Portal is a new single player game from Valve. Set in the mysterious Aperture Science Laboratories, Portal PC has been called one of the most innovative new games on the horizon and will offer gamers hours of unique gameplay. The game is designed to change the way players approach, manipulate, and surmise the possibilities in a given environment; similar to how Half-Life® 2's Gravity Gun innovated new ways to leverage an object in any given situation.
Players must solve physical puzzles and challenges by opening portals to maneuvering objects, and themselves, through space.
Portal 2 is a masterpiece, a work of art that you will love for its ingenious story pop-culture, references to logical puzzles and co-op multiplayer. Definitely a candidate for game of the year. [Issue#204]
Portal is perfect. Portal 2 is not. It's something better than that. It's human: hot-blooded, silly, poignant, irreverent, base, ingenious and loving. It's never less than a pure video game, but it's often more, and it will no doubt stand as one of the best entertainments in any medium at the end of this year. It's a masterpiece.
Sporting some of the best writing and voice work in years (as well as some deviously designed puzzles), Portal 2's single-player campaign is superior to its predecessor in every way. It's the co-op mode, however, that makes this 2011's first must-play game -- even for those gamers that don't like first-person or puzzle games.
The game's quality stays consistently outstanding throughout; there isn't a minute of filler content to be found anywhere in single-player or co-op.
Portal 2 is the best game I had the opportunity to play this year. It interests the player from the beginning and stays like that to its final minutes. It entertains with great, humorous dialogue, intrigues with compelling puzzles - as a result you keep staring at the screen and forget about the world around you. Valve's newest game is also a well-written product with great attention to detail.
A hilarious slice of gaming glory. [July 2011, p.92]
Emancipation complete for Portal, which gets rid of his "bonus game" condition with a second episode that is certainly no revolution but still manages to justify its new status.