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" The next time we join Chell, it appears that hundreds of years have passed. The room has seen severe decay, with a washed-out appearance, its walls gradually falling apart and an obnoxious alarm system warning of imminent meltdown. Very soon there&amp;#039;s a knock on the door followed by a voice with a polite but noticeably urgent tone. The room&amp;#039;s doorway soon smashes open and a robot sphere worms its way along a ceiling rail into the centre of the room, introducing itself as Wheatley (who is voiced by Extras star Stephen Merchant). He explains that although he was left in charge of all the test candidates here - tens of thousands of them - he wasn&amp;#039;t told about his duties until far too late. With the other humans rendered &amp;quot;vegetables&amp;quot;, Chell is the only one left alive, and his only hope of escape from the facility that&amp;#039;s due to collapse in on itself. After Wheatley pops outside to quickly survey the situation, he tests Chell&amp;#039;s mental state for the trials ahead (complete with a genuinely laugh-out-loud request that&amp;#039;s best left unspoilt). He disappears once more, and the room&amp;#039;s walls fall apart to reveal a seemingly never-ending warehouse stacked with hundreds of similar chambers suspended on rails. Wheatley guides the box past masses of other rooms, before engaging in a &amp;quot;manual override&amp;quot; into the facility proper; in other words, he slams the room into a concrete wall until it splits open. Tumbling out of the room and dropping into an enclosed location, it&amp;#039;s apparent that you&amp;#039;ve landed where the first game began; a four-walled chamber with that same old toilet, except that the glass surroundings are cracked and that the walls are lined with moss and marked with signs of decay. It&amp;#039;s the same Aperture Science, but it&amp;#039;s seen better days. Following a similar structure to the original Portal, Chell is led from floor to floor through simple trials that end with a familiar, pod-like elevator system. While Wheatley makes the occasional appearance, telling you that somewhere there&amp;#039;s a gun &amp;quot;that creates holes, but not bullet holes&amp;quot; somewhere ahead, you&amp;#039;re largely on your own as the game gets you to grips with its Portal mechanics. Once you find the gun - it&amp;#039;s moved from its original resting place and down a collapsing hole in the ground, along a trip through a damp, dark passage and on top of a pile of rubble back in the labs - you can create two connected portals, whereby walking through one you&amp;#039;ll appear out of the other, allowing you to navigate around seemingly inaccessible ledges and vast expanses with ease. While these core mechanics are second nature to those who have played the original, this extended tutorial serves as a handy reminder.  This opening chapter keeps things simple by automatically placing the orange portal ahead of you, requiring you to find a good spot to place the opposing blue variant and then simply head on through. The testing labs are similar in layout to the first game but are not identical, especially in its weathered appearance, but they still require you to locate Weighted Companion Cubes and place them on pressure pads to open doors, or to jump from a high ledge, drop a portal at the ground that&amp;#039;s racing towards you and instead fling out of a wall high above. It compresses some of the later trials and ideas from the first game into this introductory chapter without feeling at all rushed or difficult, while giving you nuggets of story about what happened here in the hundreds of years past; a male, robotic voice warns of evacuation procedures in the event of meteor strikes and blasts out warbled jazz music to alleviate stress, while you can head off the beaten track and explore dilapidated offices, complete with a familiar array of painted messages splashed across them. Once the testing labs are finished, you meet up with Wheatley once again, seemingly surprised that you managed to find the Portal gun and reach this point with all limbs and reasonable mental capacity intact. From here on in it&amp;#039;s pretty much an extended cutscene as Wheatley assists your progress through the labs. It&amp;#039;s at this point that you notice how wonderfully realised Wheatley is; for what is essentially a sphere with a glowing light adorned in the centre, his movements, twitching eye-shutters and the perfectly-matched voice of Stephen Merchant make for a companion that has bags of personality and is genuinely funny, and one that you&amp;#039;d look forward to spending more time with. Even though Chell is silent, there&amp;#039;s a natural interplay between the two characters, as Wheatley asks to catch him when he disengages from the ceiling, or politely requests that you turn around while he fiddles with wall circuitry due to stage fright.  The final moments of the chapter continue to paint more of a picture of what&amp;#039;s going on. Sneaking through ventilation shafts and access walkways, familiar clear-tubing is now clogged with Companion Cubes and turrets screeching for help, and Wheatley retells the story of GlaDOS&amp;#039;s demise, brought down by a human (a male, nonetheless) and that the evil, AI overlord was truly a nasty piece of work. Moments later, however, the pair encounter a tunnel of breaker switches and are slowly lifted to an open atrium, accidentally reanimating the evil, AI overlord. Once she reassembles herself in front of the hapless duo, GLaDOS tosses Wheatley asunder, and with Chell in her grasp, says she&amp;#039;s eager to resume her testing duties once more. However, as the player is thrown head first into a dark pit, there&amp;#039;s &amp;quot;one small thing&amp;quot; to take care of first... &amp;gt; Read our Portal 2 interview with Valve Portal 2 will be available on Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, PC and Mac from April 19 in North America and April 21 in Europe. 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<http://www.digitalspy.com/gaming/previews/news/a313872/preview-portal-2s-opening-30-minutes/>