When One Portal Closes, Another One Opens

Portal 2 was released on Tuesday and being a big fan of the first Portal, this sequel was one of my rare pre-orders. Portal was a brilliant puzzle game where the simple mechanic of being able to link two points in space led to many excellent brain-scratching puzzles, especially in the optional Advanced Chambers. The pre-release hype for Portal 2 has been huge - probably the biggest for a puzzle game that I've ever seen. So, has the game lived up to thy hype?

So far I've only played for a couple of hours of Portal 2's single player story (and there's also a distinct co-op story) and it's brilliant so far. You play as the same character as in the original and the game starts you off waking up years later in the ruined Aperture Science laboratories.

Portal 2's starting room - before and after

Although much of the game (so far) has you running test chambers as in the original Portal, there's still so much that's different:

• Dynamic environments as you see test chambers literally being assembled ahead of you.
• A companion character that accompanies you for much of the time - a personality core that's mostly restricted to following you on the service rails, Wheately injects a lot of humour into the game. This also allows a story to develop that's more than just you versus GLaDOS.
• New puzzle elements - so far I've seen lasers which can be redirected with special cubes; bouncing catapult-type things that will fling you (or any object) in a specific direction; and "light bridges" that you can walk on.

Waking up GLaDOS (in the background), the facility's robot overseer

The game has a steeper learning curve for those with no Portal experience. For them, I'd recommend starting with Portal, just $9.99 on Steam at the moment. As a Portal veteran, I've found the puzzles so far to be a bit too easy. Once you've figured out how the new elements work and interact, the solution has been readily apparent. As I said, I've only played a few hours, so I'm hoping it gets harder, or at least that there are advanced levels to really challenge me.

Expect a full review once I've at least completed the single player and tried some of the co-operative mode.

Edit: Confirmed that there are no Advanced Chambers or Challenges - best we can hope for is that there is equivalent DLC.