A video game that is appropriate for all gamers, even if they don’t get some of the cultural references, Portal 2 makes physics fun! New characters, such as Wheatley, and returning icons, like GlaDOS, reinvent the already inventive Portal experience.
Awakening in the Aperature future turns on its axis to travel through the decades of Aperature Labs experiments and test chambers. New, but at the same time old, experiments with repulsion gel, speedy gel, and bouncy gel give the gamer a whole new appreciation for science. However, it is the actors voicing the characters that make Portal 2 come alive...as much as machines can.
GlaDOS, voiced by Ellen McClain, is snarky yet appealing. In Portal 2 you discover her origin story and are introduced to the potato battery. Wheatley, voiced by Stephen Merchant, gives lie to the idea of the unflappable Brit. He is definitely flappable, lovable, crazy, and hilarious. Some of the best quotes come from Wheatley:
Ooh. It's dark down here isn't it? They say that the old caretaker of this place went absolutely crazy. Chopped up his entire staff... of robots - all of them robots - they say at night you can still here the screams... of their replicas. All of them functionally indistinguishable from the originals... no memory of the incident... nobody knows what they're screaming about. Ab-solutely terrifying. Though obviously not paranormal in any meaningful way.
--Wikiquotes
J.K. Simmons (Chief Will Pope, The Closer, J. Jonah Jameson, the Spider-Man franchise) gives voice to Aperature’s CEO Cave Johnson, to whom we are introduced (through recordings) as the gamer ascends through the decades of past test chambers. Only, as you ascend, the mind of Cave Johnson shows some serious deterioration! Hilariously mangled quotes and demented science! What could be better?
New memes (SPAAAACE!”), new characters, and science! Just what the Christmas elves ordered! Put Portal 2 in your favorite gamer’s Christmas stocking and have a happy gamer!
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