Portal 2, leading swiftly on from the well known and loved game Portal is set in the Aperture Science laboratories, a facility created within a giant ex mineral mine on the earth’s crust. The main goal of Aperture Science was simply.... well science and testing. Founder and CEO of Aperture Science was Cave Johnson, a visionary who wanted to further science and with a seemingly limitless budget and even greater imagination anything was possible. Among the many ideas and experiments of Aperture, including but not limited to military grade turrets, “repulsion gel” and “propulsion gel” their greatest and most versatile invention was by far the “Aperture Science Portal Quantum Tunnelling Device” or more commonly known as the Portal gun. The portal gun is a hand-held device which has the ability to manufacture two linked portals. No matter the distance between them, any object which passes through one portal will emerge from the other and vice versa instantaneously. The portals can be placed on almost any surface which is made out of a certain material, flat, white in colour and large enough to accommodate them. The game is primarily physics / puzzle based but has a few action sequences thrown in for good measure. The saying “thinking with portals” is all to true for this game. You have no “special” powers, no flight, and no shield not even the ability to roll but you can fall regardless of distance and survive thanks to the Aperture Science “Long Fall Boot” which like most Aperture Science technology does exactly what is says on the box. It is a boot that prevents damage to test subjects if they fall a long way.... providing that the subject in question lands on their feet. Anyway! Back to the game. Imagine a puzzle in a game, normally simple enough, add to that same puzzle lasers, turrets, bridges made of sunlight, gel that makes you bounce into the air, gel that makes you run 3x as fast and a whole lot more that all have to be manipulated within each cube shaped “Test Chamber” and you have portal 2. There is A LOT of stories. Back stories, side stories, and even stories about falling in love with inanimate cubes. The list goes on but if you want to peruse all the fine details and superstition that surrounds this game I will point you to our good old friend Google. Over all I greatly enjoyed portal 2, I felt it lead on from the original game very well and the whole experience kept my mind sharpened for whatever test lay ahead of me. Some of the parts were a breeze and others had me stumped for a while but in the end a great game and with co-op having their own set of testing chambers and with community made test chambers there is an almost limitless amount of fun puzzling hours to be had once the game has been completed.

With enjoyable and challenging game play I give Portal 2: 9/10