PAX: I Saw the Portal 2, and the Portal 2 Was BeautifulPAX: I Saw the Portal 2, and the Portal 2 Was Beautiful

It's day one of the Penny Arcade Expo (PAX) up here in Seattle. PAX was started in 2004 by the guys behind Penny Arcade, a webcomic about gaming, and has since grown to a twice-a-year convention in Boston and Seattle—last year, PAX attracted over 60,000 people.

Other than being full of a bunch of freaking nerds (and disease—last year saw a significant H1N1 outbreak), PAX is where many games get announced and the tone of nerd culture is set. On to the coverage!

Big titles this year: Portal 2! Duke Nukem Forever (IT LIVES!)! Guild Wars 2! I could go on....

There's just nothing else to say: Portal 2 looks amazing. In Portal 2's new two-player co-op mode, you play a robot, completing the same type of puzzles that you did as a human in the first Portal. You and your partner each have a portal gun, making possibilities for portal-ing about twice as awesome. You can also direct new things through your portals: lasers, an energy bridge, and a flubber-like substance that flows like liquid but lets you can bounce on it like it's a trampoline.

The co-op mode robots—one short, one tall—appear to take equal part in the game mechanics (though as GLaDOS's friendly voice reminds you: "Like Albert Einstein and his cousin Terry, history will remember only one of you"). However, the game is designed to be played by gamers at different levels (you and your mom or girlfriend, for example)—a new feature called "pinging" allows one player to show another where to shoot his/her portal. You can also make your robots wave to one another or "hug" (adorably).
Valve says Portal 2's single-player storyline is twice as long as the original's; the co-op mode, additional and separate to the continuing storyline, is also twice as long as Portal's.

More from PAX day one—including Deus Ex creator Warren Spector's keynote and the craziest kind of nerd—after the jump!

[ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]