Portal 2

Portal 2 (2011) is an action adventure where you traverse through increasingly complex (and dangerous) test chamber obstacle courses. By creating two connected portals (if you walk into one, you walk out the other) you must move yourself around the rooms to escape. It expands on the mechanics of the first game with new ways to change your surroundings, cooperative multiplayer stages, and levels made by other players.

---

Set long after the first game, you once again find yourself in a science lab, now run-down and abandoned, and must move through and escape room after room full of traps. As you do, you discover GLaDOS, presumed destroyed, is working to rebuild the facility. By your side is Wheatley (voiced by Stephen Merchant), a robot who at first seems friendly, but soon emerges as the real threat who must be stopped.

Play is mainly similar to the first game; you have a gun that can create a pair of magic portals on any surface: one orange, the other blue. If you walk through the blue portal, you emerge from the orange one and vice versa. Through a series of increasingly ingenious (and malicious) test chambers, you must use your gun to escape.

As you progress, the stages become ever more challenging to solve, requiring lateral thinking and experimentation to find a way out. Alongside the portals, several new mechanics are introduced, such as tractor beams, lasers, and gels that impart special properties to any surface they touch.

The result is a sequel that continues the mysterious sci-fi narrative of the first game while adding to its core mechanics and deepening the narrative and world. Discovering a new way to progress and experimenting with each new tool is hugely rewarding and makes for a compelling experience.

---

Our examiner, Ben Kendall, first checked Portal 2 7 months ago. It was re-examined by Jo Robertson and updated 7 months ago.