Valve deliver the perfect Portal sequel with a wild co-op mode and writing that peaks in GLaDOS and Wheatley duets penned for Stephen Merchant. The puzzles dazzle, the staging hits dead centre, and the whole stands as an utterly essential modern puzzle peak.
Your verdict
Category
Puzzle4 players12+
Co-op
Split screen
Description
Puzzle game by Valve and EA, April 2011. Chell returns to Aperture Science laboratories facing AI GLaDOS and new AI Wheatley in portal test chambers. Portal mechanics opening two teleporters enabling inventive physical solutions, humorous satirical narrative and two-player Atlas and P-Body co-operation. Unanimously acclaimed original Portal sequel.
Portal 2 review
MAX
Art direction
★★★★★
"Iconic"
MAX
Music
★★★★★
"Legendary"
MAX
Story
★★★★★
"Masterful"
An aesthetic of sterile laboratory contrasting with ruins overgrown with vegetation: the game plays the clean against the decayed with rare intelligence. The readability of the settings and the visual humour directly serve the puzzles. This art direction, pared-down and clever, stands as a model of design in service of gameplay.
Signed by Mike Morasky, the music unfurls a generative, playful ambient electro, where synthetic textures and robotic beeps embrace the mischievous spirit of the puzzles. The final song "Want You Gone" crowns the adventure with an irresistible touch of humour. This inventive, offbeat sonic identity makes all the singular charm of the game.
Woken in an abandoned laboratory, a mute test subject must outwit the traps of artificial intelligences as funny as they are cruel. Beneath the spatial puzzle hides a black comedy of sparkling writing, carried by cult dialogue. A rare puzzle game that makes you laugh as much as it makes you think, it became a benchmark.
Gameplay
"Masterful"
Punching two portals to reroute momentum and gravity turns every room into a spatial riddle of fearsome elegance. The gradual introduction of gels and beams constantly renews the thinking. A model of first-person puzzling, it preserves a crystal-clear logic and an inventiveness whose ingenuity hasn't aged a day.
North American (NTSC-U) edition of the Valve sequel to the portal puzzle game, marrying ingenious spatial puzzles, hilarious writing and two-player co-op in a work held as one of the genre's summits. Widely distributed in the West, its appeal lies in this status as a puzzle masterpiece rather than scarcity, its run staying accessible. An essential prime piece for fans of puzzles and Valve.
Better with friends
A first-person puzzler whose co-op mode, designed specially for two, rests entirely on communication and synchronizing portals. Mutual aid is mandatory and joyful: solving a puzzle with two brains, after a thousand tries, brings unmatched satisfaction. Playable in local split-screen, its deadpan humor and ingenious puzzles make it a high point of two-player gaming.
Is Portal 2 still worth playing in 2026?
Released in 2011 on Xbox 360, Valve's Portal 2 brilliantly widens the concept of the first person puzzle game built on portals, with ingenuity and comic writing of an exceptional level. The new mechanics, gels and light beams, enrich spatial puzzles that stay just as satisfying to solve. The humour of GLaDOS and Wheatley and the staging of the Aperture Science settings are memorable. Above all, the co op mode, entirely designed for two, offers a unique experience. For fans of puzzle solving, co op and brilliant writing, this masterpiece keeps an intact value today.
