Review: Portal 2 as a learning tool

 You can put down your lame sodoku puzzles because there is now something much more brilliant, stimulating, and interesting out there.

I noticed that a couple people posted reviews on their blogs about video games as a learning process and video games as a potential interactive learning tool in school, one review is here http://socofedufaubert.blogspot.ca/ . I find this to be quite interesting so I did a little research (by that I mean I googled it) on a specific game that I found to be beneficial as it had a lot of critical thinking involved. This game of course is Portal 2 and I was not the only person to believe this game was an educational tool, CLICK HERE for a link to an article that does a small analysis of the game and here are a few more: LINK 1  LINK2  LINK3.

Portal 2 won many awards and is critically acclaimed for its very original story, gameplay and of course the dry humour. Behind the amazing story is a revolutionary puzzle game that will stimulate your mind for hours, resulting in a feeling that you have truly benefited from a video game. The game throws you into numerous complex situations driven by the plot where you have to think your way out with the portal gun and your environment. As you progress, and you really feel like your
progressing, the puzzles become more intricate and detailed through which you must complete many more processes to get yourself out, personally most of the game involved me standing and looking around while I thought things out, or indulging in a seemingly everlasting, intense process of trial and error. According to a couple sources, the Valve team (developers) will introduce a product that will allow people to build there own puzzles so that people can take in what they learned from the game and try to add their own spin on it, this adds a whole new perspective to the potential benefits. Another great feature implemented in this sequel is cooperative mode where you and a friend can play puzzles made specifically for two people where you will find yourself communicating and explaining theories and thoughts of what to do as you can't solve them without the help of somebody else.

There is talk, some in the provided articles, that the game could be used in schools as an interactive tool for learning physics, though personally I don't think it should be reduced to only teaching physics. I believe that there are ways to involve video games as a interactive tool for learning in school, but the games should be designed specifically for the curriculum of the course rather than having its primary focus as entertainment. For that reason I don't think a game like Portal or Portal 2 should be found in the public school system.

Learning outside of school though is just as important and if you want to stimulate your mind then Portal 2 is a highly recommended game to do so, sodoku puzzles and other such games will never feel the same. For me Valve has changed what I expect when playing a new video game and I hope that the industry can learn from it and provide more products with relatively similar learning processes instead of dumbing down the population.

If you want to check out the game then download the demo here. http://www.filestube.com/p/portal+2+demo+download