stick to the traditional Gears style of having plenty of cover to dodge and weave around. However, each one also offers its share of narrow, open passages where plenty of close-quarter combat takes place. The three gametypes, while based off of the old styles, have been redone to offer a new style of play. There is the traditional Team Deathmatch, but this time with a twist. Each team has a pool of lives that each member shares. When it runs out each team member has one more life before they are out for the rest of the round. King of the Hill also makes a debut, where each team strives to take control of a ring that moves every minute or so. There are unlimited respawns and points are awarded for capturing and “breaking” the ring. Finally, there is Capture the Leader, a combination of Guardian and Submission from the previous game. Each team has a leader which the other team must down and then hold for 30 seconds. However, whenever the leader is dropped the time resets, adding a bit of challenge. 

    As far as the actual gameplay goes, anybody who has played a Gears of War game will be right at home. Epic Games has kept all the elements that make the game what it is, but this time around it feels a lot more fast-paced. Because of the unlimited respawns, the action is almost constant and there is barely time to take a breath. This is definitely a far cry from the original game where each person had only one life per round. One thing that could use an upgrade, though, is the spawning system. Countless times I have spawned either right next to an enemy, or an entire team spawned right behind me as I was leaving. As you might imagine this can lead to quite a bit of frustration, especially during a close match.

The new weapons also add a refreshing spin on the game. The two main additions are the Retro Lancer and the Sawed-off Shotgun, which can both be used as starting weapons. The Retro Lancer, while super inaccurate, is more powerful than its modern counterpart and works best at medium- to close-range. The Sawed-off is a powerhouse in that it is an instant kill if shot extremely close-up. This is balanced by the fact that there is a one-shot clip and the longest reload time of any of the guns. Also, unless you are right in the other player’s face, the gun is practically useless. Other additions include the Digger Launcher, a rocket launcher that burrows underground, the One Shot, a large, bulky sniper rifle that is a one-hit kill, and the Incendiary Grenade, which creates a patch of fire wherever it hits. At this point there is still a bit of tweaking to be done in terms of weapon strength, but it seems as though it is balanced by-and-large. 

Yet another new feature that has been introduced is unlockables. Almost everything, from characters, to weapon skins, to special executions, are unlocked in various ways. So far they seem pretty generic, such as “Play x games of y gametype” or “Get x kills with y weapon” but it is a little something extra to keep players interested for even longer. There are also medals that players can earn by achieving certain things in-game. Things like healing teammates 50 times or getting a particular amount of headshots will unlock the medal and a title to be displayed next to your name. Each medal has four levels to it, with the requirement for each level increasing exponentially. In the Beta the unlockables are a bit on the skimpy side, but that will no doubt improve with the final release. At this point it all works quite well and it will be interesting to see what Epic does with it.

So far, the best thing I can say about the Gears Beta is that it is very promising. Epic made a very good decision in delaying the game to do this, especially with the problems the Gears 2 multiplayer had at launch. Not only does it allow for the gameplay to be tweaked and balanced, but it also creates even more hype for the game when it is finally released. If the Beta is any sort of reflection on what the final game will be like, then it will most definitely do the series justice.