Potato clocks and Neurotoxin: A review of Portal Two

Despite numerous vicious deathreats ranging from Neurotoxins to Acidic sludge, there’s enough humour in Portal 2 that you often forget that it’s not a jolly walk through a series of puzzles with a magical gun and a pair of fancy boots. The ballance between the funnies and the creepies is just right to bring on fridge horror of epic proportions.

Now personally, I don’t enjoy first person style games, but Portal with its minimal screen clutter and easy to use controls I manages to avoid the usual feelings of claustrophobia and the sensation of being blinkered and disorientated that I usually feel when playing other games with similar setups (Read ‘Left for Dead’ and to some extent, Skyrim) Thanks to careful colour choices the scenes mannage to remain clear and uncluttered despite lighting that's often dim, and a panoramic view mean that rather than feel like you’re looking through a tube, you manage to forget the screen and get on with the game.

At the sound of the buzzer, appreciate Art.

I kicked this game off by jumping up and down in a fake motel room when asked to say ‘apple’ and now here I am being led around by a talkative little robot called Wheatley who babbles along in an English accent whilst I’m on the run from a soft-spoken genius AI in control of a sprawling research facility (GLaDOS is, in my opinion, one of the creepiest villains ever created and certainly the most chilling I’ve ever faced. Cool wit and calm inflection coupled with intelligence of a genius’ genius, are so much more terrifying than a screaming demon or undead hoards)

We both said things you're going to regret

With Weatley's fragmented help the strange murals recapped the first game for me and GLaDOS has been dropping hints since I woke her up and now as I run, my robot friend is dropping even more. It’s nice to have the lore and world of the first game built upon since the first game had little time to expand into back-story with its three hours of game play – in fact, time and art capabilities were so limited it meant that Portal was built into the Half-Life universe so they didn’t have to create a whole new world for it to sit in. So it’s pretty understandable why they concentrated more on the game play than the back story. Now Portal two is much larger than its predecessor, running to twelve hours including co-op mode and there’s a lot more room to expand. But it’s the way they give the story to you which impressed me by the game; it’s never stuffed down your throat by obnoxious cut scenes and the little moments of realisation really make looking for them worthwhile;

When I saw the potatoes the first time, I honestly laughed a little. Here were these cute little science projects, all lined up for presenting, and every one of them was that very primary school style of thing with baking soda volcanoes and potato alarm clocks. It made me think of eight-year-old me giving my best friend a lemon clock kit for his birthday. He wanted to be a scientist, it seemed a logical progression. Now here I was looking at some science projects and smiling at the exuberance of their young creators – 

How long has that thing been running off mouldy potato? What even is it?

“Electricity from a potato?!?!  Yes!  WOW! Totally!” 

In game the alarm clocks and bulbs and – is that a fancy flux capacitor? – powered by these potatoes still flickered as I looked and it was with some odd nostalgia that I thought about those fictional little girls who worked on their projects with their parents, ready for bring your daughter to work day.

Well that ended well

Then there it is, behind the massive, mutant potato plant that’s colonising the ceiling on the end – the name on the project says ‘Chell’ in childish handwriting and the meaning of what I was looking at really hit me; here was a room full of abandoned projects, in a building devoid of life. I’d learnt early on – in the first game in fact – about what happened to the facility, but that was just an event, here were little stories, of fathers and daughters and a lot of death. Working it out for yourself what happened to these children - GLaDOS' attack on the facility, the test subjects in storage at the start of the game. wWhat happened to Chell and by extension what happened to you is much, much more gutting than just being told.

And that’s what portal is about for me; that creepy, niggling feeling of walking amongst the ruins and hearing the ghosts - be they electronic or otherwise - the excitement of going after those ghosts for answers. And that punch in the gut feeling when the penny drops.

Onwards for SCIENCE