This week I played Portal 2, a classic of the puzzle genre and arguably gaming as a whole that up to now I never got around to. Portal 2 is developed and published by Valve, who also happened to have created the platform I played it on, namely Steam. The game’s target audience is pretty broad, but is best suited to those who enjoy puzzle games and/or fans of the series.
Portal 2 is set in a seemingly abandoned, sci-fi facility that has created many strange and unique futuristic technologies. The main gameplay is puzzle-based levels that involve using, as the name of the game suggests, portals. This is contextualized in the narrative as the tests the robot(s) that oversee the facility are performing, with you as their test subjects. As you proceed through these tests, you also go through an enacted narrative in which the player character works to destroy or otherwise inhibit the AI that runs the facility(first GLaDOS then Wheatley) and eventually escape. These AIs, despite not being human, add a lot of character and humor to the game that helps break up and complement the puzzle solving gameplay. The game’s environmental storytelling is conveyed through bits of the facility you see in between levels. Most notably, the sections in the antiquated parts of the complex also reveal a minor, but still present, embedded narrative: that of Aperture Laboratories(aka Aperture Science Innovations) and its founder, Cave Johnson.
An older part of the facility featuring a picture of Aperture’s founder, Cave Johnson
As fun as the narrative is at times, it’s not as much of a focus for the game when compared to the puzzles. That isn’t a complaint however, as the puzzles in this game are excellent. The game very effectively introduces the player to its mechanics, old and new, in simpler levels that serve as subtle and unobtrusive tutorials. The game then later combines these mechanics in more complex puzzles, effectively building off of knowledge the player has gained throughout their play experience. This creates a very satisfying game loop of learning a new mechanic, understanding its multiple uses and applications, then combining it with other mechanics to solve puzzles. The only times I found myself getting stuck are times when I was overthinking the problem, or had missed some obvious element, neither of which can entirely be attributed to faults of the design as much as my own lack of awareness(or perhaps lack of sleep).
A level that introduces you to repulsion gel, by showing how you bounce when you fall onto it
In many ways, puzzles define the experience of Portal 2. It’s interesting mechanics and the clever ways you learn to use them make it stand out as exemplary of good puzzle design, and it does all this while also managing to have an intriguing and fun narrative that makes you want to keep progressing through puzzle after puzzle. I now understand why this game is considered such a classic, and why it should be played and studied by anyone seeking to make a puzzle game.
Ethics Question:
Portal 2 does a very good job of communicating information to the player in a way that’s both comprehensible and accessible. The game slowly and deliberately introduces the player to its numerous mechanics, none of which require much if any out-of-game context. The game goes as far to provide little icon graphics to better inform the player of what certain game elements do. All of these elements serve to make Portal 2 a very accessible and ethical game.
Some of the chamber icons used to assist players
