Apr 19, 2011 10:40 GMT  ·  By

Portal 2 is most certainly one of the biggest titles to appear at the beginning of this year, being the direct sequel to one of the most popular games ever released by Valve.

The company promoted the title through a series of hilarious videos, as well as through an Alternate Reality Game which, thanks to the efforts of gamers from all around the world, got the title released 10 hours earlier through the company's Steam platform.

Now, players can finally see how Valve continued the story of the original Portal while adding brand new features and mechanics in order to innovate on the brilliant work it did with the first title.

Portal 2 starts off rather awkwardly in what appears to be a hotel room designed especially for members of the Aperture Science team that wanted to be frozen in time.

In case you didn't follow the comic book series released by Valve before the launch of Portal 2, the heroine of the two titles, Chell, is taken back into the Aperture facility after the end of the first game, and put into a special pod, in order to keep her alive as time moved on.

Now, you awake to find Wheatley, a friendly British robot, which is trying to rescue you from some sort of apocalyptic scenario that affected the whole Aperture Science research facility.

After a few adventures, you're once again tasked with going through some of the test facilities that survived the destruction, but, this time, their crisp, almost surreal white image from the first game is replaced with a run down, decayed one, showing players just how much things have changed for the environment.

You're reunited with your trusty Portal gun, at first being able to fire just one portal, and then the second one, while going through all sorts of tricky puzzle levels.

Portal 2 manages to grasp the same quirky humor that made the original such a popular game, while also delivering on quite a lot of new things, at least judging by the first portion of its single-player story.

Don't forget that there's also a hefty cooperative campaign in the new title, with its own special story, so there are certainly quite a lot of things for any gamer to do in Portal 2.

Until our full review appears at the end of the week, check out a video of the game's beginning below.