Calling Portal 2 anything but good is objectively wrong. From its long-standing, overwhelmingly positive ratings to the flawless execution of the concept that is Portal, there is absolutely nothing that can be said against the game on its own merits. It’s not boring. You’re boring. The game is simply fantastic on every level. It is short, about 6 hours, and packed to the brim with content. It’s a breath of fresh mint in the nuclear winter that is the modern gaming scene. Just try it.


Portal 2 is what I am tempted to call a well-endowed game. It packs a punch simply due to its namesake, and it swings more d*** in the gaming scene than Frank Sinatra in Vegas. Everyone has heard of Portal 2 in the same way everyone knows how to ride a bike. It has become collective knowledge, absorbed by the masses, that Portal 2 was big, popular and good. However, like Skyrim, I often forget that these special placeholders in our collective memory of gaming is more than an inherited prestige. I forget that this prestige has actually been earned. Portal 2 is a breath of fresh air in a scene that has misaligned itself to my tastes. It was fresh then and if anything, it feels even fresher now. AAA games have become more like bloatware than an experience, leaning on franchising more than innovation, and so delving into a polished product feels like a scam. Was I not supposed to wait for another update? Did I pay for this game to function? Why hasn’t the publishers oversold the vision of the developers? Having instinctively curbed my own expectations before even starting Portal 2, it felt like a shock not to have been required to do that. I was in fact positively surprised by the very first game I bought on steam in 2012 – a game I know I love. In other words, Portal 2 exceeded my expectations despite already having played it.

Portal 2 makes you feel like an anachronism. In contrast to its predecessor’s sterile palate, Portal 2 emanates an old, decrepit, and random chaos. There is an overbearing sense of pointlessness looming over the shoulders of the player. From the experiments of GlaDoS, the inferiority complex of Wheatley, to Cave Johnson’s pre-recorded tapes booming to rusting equipment in the underbelly of Aperture Science’s basement, there is a crushing sense of abandonment. You do not belong in this time. You wake up from a slumber counted in errors instead of days, and there is nothing in the dilapidated halls of Aperture Science that well and truly wants you to be there. Almost every puzzle feels like an accident because they were never meant to be puzzles at all. The environment is hostile not out of malice, but out of human incompatibility.

Through no fault of your own you awaken the corpse of GLaDoS, the artificial intelligence hell-bent on making life as miserable and scientifically valuable as possible. The reanimated skeleton of Portal’s villain returns 80% corrupted, but still mostly the same. She sneers at you, berates you, calls you fat, ugly, adopted and dumb. She does what she always does: tests you. Everything new to you that is discovered in Portal 2 is inherently old and abandoned: Cave Johnson, the dead CEO of Aperture Science, clings on through whirring tapes, GlaDoS is alive but without a true purpose, and Wheatley is battling demons no-one can validate. Everything within the facility is moving towards a result that is irrelevant because the people to whom it mattered are no longer alive. Aperture Science is a maimed titan clinging on, and your role is to escape it. You are abandoned and forgotten like the machinery you interact with, and there is beyond a shroud of doubt the creeping feeling that you are alone in this. The dread that comes from being within what is ultimately a dying entity is haunting. Furthermore, the sarcastic, dry humour of Portal distances you even further from your surroundings. Not only are you not wanted here, but you are hated for it. Stylistically and narratively Portal 2 is hands down one of the best games ever made. It knows exactly what it is and excels at it.