"Say apple," Wheatley commands, surveying you with his twitchy blue eye. You go to speak, but end up jumping on the spot instead. "I don't want to alarm you," he starts, trying to keep his voice steady, "but you probably have brain damage. Not to worry, though. We'll probably be okay. I mean, you know, as long as nothing else goes wrong."
Plenty of things went wrong during our two-hour hands-on demo of Portal 2's single-player campaign at Valve's headquarters near Seattle. We made our way through the opening chapters of the game, before skipping ahead to a new section in the latter-part of the campaign.
Portal 2's beginning is familiar enough: Chell, alone in a room. It's not the cold, sterile environment we've seen before; this new room is a vast improvement--carpeted floors, a wardrobe, a desk, potted plants, and even art. But something just doesn't feel right. The new AI caretaker is male, for one. His baritone voice breaks out over the loudspeakers, instructing you to move around and get used to your surroundings. If you're feeling up to it, he chirps, you can do some basic mental stimulation exercises by staring intently at the framed painting that hangs above your bed. Or, if that doesn't do it for you, he can always provide some classical music. You're just beginning to think about requesting Bach's Organ Concerto in G when you lose consciousness; you come to in the same room, although you barely recognize it now: vines creep along the walls, the carpet is a mushy brown color, and the desk and wardrobe have fallen into disuse and decay. And suddenly, there's Wheatley (brilliantly voiced by Stephen Merchant)--the neurotic caretaker of Aperture's 10,000 test subjects--telling you that the whole place is collapsing and you have to escape, now.
After navigating a maze of collapsed walls thickly coated in overgrown vines and narrow passageways filled with debris, you come across the portal gun--as you knew you would--lying unceremoniously in a pile of rubbish. According to Wheatley, the only way you can escape Aperture is by going through the test chambers. Again. Judging by his crazed ramblings, he still doesn't know you're The One [i.e. The One Who Killed GlaDOS]; he thinks you're a misguided test subject with an embarrassingly low IQ. ("People with brain damage are the real heroes," he says soothingly as you shoot a portal into the wrong wall.)
The first few chambers are a cakewalk. You know the drill: pick up the cube, drop it on the big red button, open the door, and move on. The chambers are a bit rundown, but still functional. There's even some jazz music in the third or fourth chamber, to help distract you from all the shrubbery currently growing on Aperture's once-pristine walls. For a brief, existential moment, you catch a glimpse of yourself as you pass through a portal. You're the same long-limbed, ponytailed Chell, the young woman who once walked these halls in search of something moist and delicious. But you are not a test subject now--you're an escapee. At least, that's what you think. The difficulty level of these early chambers increases significantly with each one; by chamber five you're already using momentum and gravity to propel yourself into portals and working with two or three cubes at varying heights and platforms.
