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Portal 2 is celebrating its 15-year anniversary today, April 18, 2026. Below, we examine how it approached comedy, and how many games still struggle with it.
Today, Portal 2 turns 15. Unlike most of us at that age, though, Valve’s revered 2011 puzzler is completely confident in its identity and funny as hell. In a sea of games that attempt to make us laugh, Portal 2 is the rare success.
Which is to say, Portal 2 has earned a reputation as the rare interactive comedy masterpiece as much because of what it doesn’t do wrong as what it gets right. If Portal 2 were as good as it is in every other way, but flubbed the jokes, that single failure would be an albatross around its neck. Think about how much hate Forspoken got for its quippy dialogue. Think of how Borderlands 3’s mismanagement of the series’ brash tone turned the game into a punching bag for longtime fans. And think of how hard Portal 2 would be to enjoy if GLaDOS were constantly doling out joke-y hints every time you got stumped.
Trying and failing to be funny is the quickest way to kill a game. So why, a decade and a
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