Portal 2 - Review: First Impressions

You want my first impression? "Oh wow this is awesome!" There you go. So anyway, I finally got to play Portal 2 and I decided that wow, this is hilarious, I must write a post about how awesome this is and how you guys should get it. But then I played the game for another few hours...



Intro
So the game starts out with you waking up in a relaxation chamber for some mandatory exercises that have to be done seemingly every 50 days, you look up, down, admire some artwork and some soothing classical music, and go back to sleep. You next wake up something like 999 days later, and get greeted by a hilarious robot eye (like the ones you murdered at the end of the last game). Hilarious stuff starts happening and it's funny, I'm not going to spoil anything, but I will say that you're very good at jumping.

So the building is collapsing and everything is ruined, you who supposedly should have brain damage after sleeping for so long then gets dumped into test chambers and have to solve puzzles yet again. I found the dialogue during this to be much funnier than any part of the last game and was actually laughing at some parts (I barely actually laugh out loud).

Eventually its all GLaDOS again and you have to do more testing, while being constantly reminded about how horrible it was that you murdered her in the last game.

The test chambers
Yet again the chambers start out pretty simple to remind you how stuff works, however it's due noting that the whole place is ruined and there's rubble everywhere, I also found it quite impressive when I crashed through a glass window. However, the chambers climb in difficulty nicely and soon enough I was doing some aerial portal placing and laser dodging, oh yes, lasers.

Some new elements so far

Lasers.

Lasers are pretty cool, they hurt you when you touch them and they usually need to be directed via portals, or refracting boxes into the laser receptor. This is more functional than the old energy ball because removing and replacing the laser beam will turn the switch on and off, instead of just being permanently on like the energy ball switches.


Jump platforms.

These platforms send you flying into the air. They usually aim right at another jump platform too so they end up chaining right along. Also GLaDOS likes using them as a means to call you fat.


New Elevators

These just look cool, nothing much special about them. Also there are some animations playing on the screens around them which often have something to do with the challenge in the next room.


Lights in weighted cubes

This isn't really anything special, but when you place a cube on a button the light changes colour. Another thing to note is that GLaDOS really likes destroying companion cubes in front of you.




 









X-ray portal vision

So there's also this, as you can see in the screenshot you can see an outline of wherever your portals are, through any structure. I can see this becoming somewhat useful but I don't really like the look of it.

Hard Light

Hard light is basically light, you can walk on. So you can send it through a portal too to make bridges or use them to block things such as turrets, it's pretty awesome and well used in the game.

Well I'm off to play more Portal 2
Because it's awesome. You probably should too, because it's a pretty good game. However, if you haven't played the first portal yet, I recommend you do so, because some of the jokes are way funnier if you have.

Edit: So I've gotten a long way into this game and I have to say.
1) Amazing plot.
2) To answer my question to the game about its length, it's not short.
3) The test chambers get considerably harder. 
4) There's more way awesomer new mechanics added to the game as you go.

Edit 2: So I've finished the game and.
1) Yes it was amazing
2) The boss fight was a bit easy :(
3) Time was around 6 hours (Actually don't quote me on that because I think steam stuffed up and didn't count the time for one play-through, so probably more like over 7-8 hours)
4) The test chambers get to a great level of difficulty where it's actually very satisfying finishing each level.
5) The new song, it's not as catchy as still alive was but it was still good. To start with I didn't really like it much, but then it grew on me, it's actually a very cute song.
6) Co-op is pretty good, I hope there's more test chambers than it seems there are though.