Portal 2 - Xbox 360

The newest Portal 2 character to be unveiled is Cave Johnson, voiced by J.K. Simmons of Spider-Man fame. Valve presented a special PAX EAST single-player demo introducing Mr. Johnson as the Founder and CEO of the Enrichment Center for Aperture Laboratories. His voice is one of the many that guide you through the game with inspiring quotes like "We want the best, and you are it," and "Their deaths were tragic, but informative." The demo also gave us more Wheatley and blue goo.

The PAX EAST single-player demo starts out in a tidy room with a dresser, bed, and mural of palm trees on the wall. A calm voice asks you look up when you hear the horn, which you do. Then he asks you to look down when you hear the horn, which you do. You look at the art to feel fulfilled and listen to the classical music to meditate. You have completed your gymnastic exercise, so it's time for bed. You walk over to the bed and fall asleep.

Turns out the sleep is actually stasis. The camera pans out, and you're back in the room, but time has clearly passed. The room is in disarray, dusty and dirty. Suddenly, a frantic Personality Core bot flies over head, encouraging you to wake up. You've over slept...by a couple hundred years.

The room around you starts to fall apart, revealing stacks of similar box rooms falling apart. The Personality Core, Wheatley, is voiced by Stephen Merchant. Wheatley asks you to speak, "Say apple." If you don't do as he asks, he'll just keep talking. We were told this will happen throughout the game, not just here. As you get up, the room falls into even more decay, hardly even standing. Wheatley tries to guide you to safety as you are presumably the only one of the 10,000 test subjects to have survived. He tells you you need to find a gun to escape, but a special kind of gun that shoots holes. "You'll know it when you see it."

The second part of the demo was an introduction to Cave Johnson. Cave is voiced by J.K. Simmons. You probably know him as J. Jonah Jameson in the most recent Spider-Man series. Cave founded Aperture Science in 1953 as a shower curtain manufacturer for the military. The company grew as time went on, but Cave died, and was resurrected as a computer for Portal 2. During the demo, he tells his testers, who were supposed be injected with praying mantis blood, he has good news and bad news. The bad news is the experiment has been called off; the good news is they get to fight a praying mantis man army. Grab your guns!

As you've no doubt seen in previous gameplay videos, blue goo has a purpose in Portal 2. Some of the puzzles we saw demonstrated how players will use the goo to bounce to high places. We also briefly saw the orange goo, and all we really have to say is: slip'n slide.

Portal 2 will be released on April 19 for the PC, Mac, PS3, and Xbox 360.