Solve / First-person puzzle
Portal 2
Falling is a perfectly good way to cross a room
Valve puts an exit in plain view and quietly removes the ordinary way to reach it. Two coloured holes make a floor, a ceiling and the far wall feel unexpectedly close.
Put the floor on the wall
Stand on a ledge and picture the fall before placing either portal. One opening goes where you will land. The other faces the stretch of air you need to cross. Falling speed carries through the pair, so the deeper drop can produce the longer flight. That small act of prediction feels good even when the answer is obvious. Looking down means looking ahead, a habit that follows you into the next chamber.
Follow the white panels
Aperture draws attention to surfaces that will accept a portal, which lets a room teach without a paragraph of instructions. The trick is deciding which of those surfaces matters now. A panel glimpsed through glass may explain the journey of a cube before it offers any help to the person holding the device. Add a voice over the speaker making pointed remarks about your performance and the pause spent looking around becomes part of the comedy.
Four openings, two opinions
The two-player campaign gives each partner a pair of portals. A solution might depend on leaving an opening in place while the other player moves into position. Pointing out the right wall is suddenly as useful as finding it. Partners who discover an answer together get a lovely extra beat between understanding the idea and making it work. An expert directing a newcomer through every placement can easily talk that pleasure out of the room.
The verdict
A carefully paced introduction to an extraordinary idea, with a separate co-op campaign that gives the same tool a different rhythm.
- Pick it for
- Puzzle solvers who like to work backwards from an exit they can already see.
- Think twice if
- Repeated changes in orientation and fast exits from portals may be uncomfortable in first person.
Gallery
A closer look
Game imagery · Valve · Image source ↗