I would just like to hang a quick disclaimer here and mention that Portal is my #1 game of all time and it pains me to say a lot of these things.
I'm really skeptical about the new portal. I mean, how would the early chirstains have reacted when Jesus 2 showed up around 36 A.D.? Valve have done the impossible and created a game for which
there can be no improvements. If you thought the game was too short you are provably wrong. There is not a single thing they could have done with the physics engine and portal mechanic that was not already in the game.
You know what? For the rest of this
post rant we are going to pretend Portal is like Tetris. Two conceptually perfect games executed without flaw.
Now, immagine you are the makers of Tetris and you've decided to make Tetris 2. What do you do? Ok we'll upgrade the graphics a bit, add some new colors. BUT WAIT! This is still just Tetris but with new looks, so we'll add some new block patterns. BUT WAIT! You used every block pattern possible in the orriginal, so we'll add a plot and story. BUT WAIT! You slipped and hit your head in the shower and forgot that puzzle games are about the puzzles and nobody gives a damn about a bunch of blocks falling down in a line.
Now apply all this logic to Portal. Ok instead of an android we have robots, still thats entirely cosmetic. The portal puzzles are back, but there isn't anything else we could possibly do with the game mechanics so we'll just have the same ordinary puzzles but in a different order. Of course since the game is going to be significantly longer its going to be the same puzzles in 4-6 different orders. Then there is the plot we're adding, except its weird and out of place because this is a
PUZZLE game and nobody is here for a good story. You know what the plot of Portal was? Here is A, here is B, here is a portal gun, go nuts.
Of course all of this is completely arbitrary because the reason Portal is my #1 game of all time and Tetris isn't even ranked is because of its humor. Rather than go into a big detailed argument about why Portal 2 can not possibly live up to this legacy, let me just show you this:
Did you laugh? Did you giggle? Did you even smile a little bit? Yeah, thats what I thought. One of the downsides of humor is that once you've heard a joke it just isn't as funny the second time. Portal is the guy at the party telling every person in the room the same joke. Everyone thinks its funny so they tell it to other people at the party, except it isn't funny this time because Portal already came around and told it to everybody. Even when they go home and tell it to their other friends it won't be as good as the first time around because Portal delivered it so much better.
If I had to put all this in a nutshell, I would say that Portal 2 is going to be shit. Not because it will be a bad game, but because the bar is set so incredibly high that the only way it could not be shit would be for Valve to program the second coming of Christ.
