A couple of your favorite Gaming Angels got a chance to sit front row at one of the Portal 2 demos this past weekend at PAX. On our way to the inner-workings of the Aperture Science labs, I caught sight of a fan dressed as Gordon Freeman. Valve makes wonderful things.

Wonderful things like this.

Stephanie was lucky enough and brave enough to take our hosts up on the offer to play co-op during the demo. Here are her thoughts:

I was pretty excited when offered the chance to demo Portal 2 with one of the guys from Valve. It was a walkthrough of the tutorial stage in the game, but it was still pretty fun! If you’ve already played Portal the controls will be easy to pick up. And having the ability to play with a partner adds a lot to the game. There are some fun puzzle solving parts of the game, and I really enjoyed the added bonus of having emotes that you can perform with each other (like hugging it out!). I think that making the playthrough co-operative will make for some interesting levels to get through further on in the game and I wished that we could have advanced outside of just the tutorial. But I can safely say that I think Portal fans will be very happy with Portal 2.

Dinosaur unrelated.

Even in just observing the game, I’m super pumped to get to play this through Live with one of my friends. The characters are oddly lovable, and GLaDOS is back for a bit of friendly ribbing and threats. Valve has promised more complicated puzzles (all require 4 portals this time), new gun effects, and I’m interested in seeing how “nature reclaims the facility”.  They’ve also said the game will be twice as long and it was great to see that they’ve kept some of the interesting puzzle elements (like the infinite jump) and added a few new ones in as well (including some of the ones in co-op).

Though we won’t be getting it by the end of 2010 (Valve will keep us busy with some DLC for one of their other games I’m sure…), have your smartest friend penciled in for February 9th 2011.  Keep an eye on us here at GamingAngels.com or at the Portal 2 website: http://www.thinkwithportals.com for more!