Valve announced Portal 2 for the PS3 on during the Sony Press Conference at E3 this year, and to my disappointment it seemed to be Valve’s ‘surprise’, leaving us all hanging on information about what’s going on with the Half Life series. While I hope for some sort of announcement from them on the third and final day of E3, lets take a look at some of Portal 2′s new gameplay features and story, because it does look fantastic.

The game itself is split into two parts, firstly you have the singleplayer mode. This will carry on from the first game, with GlaDOS dead (or as dead as a sentient AI can be), and Chell returning for an unknown reason to find the ruins of the Aperture Science laboratories overgrown with vegetation, and GlaDOS attempting to rebuild it. The single player mode will, according to an interview with Erik Wolpaw and Doug Lombardi, be twice as long as the original Portal’s singleplayer, so an estimated 5-6 hours of gameplay. Valve will no doubt flesh this out with challenge modes of the different rooms, with leaderboards and achievements to encourage replayability.

On top of the singleplayer mode, there will be a co-operative mode of similar length, but instead of the same puzzles as in singleplayer, there will be whole new puzzles specifically designed for two players (or more?), which could turn out to be incredibly challenging. Imagine the possibilities of having two players attempting to solve the same puzzle, one player laying portals for the other to fly through, I really hope Valve make the best of this.

It’s also good to see in the videos that Valve has retained the humor of the first game, and now not only does it come from GlaDOS, but from the different personality cubes you will meet as you progress through the story. The first character you meet wants to help you escape, and for you to take him with you. He accidentally wakes up GlaDOS, which you can see in the first of the video below.

Valve have fleshed out the original Portal with a whole host of new gameplay mechanics and objects you can use to keep the puzzles fresh and entertaining. Probably the most important new mechanic is gel. Gel is, as it’s name suggests, a liquid, which is dispensed in the typical Portal fashion, and can be moved around using portals. Two ‘gels’ have been shown so far, a blue one that lets you jump further and a red one which speeds you up, both demonstrated in the videos below. In addition to gels, there are a number of new objects you can interact with, including Tractor Beams, which can be moved around with portals and used to levitate yourself, companion cubes, turrets, anything that can move. Aerial Faith Plates are similar to jump pads you find in games such as Quake and Unreal Tournament, which propel you and other objects in a certain direction when you jump on them. There are more in the videos below.

Finally, I’d just like to mention how incredible the game looks. Portal 2 is obviously using an advanced version of the Source Engine, and the art team has done a fantastic job recreating the look and feel of a destroyed and overgrown laboratory. Natural light pours in from the top of the levels, opened up by the explosions at the end of the first game, now overgrown with vegetation creating beautiful shadows and ‘god rays’ all over the levels.

This was a triumph.