Hands On With Portal 2 Co-Op (Complete Gameplay video)

Robot love, so romaaaantic.

For the majority of PAX 2010, even the line for Portal 2 was hard to get into. It wrapped around the booth, and people ended up hovering around the end of the line, essentially making a line to get into the line just to watch gameplay.

Ripten was lucky enough to get into Portal 2 however, and better yet, our own Danielle Cantrell was chosen to try the co-op demo with Jeep Barnett from Valve:

We sat at the front of the room and began going over the controls of the game, using a 360 controller. Since this was the co-op demo, I was an orange robot, and Jeep played as a blue robot. We played on two separate screens, but Chet Faliszek, who was presenting the demo, said that the game will be playable in local split-screen and online.  This news was thrilling for me, since there are very few decent games with split-screen co-op anymore.

Chet also mentioned that this game would be twice as long as its predecessor, which should be a relief to anyone who enjoyed the first game, but simply wanted more.  There are new features in this game too: you can use an infinite portal fall to send your co-bot flying to the other side of the room you’re in, or create portals to extend bridges to other areas. Not only is this fun to figure out, but it greatly increases the variation in puzzle solutions and makes the game as a whole, better.

Interacting with each other is better than in many other co-op games as well. Instead of just helping each other through the game, you can do things like wave and hug. (More interactions will probably be announced, but as of now, we were limited to these two) Portal 2 felt more like LittleBigPlanet in this way, it felt like more than just playing a game; it became a way of communicating as well.  I even earned an in-game hug from Jeep after he launched me into some lava.

Even if you don’t have a headset or way of actually communicating with the other player, you can show them where you want them to make a portal by pinging at spots in the test chamber.  This comes in handy if you’re depending on your own portal to keep you alive.

Check out the actual demo that we played below!! (This footage was from a previous session)

This game was definitely one of my favorites from PAX 2010 and I was very lucky I actually got to play it. The co-op robots are fun to play with, the puzzles are full of new features and surprises, and the levels are far more diverse.

Portal 2 is set for release on February 9th, 2011 on PC/Mac, Playstation 3, and Xbox 360.