Portal 2: "For Science. You Monster."

In case anyone has ever wondered before, and I hadn't explained enough, the reason I like video games is because I like stories. Novels, movies, comics, TV shows, and video games are just different mediums of story-telling, and each medium has something different to offer to the timeless task. When I explain that Portal, and especially the sequel Portal 2, are amazing games, remember that I say this to anyone who has ever enjoyed a good story before, and not just people who are into games.

'Warning, this test
contains weighted cubes'

Portal (the original) was released as a filler game in a compilation set by Valve Corporation, a video game design company. It was primarily designed to test the portal mechanics, which gives the player the ability to create warp-holes to solve puzzles. What made the game an unexpected success, however, was the creative use of dark humor and the subtle plot thread that tied the basic puzzle-solving game together. An average puzzle-solver might interest people for a while, but the tense atmosphere that Portal takes on makes the whole game important because the player cares about what's going on.

In Portal, you play as Chell, the only human character in the entire game. You wake up in a white, sterile room, with no idea of what's going on, and are told by a female, robotic voice known as GLaDOS that you will be completing a few puzzles for a scientific test. GLaDOS's voice-over throughout the puzzles provides a lot of the humor, and establishes the plot of the game; she reveals more about what's going on as more puzzles are solved, and the player slowly learns that GLaDOS doesn't seem to care about your safety. She lies to you, promises you things and doesn't deliver, and is a bit passive-aggressively unkind. She's also the only character in the game besides yourself.

One of the few moments in the game when you can
actually see yourself. Through your own portal.

Towards the end of the game, GLaDOS attempts to kill you outright. When you manage to escape her, you flee through the bowels of the empty testing facility and eventually confront the robotic core body of GLaDOS herself, who admits to having killed off all the scientists long ago. The last puzzle of the game, therefore, is a 'boss battle' where you have to 'kill' GLaDOS before she can kill you first. The story ends when the AI GLaDOS is 'dead' and Chell is thrown free of the testing facility, hopefully to find out who she really is. (If you want to hear exactly how GLaDOS really sounds, you can listen to her dialogue from the last part. She gets a touch creepy halfway through).

GLaDOS' main body, as seen at the end of Portal.

After the success of Portal, the designers decided to make a plot-heavy game using the same mechanics they'd previously developed. Portal 2 starts some undisclosed time after the original, and involves approximately one and a half more characters than the original game - meaning it's still isolated and tense, though there are more non-human AI robots to 'interact' with. The player, as Chell, wakes up in the testing facility, decaying and overrun with plants, but this time is joined by a spherical AI bot named Wheatley, whose stupidity is more often humorous than not. Wheatley leads Chell, probably the last human test subject alive, through the facility in hopes of finding an exit, working in the puzzle-solving mechanics of the first game (the other 'half of a' character is a set of recordings from the facility's founder that play during the second part of the game).

Wheatley, plugged into a control panel

It doesn't take Wheatley very long to stumble into the room where GLaDOS lies dormant, and accidentally reboot her system. Watching GLaDOS rise up again and start speaking, coldly reminding you that "you murdered me," probably isn't as terrifying if you hadn't played the original game. It is still terrifying, however. GLaDOS is cold, mean, and would rather put you through tests and psychological torture for the rest of your natural life than simply kill you ("I think we can put our differences behind us," she says in her slightly creepy, amoral voice, "For science. You monster"). The main part of the game starts as she gets rid of Wheatley and drops you back into the old testing rooms, now decrepit and partially ruined. Every section you complete develops the plot more, however, as you continue to learn more and more about what's going on and try to escape.

An artistic rendition of the Turrets

My favorite 'characters' in Portal and Portal 2 are the Turrets. Turrets are small, white, pea-shaped bots that are filled to the brim with bullets and programed specifically by GLaDOS to kill you. They provide a bit of dark humor to the game however; they speak in high-pitched voices and ask for your permission before starting to shoot at you. When you knock them over (thus defeating them), they'll say things like "Shutting down" and "No hard feelings" (audio examples). And they're so cute, both visually and in the way they talk! I always felt bad for hurting them, especially since the end of Portal 2 seemed to hint that they didn't really want to hurt you. In the original game, they just tried to kill you, but in Portal 2 they play an essential role in the plot, and one of them even foreshadows the ending.

'Warning, this test
contains Turrets'

I don't want to ruin the story for the majority of you who I hope will end up experiencing it for yourselves, so I'll finish off this San-Spoilers part of the review by saying that Portal 2 is an amazing story. The heavy atmosphere of the game is perfectly offset with humorous dialogue (mostly from Wheatley), and the music wonderfully compliments everything. The ending was breathtaking, unexpected, and perfect. I watched through it twice - the first time not believing what I was seeing, and the second time tearing up the whole way.

For people who prefer simple, straightforward games with no plot, both Portal or Portal 2 can cover that if you just ignore what's going on. For people who like fiction and see games as just a means to that end, pay attention as you play the Portal games and you will be well rewarded. I want to congratulate Valve Corp. for coming up with an original, darkly humorous and highly meaningful story, and one that has the most impact when told in a second-person perspective. I know they're quite famous for other work they've done, which I'm sure is just as amazing as Portal.