Full Circle Magazine FR

If you enjoyed playing Portal, then you may have some pretty high expectations from its sequel Portal 2 (beta). Valve Corporation originally released Portal 2 in April 2011 for Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, Playstation 3, and Xbox 360. Late in March 2014, Valve released Portal 2 as a beta for Ubuntu Linux, so you can finally put down the original and start playing the sequel. Portal 2 is a puzzle-platform, first-person, shooter which has similar play mechanics as the original “Portal.” However, being that this is a sequel, Portal 2 (beta) introduces many new gameplay elements to make it worth your time. One particular new addition that really caught my eye was the co-op missions. But it doesn't end there; read on to find out what else Valve has in store for us with this exceptionally well designed video game. Much like the original Portal video game, in Portal 2 your goal is to solve puzzles from a first-person shooter point of view. You begin each level in a testing laboratory, and you must somehow find your way out of the test chamber with the help of your portal gun. The core game concept is rather hard to describe because of how abstract it is, but, in a nutshell, you are equipped with a gun that creates blue portals through which you can teleport to another place. You step into a blue portal and you walk out somewhere else through an orange portal. Eventually, you acquire the orange portal gun which then allows you to shoot and create blue portals as well as orange portals. The puzzle rooms grow exponentially harder to solve as you advance your way up the levels. This is the end of similarities between Portal and Portal 2 (beta) as everything else about Portal 2 (beta) is a novel idea not present in the original video game. You can read Full Circle Magazine 78 for a full review of the original Portal game.

As I mentioned earlier, in Portal 2 (beta) you have the option to play online co-op games in which you and another person must work together to solve puzzles and find your way out of a testing chamber. You must communicate with the other person and the two of you NEED to work together to solve the puzzles. If the other person has never played Portal before, it will be pretty frustrating to play because you will not be able to advance by yourself, either both of you make it out of each level or neither one advances. This is the true meaning of co-op; two players must cooperate in order to solve the puzzles and move on to the next level. As much as I liked the co-op part of the game, the real selling point for me was the addition of user created puzzles. Many people have found the “Perpetual Testing Initiative” a most fascinating experience. You can create your own test chamber and share it with the world, or you can download someone else's design to try and master. To find out more about the “Perpetual Testing Initiative” then head over to: http://steamcommunity.com/workshop/browse/?appid=620 An interesting aspect of Portal 2 which not too many people may know about is the “Teaching With Portals” program that Valve implemented for teachers to use Portal 2 as a medium for teaching math, science, and, more specifically, physics. Teachers who are interested in using the “Teaching With Portals” program may qualify to get the “Portal 2 Puzzle Maker” which includes the game “Portal 2.” If you want to find out more about this exciting program, go to: http://www.teachwithportals.com/

Playing With Portals To play Portal 2 you must have a valid Steam account and you must have the Steam game engine installed in your system. If you've got both of these, you can play Portal 2 for the current going price of $19.99. If you don't have a Steam account or the Steam game engine, then the easiest way to play Portal 2 would be to go to the Portal 2 web-page on the Steam website and click on “Add to Cart” which will make sure you've got everything you need. When I first tried to play this game under Ubuntu 12.04.4, I ran into some minor problems. The game was installed and showed up in my Steam games library, so far so good. Then, when I tried to play it, for some reason it wouldn't play. I had to exit out of and restart Steam then quadruple-click the Portal 2 (beta) game launcher on Steam with my mouse in order for the game to finally start. After this initial hiccup, there have been no more problems with running the game ever since. My only other complaint is that there is no support for my game controllers even though supposedly you can play the game with a controller. I got used to playing the original Portal with a mouse and keyboard, so I didn't really miss the controller very much, though it would have been nice if it did have the support. Here's the official Portal 2 on Steam link: http://store.steampowered.com/app/620 Unfortunately, there are no minimum system requirements for Linux listed on the Portal 2 page; only Windows and Mac are listed. So, based on the minimum requirements for both of those systems, we can safely conclude that the minimum system requirements are: OS: Ubuntu 12.04 LTS or more recent Processor: Intel Core Duo Processor (2GHz or better) / AMD 64×2 (or higher) Memory: 2GB Hard Disk Space: At least 7.6 GB of Space Video: ATI Radeon 2400 or higher / NVIDIA 8600M or higher / Intel HD Graphics 3000

Conclusion I would love to give Portal 2 (beta) a perfect rating, however when I tally up the Pro's and Con's, I need to reconsider and take a star off. Mostly, and I really hope this is not an issue later, the fact that it's still in beta contributes to Portal 2 not getting a perfect score. Pro's: • Very entertaining • Easy to play • Appeals to a wide audience • It's everything that Portal was, but newer and better • Co-op has been added • You can play user created maps, or create one of your own Con's: • It's still a beta so expect it to have some glitches • You may have to jump through a hoop or two in order to get it running, again this is due to it still being a beta • It promises full controller support, yet neither one of my controllers worked (a Razer Onza and a MadCatz controller), hopefully ironed out by the time it's out of beta • No minimum system requirements listed on Steam