Portal+2+(Kathryn)



[|Portal 2 Ending Song]
 * //(4 points)// A brief description of the game. You may include images or even video clips to help give readers a better idea of the game.
 * //(5 points)// The kinds of learning involved (i.e. What specifically did you learn from playing the game?). Think about the game tasks, objectives, terminology, etc. What skills did you need to learn to be successful at the game?
 * //(5 points)// The kinds of teaching involved (i.e. How did the game teach you?). Think about the kinds of feedback, rewards, guidance, and information the game gave you, and how it paced and structured your learning. Which Principles of Learning did the game utilize?
 * //(3 points)// A brief description of the kinds (and quantity) of online sites, forums, wikis, etc. devoted to the game. What game activities (e.g. walk-thoughs/guides, databases, cheats, theorycrafting, modding, etc.) are most-commonly discussed?
 * //(3 points)// Your overall reflections on playing the game.

Portal 2 is a puzzle game, where the player uses portals to get through each level. What are portals, you ask? Well, imagine two doorways that lead to each other, wherever they may be placed. The game begins when you wake up in a suspension chamber in the Aperture Science Enrichment Center. You have been in suspension for an unspecified amount of time, but long enough for the facility to have largely broken down, and for Wheatley (personality core, AI) to fear that you have a "minor case of severe brain damage". Wheatley helps you out of the suspension chamber, much like a shipping container that looks like a hotel room inside, and sets you off on your adventure to escape the crumbling ruins of the facility. Wheatley comes back at one point, and you help him off of his track and carry him with you. Along the way, you encounter GLaDOS, a psychopathic, homicidal Artificial Intelligence, who you destroyed and dumped in an incinerator in Portal. She comes back to life and is very unhappy with you! [|Portal 2 Trailer (short)] [|GLaDOS wakes up (8 min)]

What did I learn from this game? I learned that using portals is mind-bending! You have to be able to imagine where you are going to come out and how fast. For instance, if you fall into a portal, you will fly out the other side, possibly spanning a gap and landing on a platform far away. This took me a while to figure out (and some help)!



In the beginning of the game, you are told to do basic things, like look up and down and move around the room to make sure that you are ready to play. This game was very different from most video games that I've played in that it did not take a lot of hand-eye coordination. You are not timed, and if you die (such as in the toxic water or dropping too far) you will simply re-start that level. This took a lot of the pressure off! Each level gets more complex in the number of steps required for you to activate the pressure plate with the cubes and open the door. For instance, you may have to cause the cube to fall and then activate a switch immediately after in order to cause a plate to raise up and stop the flight of the cube. Luckily, the cubes keep coming, so you have a lot of chances to get the timing right. My son tells me that as the levels progress, this type of timing gets more frequent. I really had to work to think spatially in this game, and not linearly! //Active, Critical Learning Principle// - This game depends on active learning. There is no way to get through this game passively. //Psychosocial Moratorium Principle// - There are no high stakes here. Even "dying" simply results in re-starting the level, so real-world consequences are drastically lowered. //Self-Knowledge Principle// - I felt that this game was teaching me about myself. I have a low tolerance for ambiguity and a low tolerance for failure! //Practice Principle// - I felt that there was a lot of practice and levels slowly increased in difficulty. Regime of Competence Principle - The levels progressed in such a way that previously learned skills were incorporated with a new skill. This made the game challenging but not undoable. //Probing Principle// - You have to be willing to probe the world, form hypotheses and then test them. I was fairly hesitant in doing this. It even took me a while to realize that I wasn't going to die from jumping off of places. Once I tested this, the game got a lot easier! //Multiple Routes Principle// - I didn't think this game contained this principle until my son, watching me, said "I never thought to do it that way!". //Multimodel Principle// - There are images, text, a narrator, etc. that help you along the way. There are even pictures on the floor to help you figure out what you can do.
 * __Principles of Learning__**

A quick search for Portal 2 wikis turned up 129,000,000 results! I explored ThinkingWithPortals.com for a few minutes and discovered that people are creating mods (modifications) for the game. You can go back and play Portal in a whole new, more challenging way! A quick search for walkthroughs turned up 1,410,000 results. You can watch someone else play through every level of the game. Cheat sites abound, with 1,900,000 results. Most sites seem to contain walkthroughs. There are also a lot of quotes from GLaDOS!
 * __Fan Sites__**

__**Overall Review**__ Playing this game really surprised me. I thought it was a first person shooter! Turns out it's a puzzle game with a lot of humor. I enjoyed GLaDOS and may play more just because of her. I had to work hard to bend my mind around the portals. My son helped me with a couple of hints like "If you fall into a portal, you maintain your momentum when you come out the other side". I am not good at exploring and very loathe to take risks. He helped me overcome these things part way through the game by telling me that if I died, I just re-started the game. 3-D games are difficult for me, and after an hour I was nauseous. Nevertheless, I think I will continue the game, just in smaller increments. I can see how this game would be addictive, always trying to get through the next level and meet the challenge. This game was good at helping you with the basics and then introducing a new challenge bit by bit. Each level seemed just slightly harder than the one before it. The environment itself was interesting and detailed. The center that you are in is falling apart, and there is debris everywhere. It was the messiest looking game that I have played. I thought that it increased the visual interest.