And that’s all fine, but now I can finally do some quick tests and see for myself if the product lives up to the hype.

My point of comparison will be my old but still serviceable set of V-MODA Crossfades. I’m quite fond of this headset, and feel it does quite well on build quality, comfort, and sound quality/performance. The Crossfades (and their newer variants) retail for a fair bit less than a brand new Nuraphone, so it should be a reasonable if somewhat easy benchmark for the Nuraphones to surpass.

Unboxing
Below are some pictures. I don’t think anything further is required here.

Build Quality
The case that comes with the Nuraphones appears well designed and solidly built. It closes with a magnetic clasp, and has a little cubby inside for you to stash your cable (or cables, or other stashables, as the case may be). This appears to be made of the same black silicone/rubber material as the Nuraphone earcups, and attaches to the case using a magnet. So I guess you can swap in alternate color cable-cubbies, if you actually have any. Regardless, the case is quite nice.

The build quality on the headphones themselves seems fine. I don’t think they look quite as stylish as the Crossfades, but that’s pure subjective opinion. The ear cups also don’t notch into place as you adjust them up and down, so maybe it’s a bit easier for them to drift out of alignment than on the V-MODA headset, though I haven’t had any such issues so far.

The thing I’m least a fan of is the black silicone/rubber that’s used on the earcups and along the bottom edge of the headband. I’m a little concerned about how it will hold up over the long run. Or course, the leather accent and (super-comfy) memory-foam headband on the Crossfades is literally disintegrating on me at this point, so it’s not like they’ve got any advantage; even at a theoretical level.

Overall, the build quality is entirely reasonable. Doubly so for a v1 product fresh off kickstarter.

Setup/Calibration
I got to experience some mild panic when I took my freshly unboxed Nuraphones, connected them to their analog cable, and tried to play some music to establish a baseline level of performance. All I got was silence.

Long story short, it appears the headset arrived with a dead battery. I discovered this after switching to the USB-C cable, which allowed them to power on and tell me to charge them. After some time on the charger, it was fairly straightforward to pair them and set up a hearing profile in the app.

I found that my hearing profile was consistent across repeated calibrations (and when I had a second person try, they got a completely different profile that was also consistent across calibration attempts), and that I could get a better (and better-sounding) result by running the calibration process with as little ambient noise as possible. By which I mean turning off fans, air conditioners, whirring laptops, and other sources of background noise before running the calibration.

Apart from having to discover that the headphones needed to be charged via trial and error, the setup process was easy and straightforward. My hearing profile looks like this:

Test Tracks
I’ve selected a small sampling of test tracks, aiming to get a variety of styles and formats/bitrates under test.

Emptyself – The Open Landscape (FLAC/Lossless)
Fair to Midland – Tall Tales Taste Like Sour Grapes (MP3, 256kbps)
Jethro Tull – Up to Me (FLAC/Lossless)
Dead Letter Circus – The Mile (acoustic; MP3, 303kbps VBR)
Dead Letter Circus – The Mile (electric; MP3, 256 kbps)
Collective Soul – Shine (MP3, 128 kbps)
Live – Lakini’s Juice (FLAC/Lossless)
Jimi Hendrix – All Along the Watchtower (MP3, 207 kbps VBR)

I played through the above tracks first on the Nuraphones, jotting down anything that I felt was new or otherwise noteworthy. Then I repeated the sequence on the Crossfades, paying particular attention to whether or not the same details were discernible.

The goal is to see if (and how frequently) I can replicate other anecdotal reports of hearing completely new sounds (and instruments) when listening on the Nuraphones.

All playback was done using playlister, which does not apply its own EQ or any other effects/modifications to the audio.

General Observations
I won’t force anyone to wade through my detailed notes. Suffice to say, I found 31 “new or otherwise noteworthy” things during the pass with the Nuraphones. On the follow-up pass, I found 10 of those things were sounds that I could hear just as clearly on the Crossfades, 13 were sounds I could subtly or very subtly pick out only after I knew to listen for them, and 8 were sounds that I could not pick at all on the Crossfades despite deliberately listening for them.

Probably the best single example can be found in ‘Up to Me’. On the Nuraphones, it’s clear that there are bells sounding around the 1:20 and 1:50 marks; I’d never noticed this before. With the Crossfades, I can just barely pick out the earlier set of bells (they are far more subtle), and the latter set is almost entirely unnoticeable.

Also worth noting is that at 128 kbps, ‘Shine’ was basically unlistenable on both headsets. It sounded a bit better on the Crossfades (which doesn’t really count in their favor!), but had clearly lost too much detail to be of any value in this test.

In general, the Nuraphones have a broader dynamic range, clearer and more detailed sound, and far superior stereo separation than the Crossfades. I also found that I wasn’t feeling like I needed to increase the volume of the Nuraphones. Quite the contrary, in fact; I found that I could listen at lower volumes without losing any clarity on the audio. For me, this is literally a first!

On the Nuraphones, bass guitar is clear and discernible as being separate from a bass drum. Not so with the Crossfades.

Some aspects of operating the Nuraphones are a little strange. There’s a button on each side that can be programmed with a variety of functions. By default the left button toggles personalization on/off.

However, unless you’re connected via bluetooth, the buttons are nonfunctional. And you can’t connect via bluetooth while using any of the wired connection options. This limitation (not being able to use the button without an active bluetooth connection) seems quite bizarre and unnecessary. Although I find the buttons are very easy to accidentally trigger when adjusting the headset, so perhaps it’s for the best.

You also can’t just plug a fresh set of Nuraphones into a headphone jack and use them like a normal headset; you have to pair them and set up a profile before you can actually listen to anything on them. This is weird, although once you’ve done this you can plug the headphones into any audio source, with or without bluetooth active/enabled, and they’ll work as expected.

Since they won’t work without a charged internal battery, I wish the Nuraphones had a power/charge indicator LED on the headset so that I can easily tell, without a mobile phone or bluetooth, if I’m good to listen or if I need to leave them charging for a bit.

Isolation
The Nuraphones do a very solid job here. They’re not noise-cancelling, but that black silicone/rubber I complained about earlier absolutely excels at blocking external sounds and distractions.

If you’re in a noisy environment like an aircraft, you’ll probably still get some background sound bleeding through. But I’ve used the Crossfades while flying without any problems, and the Nuraphones definitely block out more background noise than the Crossfades.

I’ve also been informed that the Nuraphones don’t leak sound into the room, at least not at comfortable listening levels. Quite the opposite with the Crossfades.

Full marks to the Nuraphone for this category.

Comfort
Have to give the win to the V-MODA here. The Nuraphones aren’t bad, but the earcups do trap a fair bit of heat and the earbud-like tips do cause some mild fatigue after half an hour or so (and I’ve always avoided earbud-style headphones for this reason). It’s not really a level playing field, however, as the headset designs are completely different.

After trying some longer sessions, I’d say that the headset is comfortable enough. For me it’s strictly less comfortable than a purely over-the-ear design like the Crossfades, however.

Sound
In “Generic” mode, the Nuraphones are quite unimpressive. I’ve seen other people claim they’re deliberately unimpressive. I don’t know if that’s true, but to my ears it sounds like in ‘Generic’ mode the headphones are using only the earbud driver and leaving the second, larger driver switched off entirely. The best adjective to describe the sound would be “tinny”. Extremely, annoyingly, intolerably tinny.

But nobody buys a pair of Nuraphones for the ‘Generic’ mode. And in ‘Personalized’ mode they sound much, much better. The audio is smooth and clear, the stereo separation and sound-stage is excellent, the bass is convincing (turn the volume up a bit, and the headphones feel like they want to jump off your head), and there’s plenty of nuance and detail to be heard. I did notice sounds (and entire instruments, and backing vocalists) that I hadn’t noticed before, in any setting.

The difference between ‘Personalized’ mode and ‘Generic’ mode is like night and day. The difference between ‘Personalized’ mode and the Crossfades is less striking, but I’d still definitely give the nod to the (personalized) Nuraphones.

I think the Nuraphones really excel on more acoustic/instrumental tracks and when handling clear, cleanly sung vocals. Tracks with high production quality and lots of studio polish also tend to shine. Which isn’t to say they’re bad at with other genres/tracks; it’s more the difference between “very good” and “awe inspiring”. And lossless, yes, having lossless copies of your tracks is worth it with these headphones.

Overall
These headphones work as advertised and live up to the hype. If you’d consider dropping $400+ on a pair of headphones, the Nuraphone belongs on your list of options.

P.S.
The following link should be good for AU$100 (20%) off a set of Nuraphones, if you decide you want a pair of your own:

http://fbuy.me/hmVMQ

Full disclosure – if six people actually buy a pair of Nuraphones from the link above Nura will send me a free pair. Which I will promptly donate to someone who’ll appreciate them.

2026 Update: Unfortunately I think you can no longer get these

But allow even one parameter to drift too far out of line, and all you’re likely to end up with is a tangled mess of plastic:

Here are a few things that I’ve found can help at avoiding the tangled mess of plastic:

Glue – Use it sparingly, if at all

The Ultimaker manual recommends applying a thin layer of glue to the buildplate before starting a print. And yes, glue can help your print stick to the buildplate better, and it can be used to compensate for minor buildplate leveling issues that can’t be corrected in any other way.

The problem with glue is that it seems to accelerate the rate at which residue accumulates inside of the Ultimaker’s nozzle, leading to more frequent clogs and extrusion issues. It can also cause parts to stick too well, making removal a pain. In most cases, glue is completely unnecessary:

That part was printed directly onto the glass buildplate, and despite the very small contact area it stuck to the buildplate for the duration of the print. If you’ve leveled your buildplate properly, you should have no problems printing small and medium-sized parts directly on the glass.

For larger prints that make contact with large swaths of the buildplate, a small amount of glue can be useful in dealing with any minor adhesion issues that you encounter. I recommend printing the first few layers, then checking to see if there are any spots where the filament has come unstuck from the buildplate, and canceling the print, applying a small amount of glue just to the problem areas, and then restarting (or if you check and find no problem areas, just let the print run with no glue at all!).

If you see a large number of problem areas when starting a larger print, it’s better to relevel your buildplate than it is to try and solve the problem by covering the entire thing in glue.

Buildplate Leveling – The third screw

When leveling the buildplate, the wizard will point out the two front screws that you can turn to fine-tune your level. What it won’t tell you is that there’s actually a third screw you can adjust, as well. This screw is located underneath the build plate and towards the back (and in the center).

This screw adjusts the rear-center height, and can be very useful if you’ve just reassembled your printhead and now find that you can’t level things properly because one notch of height adjustment (through the printer’s wizard interface) moves from ‘a bit too low’ to ‘a bit too high’. By turning the third screw, you can dial in the middle ground between ‘a bit too low’ and ‘a bit too high’ and get your buildplate leveled correctly.

Oh, and since it’s not immediately obvious what affect adjusting the screws has, tightening a buildplate screw will lower the glass plate and increase the distance between the nozzle and the glass. Loosening will have the opposite effect.

Buildplate Leveling – The wizard only works once

The wizard that walks you through the buildplate leveling process is helpful; but only until your first successful leveling attempt. The problem is that the wizard will tell you to adjust the buildplate screws in order to level it out. But if you’ve already done this (and confirmed the result) then your buildplate is level and playing with the screws will only make it worse!

Once you’ve successfully leveled your buildplate the first time, it’s not going to drift out of level and the only thing you should ever need to adjust again is its offset height relative to the printhead. That’s the first and the fourth step in the leveling wizard and something you’ll want to do if/when you disassemble and reassemble your printhead, as the nozzle height is likely to change slightly when you do so.

So if your buildplate is already level, and you need to adjust the height using the leveling wizard, the only thing you want to worry about is step 1 (or step 4). The other steps you should just click through without touching anything. If you find you need to adjust the third screw in order to dial in the correct height, you should also adjust the other two screws by exactly the same amount to ensure that everything stays nice and level.

And in terms of getting to your first successful level, the wizard’s suggestion of using a piece of paper will get you pretty close. But the best way I’ve found to fine-tune things further is to start printing a large object and adjust the buildplate screws as the first layer is printing.

If you notice that the first layer seems too thin in some areas, then you’ll want to tighten the nearest buildplate screw to lower the glass a bit. And if you notice that parts of the first layer are too thick and/or not sticking to the buildplate, then you should loosen the nearest buildplate screw to raise the glass in that area.

The Nozzle – Clean it often

When printing residue can build up in the nozzle, resulting in underextrusion and clogs if left unchecked. And residue buildup can be difficult or impossible to actually see, as even if the nozzle itself seems clear there can still be enough residue stuck around the sides to cause problems with a print. This can complicate troubleshooting, as a number of other issues can cause the same sort of problems with a print making it all too easy to blame a different component for a problem that’s actually being caused by a dirty nozzle.

So it’s best to take a few minutes to clean out the nozzle every once in awhile. For instance, when changing filaments or whenever else you decide to remove the filament from the printer. The best way to clean the nozzle is to follow the steps described in the following PDF document:

https://www.ultimaker.com/spree/uploads/113/original/Ultimaker_2_Atomic_Method.pdf

Once you’ve gotten used to it, it should only take a few minutes to step through the cleaning process, and you’ll have ruled out a common but hard-to-spot cause of printing issues.

Hardware – The stock parts are good enough…

…good enough for printing better parts for your Ultimaker.

Seriously, there’s nothing wrong with the Ultimaker 2’s stock parts, but other people have been designing and sharing alternative versions that work better in most cases. For example, I’m currently using:

• Venkel’s fan mount
• IRobertI’s feeder system
• My own filament mount

With that setup, I get better prints, easier maintenance/troubleshooting, and more flexibility than what’s offered by the Ultimaker 2’s stock hardware. If you get a printer like the Ultimaker 2, one of the first things to do with it is print out some better replacement parts for it.

And whenever printing replacement parts out of plastic, always keep a second copy on hand in case the first one breaks, or has a run-in with the hot nozzle and melts, or whatever. Having a spare always available is worth the few hours that it takes to print.

Tuning – Extrusion rate isn’t everything

There’s a test print you can do to measure your printer’s extrusion rate. Despite much of the discussion surrounding the subject, however, there’s a lots more to getting a good print than optimizing the extrusion rate.

With the right parts, it’s actually fairly easy to get a successful extrusion-rate test. You can just dial down the tension on the feeder to the point where it will never skip backwards, and blow through perfect print after perfect print of the extrusion test. And then try to print an actual object that requires some retraction, and watch how fast your printer sands down the filament and jams.

What I’ve found is that better results can be achieved by tuning the printer to the speed you’ll actually be printing at. The extrusion test goes up to 10mm³/sec, but unless you’re printing very low-quality, high-speed parts then you’re not going to come close to that extrusion rate in practice. I personally never print above about 5-6mm³/sec, and find that I get the best results by increasing the feeder tension until the extrusion test fails around the 7-8mm³/sec mark.

That gives adequate extrusion for my prints, and also helps to ensure that the filament doesn’t just get sanded down to nothing on prints that make heavy use of retraction. It pays to work out what extrusion rate you actually need, and then tune your printer to that amount instead of just trying to tune for the highest possible extrusion rate. A successful 3d print requires more than just extruding plastic as fast as possible.

Printing – Use your ears

The Ultimaker 2 is a very quiet printer when everything is working well. And when it’s not working well, you can usually hear it.

The most common issue is underextrusion during a print, which can usually be heard in the form of loud and distinct ticking sounds from the feeder. An occasional tick isn’t usually a problem, but if you’re getting multiple loud ticks in a row it’s time to intervene if you want you print to succeed.

If you’re fortunate, the cause of the issue will be something simple, like a snag on your filament spool. Usually unspooling a bit of filament to get past the snag will solve this issue. If the ticking has gone on for awhile, however, you may find that you filament has been ground down/deformed a bit (especially if your feeder is tuned too aggressively).

If the deformation isn’t too severe, you may be able to clear the issue by gently pushing the filament through the feeder until the deformed bit is past the feeder wheel (and blowing/brushing off any filament dust that’s accumulated within the feeder). If you’re unable to do that, then you’ll likely have to cancel and restart the print.

In any case, if you’re attentive to the sounds your printer is making, you can generally catch underextrusion issues early enough to fix the problem and rescue the print.

Maintenance – User serviceable parts inside

The Ultimaker 2 is entirely open-source, and designed so that the end-user can repair, maintain, and modify it easily. Don’t be afraid to take it apart, modify it, and put it back together. As complicated as it can be to get all the variables lined up for a successful print, the machine itself is quite robust. You can’t really break it unless you try.

Which is good, because otherwise I’d probably have broken mine a few times over by now.

And yes, you can drag the printhead around to get better access at the parts on it. Just make sure you turn the printer off first! It will stay where you left it when you turn the printer back on.

Should all else fail, there’s also a very supportive user community that will help you sort out any issues you come across. Just pop in with a picture or two, and wait for the free advice to start rolling in.

So after several days of research I decided that I’d order an Ultimaker 2, straight from the Netherlands. I very nearly got a Form 1+ as I think that stereolithography is a vastly superior approach when compared to FDM. Ultimately, however, I was left with too many reasons stacked up against the Form 1+ (and of course, the frequent positive reviews of the Ultimaker didn’t hurt, either):

• Multiple reports from early users showing poor printer accuracy.
• Smaller build volume compared to the Ultimaker (and most other 3d printers).
• A time-consuming, messy, and smelly finishing process.
• Proprietary design with no/few user-serviceable parts inside.
• Very costly resin.
• Shipping logistics and costs with getting the printer to Australia.
• A slightly higher base cost.

That first point was actually a huge issue for me (what good is a 3d printer if it can’t print, accurately, in 3d?). I even contacted FormLabs Support to see if perhaps the Form 1+ had solved the accuracy issues and what their official calibration tolerances were when shipping a printer. Unfortunately all they could tell me was that the Form 1+ would be “more accurate” than the Form 1, and that they did not yet have any formally established tolerances as far as printer accuracy is concerned. That’s just not good enough. So an Ultimaker 2 is was.

The printer arrived last week, and I’m fairly impressed with it so far. It’s very easy to use, and comes with everything you need to get started.

After walking through the calibration wizard that runs the first time the printer is powered on, my test print came out with some minor issues:

As you can see, half of the print looked pretty good, but the other half looked kind of melty. After asking around a bit I determined that this happened due to the geometry of the Ultimaker’s printhead and cooling assembly. The printer comes with a single extruder installed, and with space already allocated for installing a second extruder as a future upgrade. The two extruder nozzles are positioned to be installed side-by-side, in line with the cooling assembly. What this means is that the Ultimaker 2’s cooling setup is actually asymmetrical, with one fan being significantly closer to the extruder nozzle than the other. This causes uneven cooling, and melty-looking results on the side that has the cooling fan further away from the nozzle.

This may sound like a fairly serious issue, but it’s actually an easy problem to solve. I was able to eliminate the asymmetrical cooling problem by printing out a custom cooling assembly (freely available; I used the ‘V06′ design found here) and replacing the stock assembly with it. My next print showed an immediate improvement:

So…the 3d printer can 3d print its own upgrades, fixes, and replacement parts. Soon we’ll have 3d printers spitting out improved versions of themselves, and all the companies selling these devices will be out of business. In any case, with the improved cooling assembly installed I’ve had success printing many things, from cups (watertight, but not dishwasher safe), to rubbish bins (a cup that’s accidentally scaled up too much makes a rubbish bin), to annoying cube puzzles, to custom-designed modifications for the drone:

In general it’s quite easy to print things. It’s pretty much just load up the part in Cura, transfer to SD card, and go. Cura is fairly easy to use, although some of the more advanced options could use a bit more documentation. My only major complaint about Cura is that in my opinion it’s overly aggressive about automatically retriggering expensive computations (toolpath and model updates) and brings my laptop to its knees as a result. However, Cura is open-source, and with a few hours of tinkering I was able to create a patched version that disables the expensive computations until the user says it’s okay.

In the end, the only real issue I see with the printer comes back to the cooling problem that I encountered on the initial print. If the printer is going to ship with a single extruder installed, then the cooling assembly that ships with it should be optimized for use with a single extruder. The dual-extruder shroud could easily be included as part of the upgrade kit for installing the second extruder. Taking it even further, however, what I really think what Ultimaker should do is redesign the printhead assembly by rotating the extruder nozzle locations 90 degrees from their current positions. That would put them in-line with each other but perpendicular to the fans, making them equidistant from the cooling source. It would also allow the same cooling assembly to be used with both single- and dual-extruder setups. Perhaps this is something they’ll consider for the Ultimaker 3. Or the Ultimaker 2+, if they follow the naming conventions that other companies seem to be using.

So overall the Ultimaker 2 is shaping up to be a very capable machine that’s simple and straightforward to use. I still think stereolithography is how we’ll end up printing things in the future, but the Ultimaker has shown me that there’s actually quite a bit that can be done with FDM.

Oh, and the accuracy? It’s spot on, on all axes. If I tell it to print a 1cmx1cmx1cm cube, that’s exactly what I get. Interlocking parts with relatively small (~1mm) features can be printed with ease. So no issues there.

Overall score: 9.0 / 10.0.

Long story short, my feelings toward Portal 2 are a bit mixed. Viewed as a game in its own right, Portal 2 does not disappoint. It’s really hard to find much to fault it for in this context. But viewed as a continuation of the original Portal, the game just doesn’t quite live up to the sky-high expectations that I (and probably other fans of the original game) had for it. GLaDOS is back, and just as sarcastic, humorous, and passive-aggressive as ever. At least for the first half of the game. Something seems to happen to the writing about halfway through; it loses its clever wit, that special something-or-other that left you anticipating the next catty remark from GLaDOS and laughing-out-loud when it finally arrived.

Much of the dialog towards the end of the game becomes just matter-of-fact moving-the-story-along chatter, with one AI acting loopy and another AI trying to provide a plausible explanation for why the first one is acting loopy. After a certain point, it just doesn’t feel as clever. At first I thought that it might be just because your antagonist changes, but that’s not really it. Wheatley’s early game dialog is on par with anything GLaDOS ever said, but as the game progresses his lines become less and less inspired. By the time you reach the end some of them are so bland that you pretty much have to force yourself to listen.

In the end, I think the developers erred in putting too much effort into trying to explain and justify their game world. Why should I care about history when there is a sarcastic, witty, and antagonistic AI practically goading me into dismantling it? Such was the case in Portal, but unfortunately not so in Portal 2. Instead the game distracts itself in trying to explain the origins of its world and the players within it, and the result is that some of the drive to keep pushing forward is lost.

Moving along, Portal had its fair share of fiendishly difficult levels. Levels which would leave you genuinely stumped and probably kill you once or twice before you puzzled your way out of them. Portal 2 has a couple of moderately challenging levels, but for the most part the puzzles are straightforward and easy to solve. I’m glad that for the most part the developers fixed it so that going through a portal won’t arbitrarily rotate your character’s orientation (and/or they made it easier to avoid placing portals such that they force you to rotate), but apart from that I think the game was nerfed a bit too much.

Portal put you on a conveyor belt heading towards an incinerator and left you with very little time to work out an escape plan. The situation felt very tense the first time through, and if you did not react very quickly to locate the way out then the game had no qualms about killing you for your shortcoming. Portal 2 has a similar scenario, but the way out of it is much too obvious and the element of danger just isn’t there. Rather than being compelled to react, it feels like there’s plenty of time to just stand their and listen to the AI gloat about its triumph. The sense of imminent danger just isn’t there like it was in the original game.

That said, there’s very little to complain about in terms of graphics, sound or gameplay. Any reviewer who gripes about Portal 2 (PC version, obviously) suffering from being a “port of the console version” is just being a fool. Portal 2 was implemented using the Source engine, an engine which began its life first and foremost as a PC game engine. It cannot be a “port” of anything if its implementation engine natively supports the PC as a target platform.

Yes the graphics in Portal 2 are a bit simple/dated-looking, but such has been the case with every Source-engine game released (even the very first games to use the engine). Valve has always favored attaining playable framerates on lower-end hardware over throwing in lots of hardware-crushing eye-candy, and I’m not about to fault them for their decision. If you need hardware-crushing eye-candy, play Crysis.

On top of its solid graphics and gameplay, Portal 2 gives you quite a few new puzzles to play through. In fact, there are almost certainly more puzzles in the Portal 2 single-player game than in Portal’s single-player game. But, because of the decreased level of difficulty, most of these new puzzles can be breezed through in a handful of minutes, even on your first play-through. It took me less then 7 hours to complete the single-player game, and I wasn’t rushing or trying to solve puzzles as quickly as possible.

I spent time exploring the environment and looking around, trying to knock off as many achievements as I could, and still I only needed 7 hours to complete the game. That’s a bit short, but the problem isn’t that the game itself is too short, rather it’s that the level of difficulty has been reduced too much. Once you know the solutions, Portal can be completed in far less than 7 hours. Portal 2’s real problem is that too many of the solutions are a bit too obvious.

Portal 2 does introduce a number of new gameplay elements, from the propulsion/repulsion/conversion gels, to mirrored “discouragement redirection cubes”, to hard-light bridges, excursion beams, and “aerial faith-plates”. The last of these I find a bit questionable, as their real purpose seems to be replacing some of Portal’s more challenging jumps (the ones where you have to work out some way to build sufficient momentum to bridge an impassable chasm of some sort or another) with a prepackaged solution that “just works”.

Unlike the gels, mirrors, bridges, and beams, the aerial faith-plates function less as a tool for solving the current puzzle and more like a quick way of hopping between Point A and Point B without using a portal and without having to worry about where you land. I think the game could have been better without them, but apart from that I also think that the rest of the new gameplay elements function very well within the context of the game, and I’m surprised that Valve was able to come up with so many new physics things to add to the game.

One last thing that leaves me a little confused is the decision to replace the guided missiles of Portal with generic unpropelled exploding boxes in Portal 2. It doesn’t really change the gameplay that much, but personally I found the missiles to be a lot more threatening and fun than some nondescript red boxes that just happen to explode when they hit something. Perhaps Valve decided that they didn’t want to renew their missile targeting AI license?

Anyways, though I have picked the game apart over a few minor issues, I still think that overall Portal 2 is a very fun game and worth a play-through or two. Play it and enjoy it as a game in its own right, as its biggest flaws only become apparent when you hold it to the candle that is Portal the first. It doesn’t quite satisfy as a sequel to that original magical title, but as a first-person puzzle game with a completely unique mode of gameplay there’s still nothing else quite like it.

Overall score: 8.5 / 10.0

P.S. The Portal Song is an order of magnitude better than The Portal 2 Song. So don’t get your hopes up expecting an epic musical ending like in the first game. You still get a musical ending, but it’s not quite as epic.