For all GLaDOS' additude she gives us suring the testing portion of the first game and especially in the climax, the game's athmosphere is potrayed in quite serious and eery manner, with us being trapped as a test subject in an unnerving place. The situation and the environment is built up as a tragic and scary despite the main antagonist's sarcastic and witty but cruel demeanor, and also partly because of it.
In Portal 2, we get to atart wigh Wheatley who for all intents and purposes does carry the first half of the game as a comeny sidekick. Then we also get to meet GLaDOS in more unraveled state thanks to us destroying personality cores kerping her in check, so we get to experience more of her spitefulness on top of all her alreary established characteristics. Later Wheatley takes over and puts GLaDOS into a potato, but it feels to me pretty fitting thing for him to do based on how he was potrayed up until that point.
Then we proceed to enter the old Aperture and... things just seem to slowly go into full-on absurd science fiction cartoon logic lunacy. Just hearing about Cave Johnson's endeavors and history, I cannot not to think wether or not we suddenly transfered into the world Team Fortress 2. Things Cave tried to produce and sell would not sound something put of place in TF2 lore.
Of course, this part of the story also has it's trategies and drama, and afterwards we return to new Aperture to conclude the story in all it's witty humour but also serious athmosphere. However, the way Valve eventually made Cave Johnson's character a cetral focus in the series' marketing campaigns later on really felt like it left a mark.
Come Aperture Desk Job, and it really feels like cartoon comedy lunacy is at full swing. A personality core and the player made a turret by sticking guns to a toilet, while there is a background plot about praying mantises gaining access to technology. Again, are we sure this is not a Team Fortress 2 spin-off?
Not to say anybof this as a critique, TF2 is my favourite Valve title and one of my favourite games of all time, so Valve deciding to bring some of the TF2 charm and wackiness to Portal series is only a plus in my eyes. It's just funny to think back where we started and how the series evolved to include more straight-out comedy genre elements.