I probably won't be able to get to the co-op campaign for at least a few days. I wanted to play the single player immediately because I knew I wouldn't be able to resist reading spoilers, and I was excited about the storyline.
First impressions:
- The storyline was really good. It wasn't as filled out as a book, but they gave you the broad sweeps of the history and progression of Aperture Science which, taken together, form an interesting history. I now know the backstory behind Glados.
- The twist where you swap one AI for another that immediately becomes aggressive was unexpected and provided the main motive force for the rest of the story. When I was contemplating 10 hours of the same AI that I dealt with in Portal 1 I was scratching my head wondering how they would make it compelling. Well, they did a good job of changing the actors in the story so it was interesting.
- Similar to the storyline, the significant change in pace of the puzzle elements - changing the environment (Love the attention to detail from the 50's and onward!) gave a fresh visual perspective that made sure it wasn't just the same boring puzzle room with a different solution each time.
- The new game elements (accelerant gel, jump jel, and moon dust) added a new aspect to the puzzles that was very fun.
- I never saw a the sucking tubes that were displayed in one of the teasers. Perhaps they are part of co-op? Tubes played a part of the game, simply not as vacuums.
- The humor throughout the game was chuckle worthy, but got few strong laughs. It was varied enough (Glados, Cave, Wheatley) in style and substance that it didn't bore.
- I rarely play FPS style video games, though I do play a lot of puzzle games on mobile devices. From my perspective it was not a difficult game. There were a few times where I made mistakes and died, there was one chamber where I had to get an irritating timing based puzzle solved that wasn't trivial, and of course like Portal 1 the last chamber was more difficult than the preceding chambers due primarily to the time limit. I don't think there was anything as bad as test chamber 18 in Portal 1(where you had to time pressing the button with the energy ball release while managing to shoot another set of portals before the energy ball hit the wall and/or the door closed) so the frustration level was surprisingly low.
I made the mistake of saving the game with 31 seconds left to get and attach the last core, and rather than going back and re-doing the earlier cores to give me time with this one I just played those 31 seconds over and over again until I finally attached it in time. Of all the rooms, the final chamber was the most frustrating because it wasn't clear what was expected at first, and I had to try several things before I finally figured out the 3 aspects of this puzzle (how to get Glados to deliver a core, where the cores were going to appear, and where and how I needed to place them). There was a generous enough time limit though, and it extended a few times, so it wasn't as bad as it could have been
I suspect that this was watered down a bit since it was play tested and intended for a more diverse audience. I feel as though they took more risks with Portal 1 than Portal 2.
The ending wasn't as satisfying as Portal 1. After Portal 1 the ending just gave me chills, but this one didn't. Not sure if it's because I was expecting it (and they did a reasonable job changing it up a bit so it was different than the first one) or if the song didn't leave the impact I was expecting, or if the gameplay simply didn't put me in the right space mentally to enjoy it, or if it was simply that I'd been playing for nearly 10 hours straight, it was 5am, and what did I really expect? I'll probably play that last level a few more times to see if there's something else there I missed due to the late hour, but I strongly suspect that people are going to be complaining that it didn't live up to Portal 1 in this regard.
Overall the game was fun. I enjoyed playing it, and I will be replaying it a few times (paying more attention to the story, exploring the nooks and crevices that I skipped the first time through, doing the commentary, and gathering a few more achievements).
I don't know when I'll get to the co-op mode. I'm curious if there will be as much there in terms of story line and verbal assault as there is in the single player mode. It appears that there's no split screen mode for the PC, which is expected, but disappointing, so I'll be bumming around trying to find partners probably next week.
