Portal 2

I felt Portal 2's single player campaign was mostly a reboot of the original game, even though it technically is a sequel. But somehow you (Chell) are back in Aperture's testing chambers and it's time for another breakout, since you incidentally also cause GLaDOS to revive.

This time there's more plot and drama, however, and of course new puzzle elements, which I was already familiar with, having (mostly) watched Yogscast's playthrough of the co-op campaign last year. And I think I progressed faster through the puzzles than in Portal. Although, there were couple ones I had to really think to figure out how I should proceed.

While it's pretty obvious that falling into a portal from a height will cause you to fling over the room when the out-portal is on a wall, it's more difficult to measure how far you will bounce off the blue jumpy gel. I think this is because you only see yourself moving from the first person and thus never get a proper sense of what kind of distances things make you move. It's somewhat similar issue to what Mirror's Edge had.

Like in the first game, I failed the boss fight on my first try. This time my problem wasn't with finding the balls; instead, for the death of me, I couldn't figure out the place I was s'posed to put them, regardless of the flashing red light (!). On the second try, stuff was once again more obvious. Funny how that works.

Portal 2 uses the same Source engine of Valve's, though with a polish compared to the first game. Loading times are maybe tad longer but nothing to complain about. However, since quite a few of the first test chambers are fast and easy, it sometimes felt like I was jumping from a loading screen to another.

The ending seemed final; GLaDOS made it clear she doesn't want Chell back anymore. I don't think she really had that much to do with recapturing(?) Chell the previous time either, being shut down and all but yeah...