It was the year of ending trilogies and super-duper sequels, but this year’s game of the year was not nearly as difficult to choose as one would think. You would have said at the beginning of the year that games like Modern Warfare 3, Battlefield 3, Batman Arkham City, or Uncharted 3 were all incredible games of their own right, but let’s face it: after playing a few hours of each game, a lot of folks shrugged their shoulders and felt that despite improvements to each title, the original thrill was gone.
Not for Portal 2. Portal 2 is a perfect case against annualizing the hell out of your franchise and forcing your fan base to drool a little before cramming the next iteration down gamers’ throats. Valve took a game that sounded like a tough sell for a sequel and gave us 24-karat gold. And platinum.
Valve is never one to beat the player around the head with a storyline. It’s usually hidden amongst the gameplay and enviroment in clever ways, and Portal 2 is no different. Need some examples? Simple. For the entire Aperture Science/Cave Johnson act of the game, you never once meet the enigmatic Cave Johnson, and yet you completely understand his transition from bright eyed entrepreneur to a desperate man grasping at straws by the time Chell leaves the buried Apeture Science testing labs. The characterization of Wheatley’s transition from bumbling sidekick to all-powerful-yet-still-clueless deity is one of the more shocking and well-done twists in the game, with Stephen Merchant’s character repeatedly causing the player multiple laugh-out-loud moments. Honestly, between posters on the wall and the few other characters in the game, you’re really just told the story as you’re running around. No cutscenes, minus the ending of course, but it’s done so well that I can’t help but wonder why other developers haven’t tried doing the same.
When you think of the original Portal, you probably think to yourself, “How in the holy hand grenade are they going to turn a tiny little side project of a game into a full on retail title with new gameplay mechanics?” And yet, they managed to come up with not only a great 6-8 hour single player campaign, but also handcraft a brilliant two player co-operative campaign completely separate from the main story with Atlus and P-body. On top of that, a few months later, Valve released free downloadable content to go along with the mutliplayer. Valve’s always been pretty solid about supporting their titles (well, on PC at least), and Portal 2 is no exception.
One of the major pieces that makes the original Portal such a mind-bendingly good time was the fact that every Aperture Science testing chamber you enter, you are immediately greeted with the feeling of ”Now how in the hell am I going to figure out this puzzle?” Fifteen minutes later, you see a certain angle or panel in the distance you can shoot a portal at, and you can immediately see how the puzzle is supposed to work. That slight “I’m a flippin’ genius” feeling is unlike many puzzle games I’ve played before, primarily because the puzzles are so well crafted, but this is done even more so in the multiplayer when you double the amount of portals you’ve got flying around the room at any one time.
In a year of carbon-copy sequels and rehashes, Portal 2 is an amazingly well-done piece of art by the folks at Valve. While many of our staff may have had other games on the top of their top 10 list for Game of the Year, every single list had Portal 2 in their top 3-4 games every time. It is with that simple consensus reached by the staff that Front Towards Gamer proudly proclaims Portal 2 its Game of the Year.
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