Portal 2

I know, I know, 74 days before writing this I posted a blog entry cheerfully touting how the hype didn't live up to the promise of Portal 2 according to a number of internet reviews.  I suppose I should be more careful about who's opinion I trust before I comment or even play a game.  The "trusted sources" often have a different expectation that I do. 

Having now played the game I honestly can't see what they were complaining about.   Were they looking for an impossible series of challenges with ridiculous control sequences like something out of Virtua fighter?  If so then you've forgotten the games root's lie firmly in the Half Life universe.  If you don't know how that's relevant then you've likely spent too much of your life playing stripped down PC games on a console.
I've only recently started to play it and have a few hours into the single player game.  I actually have more time into the coop mode playing with friends than I do in the single player game.  The wonderful thing about Portal 2's coop mode is that it's a completely different game set in the same context.  So playing with friends doesn't give anything away about the single player game.

In cooperative mode there are innumerable opportunities to abuse your teammates if you so choose.  Trust and collaborative effort are the keys to success but watching your teammate fly across the room like Wyle E. Coyote in a Roadrunner cartoon tickles your inner 5 year old.

The Wise cracking GLADOS is there in cooperative mode as well so you can be sure that less than stellar performance will earn you a relevant wisecrack. 

It's almost a shame that the game had the level of promotion that it did.  I saw television commercials, banner ads, billboards and even heard radio ads for it in the months leading to its release.  That much hype is usually hiding an inferior product but that doesn't appear to be the case with Portal 2.

If you played the first game much of Portal 2's gameplay will be familiar. The puzzles are challenging but as a friend of mine put it the other day, the ambiguity is gone.  Nothings more irritating than failing a challenge because you couldn't judge minute distances in a virtual environment.  The chances of failing a challenge because your portal is 2 inches off exact center of a platform are virtually nil. 

It's about the ambiance of your environment and the puzzle to be solved not strange game engine quirks that ruin the experience.

So, I enjoy it and it's lived up to the hype so far.  

I stand corrected...