![]() ![]() And yet its canny script and ingenious level design mean you’re never bored. It boasts a tiny cast – there’s just you (the mute but magnificent Chell), a rogue AI, a maniacal AI, and the ghost of a yesteryear CEO – and ostensibly a single setting the Aperture Science laboratory. ![]() Even by today’s standards, it’s a devilishly delicious puzzler, a puzzler that oh-so-carefully layers learning in a way that never feels heavy or forced, and yet has you effortlessly “thinking with portals” within its opening hour. Portal 2 is special to me because I think it’s about as perfect a game I’ve ever played. ![]() Some games are special to us because of where there took us, or what they taught us, or maybe just because they pulled us out of our lives and mercifully let us live as someone else for a brief while. But I did know that this puzzler was getting near-perfect review scores across the board and starred, inexplicably, the fabulous Stephen Merchant, and that was enough to convince me to take a punt on it. I hadn’t even loved a companion cube yet. I went into it knowing absolutely nothing about its world or its people, its history or its premise. Having missed its predecessor, I didn’t know anything about the Portal(nor – gasp – Half-Life) universe when I picked up Portal 2, so I played the first game after its sequel. The green tendrils that snake through swhattered tiles and broken glass as nature fights to reclaim this terrible place. The little dens hidden where security cameras can’t pry. Sure, learning how to navigate its portal-based physics puzzles makes you feel both stupidly brilliant and brilliantly stupid about yourself in equal measure, but it’s the world scaffolded around GLaDOS’ wicked wonderland that delights me most. To this day, Aperture Science is one of my all-time favourite in-game playgrounds. I learned a lot from Portal 2, actually, not least that a sequel can indeed be better than the game that came before it. “Speedy thing goes in, speedy thing goes out” is pretty much the extent of my understanding of physics, and that comes directly from the script of FPS puzzle-’em-up Portal 2. Everything I now know about science – rightly or wrongly and yes, there’s an emphasis on the latter – comes from video games. It’s a shame, really, because as an adult, I’ve uncovered an innate interest in how the world works. I hated the teachers and the rooms it was taught in, rooms that were either stiflingly hot or freezing cold and always stank of old books and farts and hopelessness. Perhaps not unsurprisingly, then, I loathed science growing up. Survivors of my school can spot each other a mile off, not by their old school ties and stories, but by the fear in their eyes every time a fly buzzes by. Miyazaki’s got nothing on that nightmare-fuel public information poster. Elden Ring‘s parade of twisted denizens? Nah, mate. ![]() The macro-shot of a fly perched daintily on a fork on the side of a dinner plate is now indelibly tattooed on the undersides of my eyelids. I’m afraid to report that the accompanying image was even more horrifying.
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