Tiny Diggers – An iPad Construction Truck Game for Kids Age 2-5

The first Portal came out with little fanfare and as a throwaway title for The Orange Box in 2007.  However, critics hardly called it throwaway, naming it as one of the year’s best titles, even with its rather short length of 3-4 hours of total gameplay.  Clever puzzle design, a vindictive robotic nemesis, a shart wit and of course one of the best end game songs ever made Portal an instant classic.  So it was no shock when Portal 2 was announced.  As a matter of fact, there was more shock over the Valve shenannigans at E3 2010, due to a scheduled event, and then cancelling of that event for a surprise, and then just saying that press would be seeing Portal 2 at E3 behind closed doors.  Aeropause was one of those lucky attendees, and Valve did not disappoint with their vision for Portal 2.

We started our presentation stuffed into a small presentation room that was designed for 20, but had about 28 people actually in the room.  The Portal 2 presentation was a hot invite apparently, and several extras found their way into the room due to great communication, or as most might know it, a great hustle.  Erik Johnson started off our presentation with a little backstory on Portal 2.  The game takes place far in the future from the first title, somewhere between 100 and 200 years in the future.  The Aperature Science labs have been overgrown with vegatation, and is in a serious state of disarray.  Somehow, not yet explained, our hero from the first game, “Chell” has been returned to this facility and now wants to escape again.  And while we thought GLaDoS was dead, we find out that she has been repairing herself all this time, and is slowly bringing the facility back online to torture you with more portal puzzles, surely with the intent to kill you.

Erik then went into the first trailer for Portal 2, which showed us that our journey will not be a lonely one this time around at Aperature Science.  We will meet several new robotic nodes that will help us on our journey.  The first of these characters was Wheatley, a computer node with a great cockney accent.  We asked about the voice work for Wheatley and we found out that it was not a professional actor, but a temp track recorded by one of the Valve employees.  However, the voice was so well recevied, that they might leave it in, but would not confirm that as of yet.  Wheatley joined us on our journey as we used him to unlock new passages and doors to work our way out of the facility, as as we did this, you could see the state of disrepair in the building.  Plants, trees and more were growing throughout Aperature Science, pushing out walls, floors and generally leaving the place looking like a giant greenhouse.  Then a voice pierced through the complex, asking for help.  Wheatley said to just ignore it and made a few witty comments about how we were not interested in anything.  As we walked into an open building, we see a large machine rebuilding itself, dragging parts from around the room.  Wheatley tries to stop the process, but before he finishes, an eye from the machine looks at us, and states, “Oh, its you.”  GLaDoS is back online and mentions that she is not upset at the fact that you KILLED her, and that she has some new experiements that she needs you to test, before calling you a monster.

With that first sequence over, immediately, we can see that the sharp wit mixed with dark overtones have returned in Portal 2, and it frames up a new experience to explore and navigate, while trying not to die at the hands of GLaDoS.  However, things are a little different than before, as we will have far more tools at our disposal to take out turrets and work our way around the environment, making Portal 2 a completely new experience.

First to be shows was the Excursion Funnel.  The Excursion Funnel works similarly to a tractor beam, moving things in a suspended state.  A cube had to be moved around the environment, so Chell put it into the beam, and then manipulated portals to navigate the beam around the environment, moving portals to continue the travel of the Excursion Beam to our location on a platform on the other side of the room.  The beam was also used to take out turrets by moving them into the stream.

Next was the Aerial Fath Plate, which worked out like trampolines.  As you jump on a Plate, it hurdles you across the room and we navigated an area using just these plates following a companion cube.  At the end of the consecutivve Plate jumps, we were heading head first towards a wall, when two well placed portal shots had us go through the wall and come out at the other side of the level, with the companion cube landing right on the weight plate to open the exit to the level.

Now we moved on to the Pneumatic Diversity Vent, which works like a giant Dyson vacuum.  Anything that comes near the suction, is then sucked up into the Vent and shot out of the other end.  Chell entered a room and was tasked with clearing it of all the turrets, and all you had at your disposal was the portal gun and a couple of Pneumatic Diversity Vents.  We then shot a portal under a Vent, and then started to put portals under each turret emplacement, watching as the were sucked into the vents, humorously crying out in pain as they were shot out the other side of the vent.  One room was stacked to the gils with turrets.  Using quick portal shots, a shot was put under the suction vent, one shot into the room sucked all the turrets into the vent, and finally one more shot on the other side of the vent kept these turrets in an endless loop.

Two, and possibly more, additions to Portal 2 are gels.  These gels will have properties that will help you navigate levels.  I say possibly more than two, because of the cagey response from Erik when asked about the number of gels in the game.  Needless to say, we had two to view – Repulsion Gel and Propulsion Gel.  Repulsion Gel is colored blue, and when used on a surface, it will make Chell bounce.  The Propulsion Gel works as advertised, speeding up your movement when on a surface.  Both of these were used in crazy puzzles that boggled the mind with the manipulation of the portals with the gels.

Our final event of the day was seeing the Thermal Discouragement Beam in action.  Not only did it have the greatest name of all the new mechanics, but it was also the most destructive.  With the beam, you can take a companion cube that has holes in it, and direct the beam to attack enemies.  We used the beam to burn up turrets in a room, one by one.  It was funny again to hear the cries of agony from the turrets as the yelped out, “Ow, ow, it burns!”, of course in a computerized voice.

A final video played out at the end of the presentation, showinng us all of these new elements in action, and it was a crazy scene to watch, as you bounced from a blue gel portaling on to a runway of orange gel, speeding you up as you launched on to Aerial Fath Plates and so on.  It was manic, fast and boggled my mind as to how I was going to defeat some of these puzzles.

With the video presentation out of the way, we moved on to a few questions.  Of course, the first question that was asked was about the delay to 2011.  Erik said that this was to ensure that the game was balanced and playable not only in single player, but with full co-op as well.  The follow up was amusing as it asked whether it was 2011 in normal time or 2011 in Valve time.  A time was asked for completion of the game, wich Erik did not want to address.  It was not that he wanted to avoid it, but that it was hard to quantify how long it would take people to get past all the puzzles.  We do know that it is fairly longer than the first game, but we did not get an actual approximation of time.  He also commented that while some of the puzzles looked crazy, that Valve did not want to make Portal 2 a game that was impossible to beat.  Instead, they wanted to challenge the player to think through the puzzle, while not having the game be overly obnoxious in its difficulty.

With that, our appointment time came to a close, and I walked out of the booth, slowly comprehending what I saw.  I was amazed by the demo for Portal 2.  At first, I thought there was no way that I would be able to finish some of the puzzles I saw in Portal 2, but as I had time to focus and watched the videos again at www.thinkwithportals.com I realized that I could do these puzzles.  I remembered that I thought I would never finish the first Portal, but time and thought got me through that game.  I did like how Portal 2 was shaping up visually, and the humor and thought process was still there that made the first game great.  Hopefully, Valve is on time for a 2011 release, as I cannot wait to get my brain wrapped around this title.