Portal 2 Preview - PAX Prime 2010

Valve was showing off some new aspects of Portal 2 at PAX 2010 last weekend chronicling the game’s full-length cooperative game mode officially titled the “Cooperative Testing Initiative.” After being shuffled into a small room inside Valve’s expo booth and sat down alongside a small group of fellow game journalists and PAX attendees, one individual was chosen from the audience to play alongside a Valve team member while a Valve representative narrated the demonstration.

Prior to the actual demo, Valve showed off their newest trailer for the game which, like most of Portal’s trailers, was equal parts laugh-out-loud hilarious and mind-bendingly epic. Although not much of the story behind Orange and Blue, the two player robots, was revealed, the trailer made it evident that this mode will be more than simply a series of challenge rooms but as much of a narrative as the original game. The two robots are being tested by Aperture Science for some greater purpose possibly relating to the plight of the main character in the singleplayer campaign.

From the beginning of the actual demonstration, it was apparent that Portal 2 retains the distinct visual style of the first while seeing some great graphical improvements. Lines are crisper and textures are at a much higher resolution (or at least, appear to be). The slightly damaged and constantly malfunctioning nature of this game’s version of Aperture Science lends itself to more visually interesting level design as well.

The “Cooperative Testing Initiative” allows for each player to use two separate sets of portals. It’s no surprise that 4 portals makes for far more complicated puzzles than two, but a new set of portals isn’t all that players will be manipulating in Portal 2’s cooperative mode. Several quick and simple stages were shown to introduce some of the new mechanics such as lasers, reflection cubes, and laser receptacles. In the stage shown, the two players had to use portals to punch holes through two walls and then use a reflection cube in order to redirect a laser coming down from the ceiling through all of the portals and into a laser receptacle.

The next stage unveiled the light bridge which emits from a unit mounted along walls and ceilings much like the laser emitters. By placing a portal against the wall that the bridge is being emitted towards allows for the bridge to be extended further and placed in any direction a portal is able to be placed in. In this way, the bridge allowed players to access areas of the level they would otherwise be entirely unable to access, avoid obstacles in a brand new way, and even act as walls or barriers against turrets. The stages shown were mostly simple displays of the new game mechanics that got everyone’s mind aflutter with the great potential puzzles we can expect to see over the course of the campaign.

In addition, Valve showcased a few of the new features unique to the game’s cooperative mode. A Paint tool allows the two players to mark specific items and locations in order to properly communicate solutions and puzzle elements to the other player. Although this is a wonderful feature that will no doubt be incredibly valuable, this is an absolute must-have for gamers playing without voice chat capabilities. Player and cooperative emotes like waving and hugging were showcased on multiple occasions throughout the demo, mostly for comedic effect. Although this may seem odd in a two-player setting, it was actually very funny and something that seems to allow the gamer to add little cinematic and narrative touches of their own to the cooperative campaign.

Portal 2’s “Cooperative Testing Initiative” will be playable in both online co-op as well as local splitscreen. For a company that has so rarely developed games for consoles, Valve always seems to be a big proponent for local splitscreen multiplayer, and it is good to see that this is still as important to some developers as it is to some gamers.

Overall, Portal 2 is looking to be a worthy addition to the Valve catalog. With a singleplayer and a cooperative campaign both over twice the length of the original Portal, most gamers’ major complaint with the original, that it was far too short, is definitely going to be alleviated when the game launches next year.