First Impressions: Portal 2

Portal was a short indie game which Valve picked up and helped to polish. It was released as an extra bonus along with the game Half Life 2, Values biggest property (other than Steam). That put the game in front of a lot of eyes and with its clever puzzles and humorous dialogue it quickly became a huge hit. Quotes from the game are now deeply ingrained in to gaming culture. That was 2007 so it's safe to say that anticipation for the sequel has been high, but of course that means it has a lot to live up to.

I've played for about an hour and a half now and so far I'd day it does live up to its predecessor. That amount of play time in the original and I'd have pretty much completed it, but this time as a stand alone product it's much longer and I feel like I've barely started. The puzzles are still clever and challenging enough. With even more features this time there's a not more to think about and I'm still in the fairly basic early stages I believe. I've certainly not seen all of the features shown in the trailers yet. It does throw you in to the action quite quickly so I would say that, if you haven't, you should play the original first. I'm looking forward to playing some more. I can't help wonder about the end credits though. I just don't see how it will ever be possible to top the brilliant song Still Alive by Jonathan Coulton. I suspect they'll just reprise it, but I'm ready to be surprised and I'm not reading anything about it on the Internet until I'm done.